Former IDF Advocate-General Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested on Sunday evening, reportedly on grounds of obstruction of an investigation, after disappearing and leaving behind a note raising concerns of a potential suicide. The arrest came two days after she resigned her post following a determination by police that she had leaked sensitive materials showing alleged abuse of a Palestinian detainee at Israel’s Sde Teiman prison to the media.

Police found Tomer-Yerushalmi’s car at a beach north of Tel Aviv, hours after relatives reported that she was missing. According to Israeli media, she had left a note to her family. The ensuing manhunt involved police, the Israeli Navy, drones with geothermal detection and more.

Tomer-Yerushalmi was arrested after police found her safe, but without her phone, which had last been tracked near her car and then turned off. The disappearance of the phone raised police officers’ concern that she had possibly staged a suicide attempt to cover up the destruction of evidence caused by the disposal of her phone, Ynet reported. 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said on Monday that Tomer-Yerhushalmi remains on suicide watch in jail. The Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court extended her remand until Wednesday.

Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned from the IDF on Friday following her suspension in light of a criminal investigation by police that found that she had leaked surveillance video purportedly showing abuse at the Sde Teiman detention facility, in which terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks were held, and that members of the MAG corps lied to the High Court of Justice about it.

“I approved the release of material to the media in an attempt to counter the false propaganda directed against the military law authorities,” Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote in her resignation letter. “I bear full responsibility for any material that was released to the media from within the unit.” 

Masked military police officers entered the Sde Teiman facility last July, arresting several prison guards for alleged abuse after a doctor found wounds possibly indicating rape of a Palestinian prisoner. Ultimately, five of them were charged this year with abusing the detainee, a Hamas police officer who allegedly attacked a guard who was searching his person, but not with rape. According to the indictment, the soldiers tased the prisoner, kicked him and stepped on him while he was handcuffed, breaking his ribs.

The arrest sparked protests at the detention facility, with demonstrators — including three far-right lawmakers — at one point breaking into Sde Teiman, arguing that the IDF soldiers were being mistreated. The MKs and others on the right have frequently accused the MAG of not protecting IDF soldiers and endangering the hostages. One right-wing commentary outlet called the MAG corps “a chapter of [the International Criminal Court in] the Hague, a hostile body bringing foreign interests into the army” and leading a “campaign against the soldiers.” 

In August last year, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast the video at the center of the scandal, purporting that it showed sexual abuse. The video showed a detainee lying on the floor, while soldiers surrounded him with riot shields, such that their treatment of him could not be seen in the clip. The IDF said the video had been misleadingly edited. 

The video was distributed widely by international news organizations as well as on social media.

Following petitions to Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding an investigation, Tomer-Yerushalmi’s deputy, Gal Asael, ordered a probe of the leak by Military Police. A report provided by Asael to the Supreme Court and the Knesset stated that the leak did not come from the MAG corps, but that “hundreds of people were exposed to the materials, and therefore we cannot know who is the leaker.” 

Army Radio reported in recent days that Asael has said he did not know the leak came from within the MAG corps. He is not currently a suspect.

Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara approved Asael taking command of the investigation, and backed up his report. In September, the Attorney-General’s Office told the High Court that “there is not even a preliminary indication pointing at the source for transferring the information.” Justice Minister Yariv Levin – who has attempted to fire Baharav-Miara – accused her of conspiring with Tomer-Yerushalmi in the obstruction of justice and said she cannot be involved in the ongoing proceedings relating to this case.

Police arrested former IDF chief prosecutor Matan Solomesh on Sunday night, alleging that he knew about the leak and did not report it.

Senior government figures blasted Tomer-Yerushalmi in public statements in recent days.

At a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the incident at Sde Teiman “the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced since its establishment,” and said that it “caused immense damage to the image of the State of Israel and the IDF, to our soldiers.”

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz accused Tomer-Yerushalmi of a “blood libel against IDF soldiers and preferring the good of [Hamas] terrorists over [the soldiers].”

Katz and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir have begun the process of finding Tomer-Yerushalmi’s replacement.

By law, the MAG is appointed by the Defense Minister to protect her independence, even though the IDF chief of staff is technically her commanding officer. The MAG is the ultimate authority on what is legal or illegal in the IDF, and has broad discretion over law enforcement matters, including investigations and indictments.

The MAG corps’ independence within the IDF system is often described as the soldiers’ “bulletproof vest,” helping protect them from international courts, which are supposed to respect existing domestic legal proceedings.

Eran Shamir-Borer, the director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Security and Democracy Center and the former head of the IDF International Law Department in the MAG corps, expressed concern that the ongoing scandal relating to Tomer-Yerushalmi “might have broader implications for Israel’s legal resilience and ability to protect its soldiers and commanders against legal risks overseas.”

“What’s happening now threatens to cast a big shadow over the military’s ability to do this,” he added. “It’s a real earthquake. … A unit of the IDF entrusted with enforcing the law has been very much contaminated.” 

At the same time, he stressed that “this should not taint the entire unit, comprised of hundreds of professional legal officers with strong commitment to ensuring Israel’s security and maintaining the rule of law.” 

In addition, Shamir-Borer cautioned against public pressure to drop the charges against the soldiers who allegedly abused the Palestinian detainee in Sde Teiman, saying that “the current scandal should not be used as a pretext to further erode the rule of law.” 

Shamir-Borer said that Katz and Zamir now have an “enormous task” to “rebuild trust in this unit within Israeli society, but also overseas.” 

Citing United Nations statistics showing that the vast majority of U.N. aid convoys are diverted or looted before reaching their intended destination, a group of House Democrats is set to call on U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres this week to request a peacekeeping operation to secure those convoys.

“We write to you with an urgent call to request a resolution from the United Nations Security Council authorizing the deployment of a UN Peacekeeping operation to secure your aid convoys in Gaza, ensuring their safe passage,” a group of Democrats, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), wrote in a draft letter obtained by Jewish Insider. “Please do not continue to allow aid trucks to be robbed by Hamas while civilians struggle to get food. As we know, Hamas diverts and sells aid and is not focused on feeding innocent Palestinian families and children.”

The letter calls the diversion and looting problem “beyond a breakdown in logistics. It is a failure of the UN to execute its mission,” and says that situation has “led to huge issues.”

The letter also calls on the U.N. to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — which the U.N. has refused to do — to create a distribution network “utilizing the security of GHF distribution with the know-how and reach of the UN” and to “accept Israeli offers of coordination where they can provide security, contrary to the current posture of rejection.”

The letter asserts that the U.N.’s refusal to work with Israel on security “empowers the armed actors in Gaza, while forcing desperate civilians to risk their lives with no choice but to jump onto moving trucks to access aid,” leaving vulnerable people without aid.

“If the United Nations is serious about bringing relief to Gazans, it will do what is necessary to achieve that goal, not accept a nearly 90 percent failure rate. Authorizing peacekeepers to protect aid convoys is a crucial step toward that end,” the letter reads. “This moment calls for bold leadership. You must step up and lead the call for UN members to prioritize the needs of Gazan civilians, not Hamas.”

The letter notes that the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food has similarly suggested that U.N. peacekeepers escort food convoys and that the recent General Assembly resolution on a two-state solution “called for the protection of aid without offering solutions toward that end.”

The letter calls for Guterres to “take decisive action” because “we have no time for bureaucracy.”

Gottheimer and other lawmakers who have recently traveled to Israel have emphasized the need to better protect aid shipments inside Gaza. Gottheimer argued in an op-ed, “The problem is not a lack of aid — it’s that too little of it ever reaches the people who need it most.” He praised the GHF’s model and secure distribution sites.
The letter will be circulating for additional signatures through Monday, and is set to be sent later in the day. It currently has 15 signatories, including Gottheimer, consisting of moderate pro-Israel Democrats: Reps. Jim Costa (D-CA), Henry Cuellar (D-TX), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX), Greg Landsman (D-OH), George Latimer (D-NY), Susie Lee (D-NV), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Donald Norcross (D-NJ), Jimmy Panetta (D-CA), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Darren Soto (D-FL), Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Juan Vargas (D-CA).

When Audrey Azoulay was elected director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2017, many U.N. watchers — including some of its staunchest critics — were pleasantly surprised that UNESCO’s members had selected a Jew to lead the organization for the first time since it was founded in 1946.

The timing of Azoulay’s come-from-behind two-vote victory over a Qatari competitor came with a tinge of irony: Just one day earlier, the United States and Israel had each announced their intention to withdraw from the body, citing its persistent anti-Israel slant and “extreme politicization.” 

The organization tasked with preserving cultural heritage sites around the world has for decades faced accusations of political bias. President Ronald Reagan first pulled the U.S. out of the body in 1984 over allegations of anti-Western, pro-Soviet sentiment. 

When UNESCO became the first U.N. body to vote to admit the “State of Palestine” as a full voting member in 2011, the U.S. cut funding to the organization. In 2016, UNESCO passed a controversial resolution about the Temple Mount in Jerusalem that ignored Jewish ties to the holy site. A year later, Israel and the U.S. cut ties entirely.

All of that was before Azoulay took the helm of UNESCO. Now her leadership is in the spotlight, after the Trump administration said last week that it would again depart the body, following President Joe Biden’s decision to reenter UNESCO in 2023. “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes,” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said this month, arguing that the organization perpetuates “a globalist ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”

But Azoulay, a former French culture minister who comes from an illustrious Moroccan Jewish family, said in a statement last week that “the situation has changed profoundly” since the U.S. departed UNESCO in 2018. “These claims also contradict the reality of UNESCO’s efforts, particularly in the field of Holocaust education and the fight against antisemitism,” she said. UNESCO declined to make Azoulay available for an interview, but a spokesperson noted that “the level of tension” within the body on Middle East issues “has been reduced, which is a unique situation in the U.N. system today.” 

Her lobbying is unlikely to impact the Trump administration. But even without the U.S. as a member, UNESCO remains an important global organization with lofty goals: “to create solutions to some of the greatest challenges of our time, and foster a world of greater equality and peace.” Azoulay has bought into that mission, with the added challenge of trying to make the organization less politically toxic in a polarized world.  

“She really came into office intent on changing UNESCO’s public image and internal work,” Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told Jewish Insider this week. She has worked with Azoulay on antisemitism-related programming since 2018. “I think she recognized the flaws that had been prevalent before, and I think she was really trying to turn things around, and she deserves great credit for that.”

Azoulay grew up in France, but her family hails from Essaouira, a seaside Moroccan city that was once majority Jewish, though she rarely speaks about her family’s story. Her father, André Azoulay, spent the first two decades of his career climbing the ranks at Paribas Bank in Paris, before he returned to Morocco in 1990 to serve as an advisor to King Hassan II. Now, he is a senior advisor to King Mohammed VI, and his influence is rumored to be expansive.

“She is a really remarkable person, to have come from this Moroccan Jewish background, to become so French that she’s a minister in the French government, and then to achieve this position in UNESCO,” said Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation. Whatever people want to say about UNESCO, I think you have to judge her by what she has done.”

“Azoulay is the kingdom’s all-purpose fixer, a man who gets stuff done thanks to an endless list of high-profile contacts who wouldn’t dare to ignore his calls,” Tablet Magazine wrote in a 2018 profile of the elder Azoulay. 

When he inaugurated a structure called Beit Dakira — “House of Memory” — in Essaouira in 2020, to preserve the city’s Jewish heritage, his daughter attended the event on behalf of UNESCO. She has worked in several French government agencies, and before being named culture minister in 2016, Azoulay was an advisor to French President Francois Hollande. 

“She is a really remarkable person, to have come from this Moroccan Jewish background, to become so French that she’s a minister in the French government, and then to achieve this position in UNESCO,” said Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, who attended the Essaouira event in 2020. He worked with Azoulay on a 2021 World Philosophy Event celebrating Muslim and Jewish poetry. “Whatever people want to say about UNESCO, I think you have to judge her by what she has done,” said Guberman.

UNESCO has worked closely with the World Jewish Congress in recent years, particularly on programming related to Holocaust education. Its president, Ronald Lauder, wrote in a 2018 op-ed that UNESCO’s history of dozens of resolutions condemning Israel “makes a mockery of the U.N.” Azoulay, he wrote, has been able to move the organization forward — to a point.

“She was able to accomplish some things diplomatically with Israel that hadn’t been done before. She got the president to come to Holocaust Remembrance Day, and that was the first time that ever happened,” said David Killion, who served as U.S. ambassador to UNESCO in the Obama administration.

“Audrey Azoulay, the new head of UNESCO, is making great strides correcting this and we applaud her for what she’s doing. But after decades of bad behavior at UNESCO, its reputation cannot be cleansed overnight. Especially when this virus of antisemitism still runs throughout the entire body of the U.N.,” Lauder wrote. 

Azoulay reportedly urged Israel not to exit the organization in 2018, arguing at the time that UNESCO had made progress in fighting bias. Israel still left. But she pulled off a strategic victory in 2022.

“She was able to accomplish some things diplomatically with Israel that hadn’t been done before. She got the president to come to Holocaust Remembrance Day, and that was the first time that ever happened,” said David Killion, who served as U.S. ambassador to UNESCO in the Obama administration. 

In Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s virtual remarks at a UNESCO Holocaust remembrance event in 2022, he directly praised Azoulay. They were unexpected words from a country that had previously offered sharp criticism of the organization. 

“UNESCO has the tools with which to inform the younger generation about what happened and teach them what must never be allowed to happen again,” Herzog said. “I wish to recognize UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay for her strong leadership.”

Azoulay said in a speech soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks that UNESCO “was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust and the Second World War,” which is why, she said, fighting Holocaust denial remains a key priority of the organization. 

That work has been done in partnership with the World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and, for a period, the Biden administration. Former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff met with Azoulay at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris last year and pledged that the U.S. would contribute $2.2 million to a UNESCO program to teach about the Holocaust and genocide. 

But the agency’s commitment to fighting antisemitism has been tested since Oct. 7. 

Speaking to a global gathering of antisemitism special envoys two weeks after the attacks, Azoulay said the Hamas terrorists operated “in the same modus operandi as the pogroms.” After the “massacres” that day, Azoulay added, “We have seen a new wave of antisemitism, regrettably with all the hallmarks of our time.”

Since then, though, UNESCO has mostly directed its ire at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Critics have noted, for instance, that UNESCO has warned of damage to cultural heritage sites in Gaza and Lebanon, while not expressing the same degree of concern about sites in Israel. At a recent meeting of UNESCO’s executive board, the agency voted to approve several measures calling out Israel’s actions in Gaza, the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

“That kind of stuff remains, and it’s really bigger than her, because I think that’s the point with any U.N. [agency]. The system is so geared against Israel,” said Anne Herzberg, legal advisor at NGO Monitor, a research institute that is critical of the U.N. system. “I do think she’s well-intentioned, and I do think she has made efforts to try to depoliticize the agency. I don’t want to cast aspersions on her at all, but I do think the problem is, you’re operating in a system that’s almost impossible to change.”

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers wrote to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday, again demanding that Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, be dismissed from her position.

Albanese, despite alleged private criticism of her by Guterres and public opposition from U.S. and allied officials, recently had her employment and mandate extended. 

“This extension sends a signal to the world that the United Nations tolerates and even promotes those who spew antisemitic hatred and harbor long-standing prejudice against Israel,” the letter reads. “This pattern of the United Nations allowing employees to direct vile hatred towards the Jewish people and the obsession with the world’s only Jewish state must end now. Every day that the UN fails to address this systemic bias within its organization, its credibility is undermined.”

The lawmakers argued that dismissing Albanese would be a step to show that the U.N. can address antisemitism in its own ranks.

“We’ve seen over and over again the deadly consequences of this noxious rhetoric like Ms. Albanese’s that crosses the line from criticism of Israel into antisemitic demonization,” the letter reads, linking Albanese’s long history of antisemitic comments to the recent antisemitic terrorist attacks in Washington and Boulder, Colo., as well as the global surge of violent antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023.

The letter was signed by Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Dan Goldman (D-NY), Jefferson Shreve (R-IN), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Brad Schneider (D-IL), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY).

“Special Rapporteur Albanese has a vile and extensive history of outlandish antisemitic statements and an extreme bias against Israel,” the lawmakers wrote. “Ms. Albanese consistently uses offensive and dangerous rhetoric to absurdly compare Israel’s war on Hamas to the systematic extermination of Jews in the Holocaust … She has also outrageously stated that Israel doesn’t have the right to defend itself and has refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.”

“She has had plenty of opportunities to take responsibility for her dangerous and misguided rhetoric but instead continues to double down every time she has been called out publicly and states that she has been ‘wrongly mischaracterized as antisemitic,’” the letter continues.

It also highlights that she has accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of free travel from pro-Hamas groups in Australia and New Zealand.

Sherman, who led the letter, recently said that Albanese’s rhetoric and activity had eroded U.S. support for the U.N. and foreign aid in general and would contribute to deaths around the world.

“Instead of demonstrating that the UN can address issues such as antisemitism from within and prevent continued efforts to undermine the UN’s credibility, Secretary General Guterres extended Ms. Albanese’s employment,” Sherman said on X.

Democratic Majority for Israel helped organize the letter.

“Ms. Albanese — whose mandate as Special Rapporteur was recently and inexplicably extended — is an extreme anti-Israel activist pretending to be a neutral UN official,” DMFI CEO Brian Romick said. “She regularly spews antisemitic conspiracy theories and attempts to downplay the horrors of October 7th — all completely at odds with the values of impartiality and human rights the UN is supposed to uphold. This week she even encouraged unauthorized flotillas to enter an active war zone, putting lives at risk in a reckless political stunt. Keeping her in this role further damages the UN’s credibility. We’re proud to back this effort to hold both her and the institution accountable.”

A second Donald Trump administration would “do even more to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Israel,” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) said in a pitch to participants at a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Orthodox Union on Wednesday, highlighting the administration’s Mideast policy achievements.

Zeldin praised the Trump administration’s record on Israel, contrasting it with the way the Obama administration handled the U.S.-Israel relationship since he entered Congress in 2015. 

“Finally our country was starting to treat Israel like Israel and Iran like Iran, and I do not want to go back to my experience of my first term,” Zeldin, who is running for reelection in New York’s 1st congressional district,, told the group. “I would love to see us build on his progress.” 

“Israelis know that President Trump has had their back every step of the way,” Zeldin continued “Just think of the possibilities if President Trump has four more years in office. Because, with President Trump, he does not wake up the next day and look to just move on to the next unrelated battle. When he scores a win, he asks himself and asks his advisors, ‘What else can we do?’ That’s why we’ve had so many successes in strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship — because the president wakes up the next day saying that he wants to accomplish even more.”

Earlier this week, the OU hosted a conversation with surrogates from former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. 

In a separate Zoom call hosted by the Biden campaign on Wednesday, Israeli-American mogul Haim Saban said Trump’s moves on Israel were largely symbolic. He compared the Jerusalem embassy move to a “bar mitzvah,” noting that only one country, Guatemala, followed the U.S. lead and moved its embassy to Jerusalem. 

Another Central American country, Honduras, is expected to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem before the end of the year, according to a social media post from Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández last month. 

Saban was also skeptical that the president’s withdrawal from the Iran deal had bolstered Israel’s security.

“In the test of results — where are we from a security standpoint — we have Iran opening a new front against Israel from Syria and we have Iran with three times more enriched uranium,” Saban explained. “You draw your own conclusion.”

Saban, who has maintained close ties with Trump’s son-in-law and White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and reportedly helped broker the recent normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, suggested that the president was only a participant of a “photo op” and did not deserve credit for the Abraham Accords. “All the credit should really be going here to Jared Kushner and [Mideast peace envoy] Avi Berkowitz, who worked really hard on it,” Saban said.

After staying on the sidelines during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Saban, a major Democratic donor and bundler, endorsed Biden in September, hosting a virtual fundraiser in support of the Democratic nominee.

Highlighting Biden’s longstanding support for Israel, Saban said, “The facts speak for themselves. Facts, you know, are a very stubborn thing. Look at the track record. Andall Jews in America [who] care about the U.S.-Israel alliance know that they can sleep peacefully as far as Israel’s security goes under a Biden presidency.”