Israeli Press
Channel 14 aired the wrong woman as the army's former chief prosecutor
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel's Channel 14 led its Sunday bulletin with what it called exclusive documentation of Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, the army's former chief prosecutor, caught walking in the street. The woman in the footage was not her.
Ynet reported that the channel's cameraman, Meir Shmutzov, filmed a woman walking her dog in the belief that he had found Tomer-Yerushalmi, then followed her with questions: why she was running, whether she would take a plea deal, why she was not apologising to the soldiers of Force 100, the unit at the centre of the Sde Teiman case.
Haaretz reported that the item ran as the bulletin's headline — "the military advocate general evades again" — and that the woman was in fact her neighbour.
The video stayed on the channel's homepage for more than three hours and came down about four hours after broadcast. The channel said the woman "resembled Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi greatly" and had answered to that name, that it pulled the story "in light of the doubts that arose", and that it is re-examining the report.
Underneath the fiasco is a Palestinian detainee#
Tomer-Yerushalmi lost her post and her pension over the leak of footage from the Sde Teiman camp showing soldiers abusing a Palestinian man held there. Her successor as military advocate general, Itay Ofir, cancelled the indictment against five soldiers in March, citing evidentiary difficulties and the scandal around the leak. Police closed their investigation into her in February.
Nobody has been convicted of what the video shows. The prosecution still standing is aimed at the officer who let it out, and on Sunday a television channel went hunting for her in the street.
