The case reflected the evils currently undermining Israel. On the one hand, there was the moral collapse of public discourse, evident since the start of the war in Gaza, and on the other, the weakness of institutions in the face of fascist groups supported by part of the government, who demand that violence take precedence over the law, provided it is exercised by Jews. On Monday, July 29, just as the government was considering a major operation in Lebanon, a crowd including a member of parliament and a minister invaded the Sde Teiman military detention center in the southern Negev desert, capturing the country's attention and that of the general staff and government.

A few hours earlier, military police had raided the base, which acts as a "sorting center" for Gazan detainees, to arrest nine reservists suspected of having sodomized a Palestinian prisoner, according to Israeli media. The prisoner was hospitalized after suffering serious injuries to his rectum, which left him unable to walk. The army merely referred to "substantial abuse."

The arrival of the military police in Sde Teiman caused unrest. Soldiers first protested the arrest of the nine reservists. Then far-right religious groups called on their supporters to rush to the base. The police, led by a supremacist minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, did not block access. The parliamentarian Zvi Sukkot and Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who galvanized this small crowd, came from the same movement. In the evening, groups of demonstrators finally broke into a second base in Beit Lid, in the occupied West Bank, where the reservists had been transferred and were being interrogated. They invaded a military court building, then a detention center, pushing soldiers aside with shouts of "traitors."

Among them were masked, armed men in uniform, some wearing the insignia of Force 100, a unit accused of multiple acts of violence against detainees. Tally Gotliv, a member of parliament from Likud, the ruling far-right party, cheered on the rioters outside, along with two other far-right MPs. Labor Party leader and former vice-chief of the general staff Yair Golan called for a domestic intelligence investigation into Force 100, which he described as a "militia working to threaten sovereign bodies."

Inaccessible to the Red Cross, the Sde Teiman base stands out as a lawless place. Former inmates and doctors there have reported systematic abuses of the utmost gravity. Prisoners who were shackled for long periods had to have their limbs amputated. Sleep deprivation is a regular occurrence, as are beatings. Sexual torture has been documented. The army belatedly claimed to have launched criminal investigations following the deaths of 36 inmates in this prison. It was reacting to pressure from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, for acts that could amount to war crimes.

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