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Israeli prosecutor who leaked torture camp rape video goes ‘missing’ (www.thecanary.co)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/world
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Israeli police have launched a search for former military prosecutor Yifat Tomer Yerushalmi, who has gone missing after admitting that she was the source of a leaked video that showed Israeli troops raping a Palestinian abductee at Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp. Yerushalmi resigned her post yesterday after her admission.

Yerushalmi: missing

According to Israeli paper Yedioth Ahronoth, Yerushalmi has been missing for several hours and police found her abandoned car at a Tel Aviv beach early this morning. Israeli media report that she had left a letter inside the car and some have reported that she also left a suicide note at her home.

A senior police source told Haaretz there are serious concerns for her life – but the disappearance also raises the possibility that the Israeli regime wanted a clean end to the situation that prevented her being able to testify at the trial that was likely to follow her admission.

Yerushalmi’s disappearance came just a few hours after Israel’s wanted war criminal PM Benjamin Netanyahu described her leak as “the most dangerous propaganda attack in Israel’s history.”

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[–] [S] 18 points 1 year ago (9 children)

As recently ago as the late 1970s, someone in America could leak the Pentagon Papers, be protected by the activist left who recognized how important that kind of thing was and also major institutions like newspapers, and then he could show up and volunteer to stand trial for the leak, and win, and go a free man because the facts were on his side.

This is what I mean when I say that I don't think modern America can keep a democracy. There are just too few people involved who care about things that need someone to care about them, if the dream of the people who started America is to survive here. But it used to not be that way, and not that long ago.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Yeah, I mentioned the Panama Papers because the guy who leaked them was murdered afterward.

    The Pentagon Papers leaker wasn't murdered, though the guy who perpetrated My Lai only got house arrest in the end, and Colin Powell, who made sure said war criminal wasn't punished, is still revered here in the US and even could have been president at one point had he decided to run.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The Pentagon Papers leaker wasn’t murdered

    Not only that, he was actively protected by the system. Today he'd be in federal prison or worse.

    the guy who perpetrated My Lai only got house arrest in the end

    My Lai was a big inflection point in terms of people coming down on which side or other in terms of where they stand.

    The system is just people. Always has been, always will be.

    I read from a soldier who served with Lt. Calley (the man who ordered the massacre.) He said he was just a deeply depraved individual. He said in war, you find out who you really are, and for some people they have this darkness inside them that goes deep and deep, and war just lets it unleash and nurtures it. He talked about other horrifying things Calley had done, that he never got in trouble for, he was basically a serial killer free to do whatever he wanted and protected by this awesome power of the US military the entire time to do it all in broad daylight.

    Hugh Thompson was the helicopter commander who landed his helicopter between the Americans and Vietnamese and ordered his men to fire on the Americans if they tried to advance. They obeyed everything he told them to do, he stopped the massacre. When he came back the whole country thought he was a traitor. A lot of people wanted him brought up on charges. It never happened, they decided to give him a medal instead. But they lied and said they were giving him a medal for honor in engagements with the Vietnamese. He turned it down. He like a lot of veterans at that point was disgusted with the war, disgusted with the US government and all its people who supported it all. Eventually, years later, they compromised and gave him a medal for more or less what he actually did. That one he accepted.

    And, as is tradition, Calley escaped any serious punishment. He lived peacefully in Florida until the end of his days. I just looked it up, he died last year, in April.

    It's all just people. People decide to kill, people decide to punish or let free. People are the foundation, with the decisions they make.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    The Pentagon Papers leaker wasn’t murdered

    Not only that, he was actively protected by the system. Today he’d be in federal prison or worse.

    I guess you could say Daniel Ellsberg was "protected by the system" in that a couple years later a judge did eventually dismiss the espionage charges against him, after learning about the burglary of his psychiatrist's office (by the same White House Plumbers who would later go on to do the Watergate break-in) in an attempt to discredit him. But first he was looking at 115 years in prison.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    Yeah. That's what I mean: He signed up to go through the justice system, trusting or at least hoping that it would produce justice even with the entire weight of the federal government convinced he was guilty of treason, and committed to destroying him because of what he had done. And he was right. He went free and got to live his life.

    When's the last time that happened in Russia?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    He signed up to go through the justice system, trusting or at least hoping that it would produce justice even with the entire weight of the federal government convinced he was guilty of treason, and committed to destroying him because of what he had done.

    Signed up to? He didn't intend to get caught, and when he eventually turned himself in (while a fugitive, having been already identified) he actually expected to go to prison. And he almost certainly would have, were it not for the gross government misconduct against him (which he only became aware of later) and being lucky enough to get a judge who was sufficiently offended by that misconduct declare a mistrial.

    'The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case.'

    In the midst of Ellsberg's trial, the case took a number of bizarre twists. The first, on April 26, 1973, came in the form of a disclosure by the government prosecutor that White House operatives had burglarized the Beverly Hills office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist. The burglars, led by G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were not apprehended until after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington nine months later.

    But just days after the disclosure in Judge Byrne's courtroom, Nixon's two top lieutenants -- John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman -- resigned, along with acting attorney general Richard G. Kleindienst. White House counsel John Dean was fired.

    A few days later, another disturbing revelation came from the judge himself. He disclosed in court that he had had two recent contacts with Ehrlichman, who had offered him a job -- director of the FBI. Although Ehrlichman later testified before the Senate Watergate Committee that Judge Byrne had expressed interest in the FBI job, the judge insisted that he had told the Nixon aide he could not discuss any job offer while the Ellsberg trial was underway.

    The trial was shaken again on May 9 when Judge Byrne learned of yet another impropriety: The FBI had secretly taped telephone conversations between Ellsberg and Morton Halperin, who had supervised the Pentagon Papers study.

    When the government claimed it had lost all relevant records of the wiretapping, Judge Byrne declared a mistrial on May 11, 1973.

    "The totality of the circumstances of this case which I have only briefly sketched offend a sense of justice," Byrne told the court that day. "The bizarre events have incurably infected the prosecution of this case."

    The courtroom erupted in cheers and applause as Ellsberg was freed.

    Ellsberg learned of Byrne's death Friday as he was attending a conference of First Amendment lawyers in Palm Desert, Calif., where he took part in a panel discussion of the Pentagon Papers.

    "His dismissal of all charges against Tony Russo and myself with the eloquent denunciation of government misconduct, in which he said it offends a sense of justice, gave my wife and me one of the best days of our lives," Ellsberg said.

    (from https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/14/AR2006011401165.html )

    When’s the last time that happened in Russia?

    Huh? Are you actually trying to downplay the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg (which also included an aborted plot to neutralize him with LSD) by dropping a non-sequitur "but Russia"? 😂

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 year ago

    Signed up to? He didn’t intend to get caught

    He absolutely did. He was talking with US Senators about what he was about to do, trying to get them involved in the process of leaking the documents to the public. He already had his legal team assembled. He was not hiding, except insofar as he needed to to be able to remain free for long enough to get it done.

    Excerpts from "Secrets":

    I told him my background and of my work on the McNamara study, which I described in some detail. I explained how the history related to Nixon's policy as I understood it, why it was important for Congress and the public to know it, what I had done so far, and what was in progress. But I hadn't gotten very far in that last part before he suddenly held up his hand and said, "I have to stop you right now. I'm afraid I can't take part in this discussion any further."

    "Pardon me?"

    "You seem to be describing plans to commit a crime. I don't want to hear any more about it. As a lawyer I can't be a party to it."

    The top of my head blew off. I got up out of my chair and said in a low, tense voice, getting faster as I went along, looking down at him: "I've been talking to you about seven thousand pages of documentation of crimes: war crimes, crimes against the peace, mass murder. Twenty years of crime under four presidents. And every one of those presidents had a Harvard professor at his side, telling him how to do it and how to get away with it. Thank you, good night."

    I wasn't tempted to give the confirmation that they wanted at this point. As yet there had been no indication that the Justice Department had decided to seek criminal indictments in addition to the injunction. I wasn't surprised that Newsweek had been led to me as the probable source so quickly — the last line of its story on the interview was that I had said with a smile, "I am flattered to be suspected of having leaked it" — and I was sure that Justice was in little doubt by this point. But I was determined not to goad the administration into an unprecedented criminal prosecution by taunting it publicly, if it had any inhibitions about indicting me.

    He didn't out himself to the press early because he didn't want the story about him to distract from the papers themselves, and he stayed in hiding until it was all done so they wouldn't be able to stop the leaking process itself. It took a long time, there were many volumes and this was in the pre-computer days where it was actually hard to get a mass of documents into the public's hands irrevocably.

    Then once the stuff was all published, his lawyers got in touch with the DOJ and he turned himself in (they had figured it out by then, as he obviously knew they would). They ordered him to surrender by a certain date, he refused and told them he would be in on Monday, his lawyer told him that might cause additional charges, he said "oh well."

    I would really recommend reading "Secrets." I looked some stuff up in it to type this message, and I had forgotten how fantastic it is.

    You are correct that he wasn't expecting to go free. I had misremembered. He expected to probably go to prison, and was as surprised as anybody when things started going his way.

    and being lucky enough to get a judge who was sufficiently offended by that misconduct declare a mistrial

    It's not just one judge. The Supreme Court struck down the injunction against publishing the things in the first place, the papers published them, people went after the people who had tried to abuse Ellsberg to the point that they had to resign. My point in saying all of this is that American public society stood up for justice in a way that the "establishment" part of has not in the current crisis. That's why I think we are so fucked currently.

    Huh? Are you actually trying to downplay the persecution of Daniel Ellsberg (which also included an aborted plot to neutralize him with LSD) by dropping a non-sequitur “but Russia”? 😂

    My point is that American society used to protect people who did good things against persecution. Like I say, the government (Nixon) tried to persecute him, and they failed, and today he's a hero and Nixon went down in infamy. That stuff doesn't happen in the US anymore. I also feel like it is worth noting that modern Russian society and government also do not attempt to protect against persecution people who do good things, as far as I can tell, they are far worse than Nixon's DOJ which you seem to have no problem criticizing. It makes it weird that lemmy.ml makes such a business about stumping for the Russian system and pretending they are playing a good role. Maybe you are right that it was a totally odd irrelevant thing for me to throw in there. I do feel like it's relevant, though, if lemmy.ml in general wants to say that the US is this boogeyman (I mean, they are) and so therefore we need to adopt the USSR's system (or whatever). I do feel like it's worth looking at how different systems define and treat their public heroes and villains.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I mentioned the Panama Papers because the guy who leaked them was murdered

    The source of the Panama Papers remains anonymous and there is no indication he has been murdered; he subsequently released statements (as "John Doe") which were authenticated by some of the journalists he leaked to.

    You're probably thinking of Daphne Caruana Galizia and Ján Kuciak, two journalists who were murdered for their reporting about them.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    As recently ago as the late 1970s, someone in America could leak the Pentagon Papers, be protected by the activist left who recognized how important that kind of thing was and also major institutions like newspapers, and then he could show up and volunteer to stand trial for the leak, and win, and go a free man because the facts were on his side.

    Yeah, but that's not profitable so oh well guess we're fucked

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