We have heard a lot in the last two years and one month about Jewish Australians feeling unsafe or intimidated.

We hear much less about how threatened Palestinian Australians feel and how unsafe Palestinians have been for decades in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

But now a senior lawyer in the Israel Defence Force has resigned, saying she felt threatened in her job. Haaretz reports that Major-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, IDF’s former chief prosecutor, refrained from investigating suspected war crimes in Gaza for fear of right-wing incitement against her. She has also admitted approving the leak in August 2024 of a video showing the alleged abuse by IDF reservists of a Gazan detainee in July.

Tomer-Yerushalmi could have looked into the behaviour of Israeli guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility , and should have if she suspected they had violated international law or committed war crimes. But she evidently felt safer not knowing or saying anything about it. The soldiers’ abuse allegedly took place at the prison where Middle East Eye says Israeli forces have held and interrogated thousands of Palestinians since October 2023. Torture, rape, and killings have been found to be rife at the facility, and  CNN and _The New York Times_ have reported  widespread examples of abuse.

Many of the Palestinian bodies recently released by Israel came from Sde Teiman. The director-general of Hamas’ Health ministry said in an  interview with Al Jazeera that the remains showed marks consistent with systematic torture, and that documents found inside each body bag revealed that they all originated from Sde Teiman. Forensic examinations of the recently returned remains of 195 Palestinians showed consistency with such testimonies, Mahmoud Issa of Reuters reported on 22 October 2025.

The arrest of 10 IDF reservists suspected of involvement in the abuse at Sde Teiman triggered riots by right-wing activists and demonstrators — including serving coalition ministers and Knesset members — at the base and at the military court. The video leak in August 2024 “caused enormous reputational damage to Israel, to the IDF and to our soldiers”, said Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he called for an impartial inquiry, calling this “perhaps the most serious public relations attack Israel has experienced since its founding”.

Five soldiers were  indicted in February 2025 for abusing a Palestinian security prisoner after he was brought to the detention facility in July 2024. The assault left him with severe injuries, including broken ribs and a tear in his rectum. The other five were present in associated roles, according to the Times of Israel. The accused IDF reservists told Israeli media it was a show trial, adding, “Know this – we will not stay silent. We will continue to fight for justice”. Representing them, Adi Kedar of Honenu, a far-right legal aid organisation, called for the trial to be cancelled and for Tomer-Yerushalmi to be prosecuted instead.

Netanyahu is also in conflict with his Attorney-General, Gali Baharav-Miara, who claims she has the authority to investigate the incident. Justice Minister Yariv Levin told the attorney-general last week that she was barred from handling the case because of her personal involvement and the probability of her being required to testify. Baharav-Miara told Levin he had no authority to stop her investigating the video leak and accused him of trying unlawfully to interfere in the proceedings.

Senior sources told Haaretz that, having resigned last week over the Sde Teiman leak, Tomer-Yerushalmi used “various pretexts to avoid opening or advancing investigations” into numerous other IDF abuses in Gaza, including the army’s killing in March 2025 of 15 Palestinian medical personnel. Of direct interest to Australia is the allegation that she earlier declined to investigate the Israeli airstrike in Gaza that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers and their driver in April 2024, including Melbourne woman Zomi Frankcom. They were delivering food and other supplies to northern Gaza on behalf of the charity group in a clearly marked truck.

Outrage in Australia led to the then attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, visiting Israel in January 2025. He reported back to Australian Jewish News that _"_Australia has a deep, enduring friendship with Israel. And it’s not just the relationship between the current government of Australia and the current government of Israel. This is a ‘people to people’ relationship … the fact that we have got some disagreements with the current government of Israel doesn’t change that relationship".

A reserve officer in the IDF prosecutor’s office has now told Haaretz that after the World Central Kitchen deaths, Tomer-Yerushalmi transferred the case to the IDF’s operational investigation mechanism, and “the incident simply disappeared”. The findings required a military police investigation, but “it never happened”.

Netanyahu faces an election next year in what he says is the region’s only democracy. That claim is supported by the evident freedom of articulate Israelis and their relatively unfettered media to speak truth to power and hold government to account. One example, at least, for others to follow.

Postscript: Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi has been arrested.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.