Ministers, MKs criticize arrests of soldiers suspected of terrorist prisoner abuse

A number of ministers and Members of Knesset, mainly from the coalition, criticized a raid by the IDF's military police on the Sde Teiman base in the south, in which it arrested a number of reservists accused of abusing an imprisoned Hamas terrorist.

Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Yuli Edelstein (Likud) announced that he would convene an "urgent debate" on the "soldiers' arrests and the conduct of the Military Advocate General and the Military Police."

"I will not give a hand to the scenes as they were seen today at the Sde Teiman base," Edelstein said. A situation where masked military police officers conduct a raid on an IDF base is not acceptable to me and I will not allow it to happen again. Our soldiers are not criminals and this disgraceful persecution of our soldiers is unacceptable to me," Edelstein said.

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Likud MK Hanoch Milvetsky left the Knesset Finance Committee in the middle of a voting session in protest of the raid, and the committee was forced to temporarily halt the session since the coalition on longer enjoyed a majority. Milvetsky called on fellow members of the coalition to follow his lead, to which Hadash Ta'al MK Ahmad Tibi said, "Is inserting an explosive into the rectum of a person legitimate?" Milvetsky responded, "If he is a Nukhba (Hamas commando), everything is legitimate."

Milvetsky later added in a statement, "The progressive legal absurdity that burns everything in the country must stop now! I call on all of my friends in the coalition to do as I did and stop the harassment of IDF soldiers."

Other Likud MKs who also criticized the military police's conduct included MKs Dan Illouz and Nissim Vaturi.

The far-right party Otzma Yehudit announced soon after that its MKs were heading to Sde Teiman, as did Religious Zionist Party (RZP) MK Tzvi Sukkot.

Knesset Constitution Committee MK Simcha Rothman also halted his committee mid-session. Rothman said that "we see over and over again an enormous disconnect between the justice and enforcement agencies, who persecute reservists, heroic fighters, who left everything behind in order to protect us from the Nukhba terrorists, for whom 'animals' is a compliment."

A number of ministers, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich (RZP) and Development of the Negev and Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf (Otzma Yehudit) criticized Military Advocate General Maj.-Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, who is responsible for investigating soldiers for alleged crimes. Smotrich demanded that she "take her hands off the IDF soldiers."

The Shas party put out a statement condemning the raid, arguing that the soldiers were arrested like "the lowliest criminals."

Opposition chairman MK Avigdor Liberman also criticized the IDF, arguing that the way to treat the issue was "of course not in a raid on a military base and arresting reservists as if they were terror activists." Liberman added that the IDF was tasked with "monsters" and that the government was at fault for "delaying and not building more jail facilities, and not posting a professional team with proper training to manage the event."

A number of Members of Knesset from the opposition criticized the ministers' conduct.

Opposition leader MK Yair Lapid called the break-in to Sde Teiman "dangerous and disgraceful criminality of MKs who are weakening and dismantling the IDF, weakening and dismantling the state of Israel, and harming the sources of our strength."

Democrats chairman Yair Golan wrote, "Whoever enables Kahanists into the government discovers how severe the phenomenon is when they choose to rebel against the army. If there were criminal offenses committed by soldiers who acted against orders – the IDF and state's duty is to interrogate them. The army cannot enable phenomena of criminal phalanges doing as they wish within the army. As usual the prime minister's silence speaks for itself," Golan wrote.

"[National Security Minister] Itamar Ben-Gvir and Otzma Yehudit are encouraging a rebellion in the army, no less," Democrats MK Gilad Kariv wrote on X. "On the way, they are exposing the soldiers and commanders of the IDF to international [criminal] processes. They are not protecting IDF soldiers – they are doing cheap politics at their expense," Kariv wrote.