‘Everything is legitimate’: Israeli leaders defend soldiers accused of rape

Al Jazeera :
Video has emerged of a gang rape of a Palestinian prisoner by guards at the Sde Teiman detention facility in the Negev desert, southern Israel.
The video, which has been verified by Al Jazeera, shows the prisoner being selected from a larger group lying bound on the floor. The victim is then escorted to a wall, where guards, using their shields to hide their identity from the camera, proceed to rape him.
The attack is believed to have been so brutal that, after he was transferred to hospital, Israeli media reported that the victim was unable to walk.
Ten soldiers were ultimately arrested for the rape on July 29, in a case that has rocked Israeli society. The soldiers belong to a unit known as Force 100, which is tasked with guarding the Sde Teiman facility, according to Haaretz.
Military prosecutors released three of the arrested soldiers on August 4, adding to the two previously released by investigators following a military court hearing in Kfar Yona on July 30, at which protesters gathered in support of the soldiers under arrest.
The video has shocked many within Israeli society. Some observers, including a local rights group and two UN agencies, have voiced concerns about the treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
However, for some, including the country’s far-right finance minister, the outrage has centred on the “crime” of recording the video, rather than the alleged rape itself.
Taking to X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday night, Bezalel Smotrich demanded “an immediate criminal investigation to locate the leakers of the trending video that was intended to harm the reservists and that caused tremendous damage to Israel in the world and to exhaust the full severity of the law against them”.