By MELANIE LIDMAN and JULIA FRANKEL, Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — Until last week, Maj. Gen. Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi was the Israeli army’s top lawyer. Now she is behind bars and at the center of a scandal rocking the country after a bizarre sequence of events that included her abrupt resignation, a brief disappearance and a frantic search that led authorities to find her on a Tel Aviv beach.

The soap opera-worthy saga was touched off last week by Tomer-Yerushalmi’s explosive admission that she approved the leak of a surveillance video at the center of a politically divisive investigation into allegations of severe abuse against a Palestinian at a notorious Israeli military prison.

The video shows part of an assault in which Israeli soldiers are accused of sexually abusing a Palestinian detainee.

By leaking the video last year, Tomer-Yerushalmi aimed to expose the seriousness of the allegations her office was investigating. Instead, it triggered fierce criticism from Israel’s hard-line political leaders. After Tomer-Yerushalmi resigned under pressure last week, her critics continued to heave personal insults.

She left a cryptic note for her family and abandoned her car near a beach. That led to fears she may have taken her own life and prompted an intensive search that included the use of military drones.

She was found alive at the beach Sunday night, at which point more vitriol against her was unleashed.

“We can resume the lynch,” right-wing TV personality Yinon Magal, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted on X with a winking-face emoji.

After it was revealed that one of Tomer-Yerushalmi’s phones had disappeared, right-wing politicians and commentators began to accuse her of staging a suicide attempt as a way to destroy potential evidence.

The extraordinary episode shows two years of devastating war have done little to heal a country that was deeply divided even before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack. It also makes Tomer-Yerushalmi the latest in a long line of top security officials who have either left office or been forced out, most of them to be replaced by people considered loyal to Netanyahu and his hardline government.

Anger over leak distracts from severe abuse at heart of case

At a court hearing Monday, the judge said Tomer-Yerushalmi’s detention would be extended until Wednesday on suspicion of committing fraud, breach of trust and obstruction of justice. While the investigation into her actions continues, she is being held at a women’s prison in central Israel.

Israeli media reported that former chief military prosecutor Col. Matan Solomesh was also arrested in connection with the leak investigation. The prime minister’s office has refused to comment on Solomesh’s arrest.

The fury over the leaked video reveals the depth of polarization in Israel — and at least for the moment, keeps the media and the public focused on the leak and not the allegations of abuse.

The assault occurred on July 5, 2024, at the Sde Teiman military prison, according to the indictment against the accused soldiers. The AP has investigated allegations of inhumane treatment and abuse at Sde Teiman that predate those in the surveillance video.

Related Articles

More than 150,000 evacuate in the Philippines as typhoon approaches

Ukraine gets more Patriot air defense systems to counter deadly Russian attacks

Israel hands over bodies of 45 Palestinians after Hamas returns the remains of 3 soldiers

Today in History: November 3, KKK and neo-Nazis kill five in Greensboro massacre

Powerful 6.3 earthquake hits northern Afghanistan, killing 20 and damaging historic Blue Mosque

That video, which has been aired by Israeli news, shows soldiers taking a detainee into an area they cordoned off with shields in an apparent attempt to hide their actions. The indictment said the soldiers assaulted the Palestinian prisoner and sodomized him with a knife, causing multiple injuries.

A medical staffer familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety said the detainee arrived at a civilian hospital in life-threatening condition with blunt trauma to the abdomen and the chest and fractured ribs.

He said the detainee underwent surgery for a perforated rectum and was released back to Sde Teiman days later. The staffer said it was the most extreme abuse case he was familiar with from Sde Teiman.

When military police came to Sde Teiman in July to detain the soldiers suspected of abuse, they scuffled with protesters opposed to the arrests. Later, hundreds of violent protesters broke into the detention center.

In her resignation letter, Tomer-Yerushalmi wrote that she had exposed evidence of the abuse to counter the idea that the military was unfairly targeting its own soldiers. That idea was creating a danger to the military’s law enforcement, she said, citing the break-in.

She wrote that the military had a “duty to investigate when there is reasonable suspicion of violence against a detainee.

“Unfortunately, this basic understanding — that there are actions which must never be taken even against the vilest of detainees — no longer convinces everyone,” she wrote.

The Palestinian detainee who was the subject of the alleged abuse in the video was released back to Gaza last month as part of an exchange between living hostages and Palestinian prisoners, according to documents from the military prosecutor’s office obtained by the AP.

The case is still pending before the military court.

A web of legal issues

Three separate legal issues must be sorted out as part of Israel’s investigation into what happened at Sde Teiman, said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Jerusalem-based think tank Israel Democracy Institute.

The first is the allegation that Israeli soldiers tortured Hamas fighters while they were in detention. The second is whether Israeli civilians, including members of parliament, tried to disrupt the investigation by breaking into the military base where the soldiers accused of the actions were being held. The third is whether the military attorney general allegedly committed a host of offenses, including fraud, to undermine the investigation into how a video purporting to show the abuse was leaked to the media.

The intense rhetoric over the past few days is reminiscent of what it was like in Israel immediately before the Oct. 7 attack that launched the war in Gaza, Plesner said. At the time, the public was deeply divided over Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the judiciary.

The concern for a few hours Sunday night about Tomer-Yerushalmi’s fate should serve as a “stop sign” to the Israeli public — and especially to commentators who derided her personally, Plesner said.

“It was very sad to see how the internal discourse can bring about such potentially tragic outcome on a personal level,” Plesner said.

It felt especially symbolic, he said, that Tomer-Yerushalmi was in court while the Israeli government held its official memorial ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of the assassination of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Many regard the assassination as Israel’s lowest point in terms of divisions and incitement among the Israeli public, and worry that the dramatic events of the weekend foreshadow Israel’s return to a similar period of internal strife.

“It was very sad to see how the internal discourse can bring about such potentially tragic outcome on a personal level,” Plesner said. “There’s a way how to debate our differences in a democratic society.”

Mary Ellen McIntire, CQ-Roll Call (TNS)

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin feels confident about Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, arguing Democrats have the momentum coming off of a series of overperformances in special elections this year.

“If we win these elections on Tuesday, which I think we will, that will be a huge wakeup call to Republicans that a wave election is coming,” he said Sunday in an interview with CQ Roll Call at the DNC headquarters in Washington.

But Martin, a former chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor party who took over as national party chair in February, acknowledged that a 2026 wave election may not include winning the Senate majority.

“The hill is pretty steep for us to win the Senate back,” he said, before suggesting Democrats could “chip away at the margin enough” to be primed to flip the chamber in 2028.

“There could be enough of a wave election next year that brings us back into both, both chambers. I won’t bet against it. I won’t bet on it. It’s still unlikely,” he said. “The likeliest chamber to flip will be the House.”

Democrats face a daunting Senate map next year, needing to flip a net of four seats to win control. Martin said he felt good about picking up North Carolina’s open seat, where Democrats are excited about former Gov. Roy Cooper’s candidacy.

He also said Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is up for a sixth term, “certainly could be a real promise for us if we don’t blow it.”

But for further gains, Democrats will need to expand the map into red territory. Martin pointed to Iowa, Alaska, Ohio and Texas as potential pickup opportunities, adding that he thought Rep. Jasmine Crockett would join the field of Senate hopefuls in the Lone Star State.

The interview with Martin came shortly before a planned afternoon door-knocking excursion in Virginia, where Democrats are looking to win back the governor’s mansion. He spent the previous day in New Jersey, where Democrats are hoping to win a third straight gubernatorial election for the first time since the 1960s.

The Democratic nominees in both races —New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger — were both first elected to the House in 2018, when Democrats won control of the chamber two years into Donald Trump’s first term. Martin said both candidates, as well as New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, have emphasized their own messages around an economic agenda while not “taking the bait that the Republican candidates are trying to set for them on some of these other issues that they want to debate.”

“Even though they’re all sort of uniquely different and represent uniquely different spaces, their through line is affordability and the through line is an economic agenda that they’re offering up,” he said. “And they’re using, of course, local issues to illustrate that.”

Martin was skeptical that Republican efforts to link Democratic House candidates to Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, as the National Republican Congressional Committee has signaled it plans to do, would be effective next year.

“They’ll certainly try, don’t get me wrong,” Martin said. “I haven’t seen that work a lot in the past, to be honest with you.”

Trump’s push for Republican-led states to redraw their congressional maps to help the party defend its House majority and Democratic attempts to counter those moves have reshaped next year’s fight for the chamber.

Martin said he thinks the GOP would have a net gain of seven seats when both parties are eventually done with their redistricting efforts. But, he said, that was still less than the 26 seats the party out of power has won, on average, in midterm elections.

So far, GOP-led redraws in Texas, Missouri and North Carolina could help the party net as many as seven seats. California Democrats responded to Texas’ move by passing their own map, which state voters will decide on through a ballot measure Tuesday. Martin said he felt confident that Californians would approve Proposition 50, which could help the party pick up as many as five seats.

“My hope is that it actually sends a chilling effect to Republicans, and they stop with this nonsense around the country. But if they don’t and they continue moving down this road, we’re going to respond in kind,” he said.

Related Articles

States and cities challenge Trump policy overhauling public service loan forgiveness

Judge again bars Trump administration from deploying troops to Portland

American Arab group sues over California’s new antisemitism law

Hearings to focus on National Guard deployments in the nation’s capital and Memphis, Tennessee

Some Head Start preschools shutter as government shutdown continues

Democrats, though, have fewer opportunities to redraw congressional lines in states they control, as several give redistricting power to independent commissions. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has been pushing Illinois Democrats to redraw their map in an effort to squeeze out an extra seat, but state legislators took no action during a recent veto session. Martin said that although Illinois’ candidate filing deadline for congressional races is on Monday, he didn’t think that would completely close the door on redistricting efforts in the state.

Martin also said he’s expecting the Supreme Court to overturn Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a civil rights-era law that has been used to ensure majority-minority congressional districts. Such a move would significantly affect Democrats’ hold on several Southern House seats, though it’s unclear if such a decision would come down early enough to affect the 2026 elections.

And with red states such as Florida and Texas likely to gain House seats after the next census in 2030, Democrats need to have a long-term strategy to become competitive in more parts of the country, Martin said.

“We cannot keep just investing in one election cycle,” he said. “Of course, we’ve got to win in ’26, but we’ve got to do this in a way that helps us also prepare for the future.”

©2025 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By MARYCLAIRE DALE, Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Two separate courts have ordered immigration officials not to deport a Pennsylvania man who spent four decades in prison before his murder conviction was overturned.

Subramanyam Vedam, 64, is currently detained at a short-term holding center in Alexandria, Louisiana, that’s equipped with an airstrip for deportations. Vedam, known as “Subu,” was transferred there from central Pennsylvania last week, relatives said.

An immigration judge stayed his deportation on Thursday until the Bureau of Immigration Appeals decides whether to review his case. That could take several months. Vedam’s lawyers also got a stay the same day in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania, but said that case may be on hold given the immigration court ruling.

Vedam came to the U.S. legally from India as an infant and grew up in State College, where his father taught at Penn State. He was serving a life sentence in a friend’s 1980 death before his conviction was overturned this year.

He was released from state prison on Oct. 3, only to be taken straight into immigration custody.

The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to deport Vedam over his no contest plea to charges of LSD delivery, filed when he was about 20. His lawyers argue that the four decades he wrongly spent in prison, where he earned degrees and tutored fellow inmates, should outweigh the drug case.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Monday that the reversal in the murder case does not negate the drug conviction.

Related Articles

Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, Grateful Dead singer, dies at 78

First clinical trial of pig kidney transplants gets underway

Diane Ladd, 3-time Oscar nominee, dies at 89

Data shows 1 in 4 immigration arrests happen in Texas, where about 1.6M immigrants illegally live

Mississippi mother kills escaped monkey fearing for her children’s safety

“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” Tricia McLaughlin,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, said in an email.

Vedam’s sister said Monday that the family is relieved “that two different judges have agreed that Subu’s deportation is unwarranted while his effort to re-open his immigration case is still pending.”

“We’re also hopeful that Board of Immigration Appeals will ultimately agree that Subu’s deportation would represent another untenable injustice,” Saraswathi Vedam said, “inflicted on a man who not only endured 43 years in a maximum-security prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but has also lived in the U.S. since he was 9-months-old.”

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The first clinical trial is getting underway to see if transplanting pig kidneys into people might really save lives.

Related Articles

When a hearing aid isn’t enough

FDA’s top drug regulator resigns after federal officials probe ‘serious concerns’

As sports betting explodes, states try to set limits to stop gambling addiction

‘Colorado sober’ movement ditches alcohol for cannabis, psychedelics. Is it for real?

FDA restricts use of kids’ fluoride supplements citing emerging health risks

United Therapeutics, a producer of gene-edited pig kidneys, announced Monday that the study’s initial transplant was performed successfully at NYU Langone Health.

It’s the latest step in the quest for animal-to-human transplants. A second U.S. company, eGenesis, is preparing to begin its own pig kidney clinical trial in the coming months. These are the first known clinical trials of what is called xenotransplantation in the world.

To protect the study participant’s identity, researchers aren’t releasing information about when the NYU surgery was performed or further patient information.

NYU’s Dr. Robert Montgomery, who led the transplant team, told The Associated Press his hospital has a list of other patients interested in joining the small trial, which will initially include six people. If all goes well, it could be expanded to up to 50 as additional transplant centers join.

The Food and Drug Administration is allowing the rigorous studies after a series of so-called “compassionate use” experiments, with mixed results. The first two gene-edited pig kidney transplants were short-lived.

Then doctors began working with patients who badly needed a kidney but weren’t as sick as prior recipients. At NYU, an Alabama woman’s pig kidney lasted 130 days before she had to return to dialysis. The latest record, 271 days, was set by a New Hampshire man transplanted at Massachusetts General Hospital; he also is back on dialysis after the pig organ began declining and was removed last month. Others known to be living with a pig kidney are another Mass General patient and a woman in China.

“This thing is moving in the right direction” as doctors learn from each patient’s experience, NYU’s Montgomery said. He noted the ability to resume dialysis also gives a safety net.

More than 100,000 people, most needing kidneys, are on the U.S. transplant list, and thousands die waiting. As a potential alternative, scientists are genetically altering pigs so their organs are more humanlike, less likely to be immediately attacked and destroyed by people’s immune system.

United Therapeutics’ trial is testing pig kidneys with 10 gene edits, “knocking out” pig genes that trigger early rejection and excessive organ grown and adding some human genes to improve compatibility.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.