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