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Former military advocate general Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was released to house arrest from police custody on Friday morning, five days after she went missing on a beach and a week after she resigned from her post and admitted to leaking a classified video to the press last year.
A judge ordered her to be released to a 10-day house arrest on Friday upon the deposit of a NIS 20,000 ($6,000) bail, and barred her from contacting anyone involved in the case for 55 days.
Tomer-Yerushalmi is suspected of fraud and breach of trust, abuse of her office, obstruction of justice and unlawful disclosure of material over her role in the leak of a video to the media that purported to show IDF soldiers severely abusing a Gazan detainee at the Sde Teiman facility last year.
She was arrested on Sunday night, after going missing off the coast near Tel Aviv for several hours, leading police to fear that she had taken her own life. When she was eventually found in Herzliya, law enforcement officials were unable to locate her phone, leading them to suspect that the incident was an attempt to stage a suicide while disposing of digital evidence related to the leaking and subsequent cover-up.
Law enforcement authorities and eager volunteers have spent the last few days searching the Tel Aviv beachfronts and the ocean for her phone, suspecting that it holds incriminating evidence, even as Tomer-Yerushalmi reportedly continued to deny that she had staged the incident, insisting that she really had intended to end her own life.
The search mission failed to yield results until Friday morning, when, shortly before Tomer-Yerushalmi’s release to house arrest, civilians found a phone in the sea at Hatzuk Beach north of Tel Aviv, where she briefly went missing.
Images circulating on social media showed that the phone turned on, with the lock screen displaying an image of the ex-top IDF lawyer and her daughter.
טלפון נייד אותר בחוף הצוק – המשטרה בוחנת האם הוא שייך לפצ”רית@_Gitsis_ pic.twitter.com/7AnECHU0om
— גלצ (@GLZRadio) November 7, 2025
Police said officers arrived at the location and took the phone for further investigation.
Citing an unnamed source involved in the investigation, Channel 12 reported that the phone has been verified to belong to Tomer-Yerushalmi, despite initial doubts that it was hers, given that it was still half-charged and working after what would have been five days in the ocean.
The person who discovered the phone, a woman in her 50s, said in interviews with the press that she had not been searching for it, but stumbled upon it by chance while swimming in the sea.
“I’m very excited,” she told i24 News. “The whole country is talking about it, and in the end, here I am, finding it.”
She said that as soon as she turned it on and saw the lock screen image, she phoned the police to alert them. The news quickly spread, and someone approached to offer her NIS 100,000 ($30,000) in exchange for the phone, which she refused.
According to Hebrew media reports, the unexpected discovery has irked some of the more dedicated volunteers, who have spent the past few days sweeping the beaches with metal detectors.
One such volunteer, the man who offered NIS 100,000 in an attempt to get his hands on the phone before the police, told Ynet that he didn’t believe she had found the real phone.
“It doesn’t feel right to me,” he said. “We got there fast, and the woman was unwilling to give me the iPhone 16 that she supposedly found… it could be a trick that somebody is playing.”
Separately on Friday, the IDF announced that the Military Advocate General’s (MAG) Corps had been temporarily placed under the command of the Personnel Directorate chief, Maj. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa.
The decision was made by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, as most of the top command of the MAG Corps is under investigation for the Sde Teiman abuse leak, including Tomer-Yerushalmi’s deputy, Brig. Gen. Gal Asael.
Asael was questioned under caution on Thursday before being released to house arrest and suspended from the MAG Corps. Other senior officers have also been suspended and investigated by the police.
Bar Kalifa will head the MAG Corps until Itai Ofir, an attorney who recently served as legal adviser to the Defense Ministry, enters the role of military advocate general. The IDF said an acting military advocate general will be appointed “as soon as possible.”
Bar Kalifa will only be commanding the MAG Corps in a technical sense, and he is not authorized to make any legal decisions.
The military said that Zamir “sees utmost importance in stabilizing the Military Advocate General’s Corps and ensuring its continuous and professional functioning.”
The Sde Teiman controversy has been unfolding for well over a year, since the initial allegations of abuse emerged in July 2024. It had died down until a routine polygraph test conducted recently by the Shin Bet on a MAG officer led to a breakthrough in the case, resulting in Tomer-Yerushalmi’s resignation and admission to the leak.
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