Israel Police confirm ex-Military Advocate General’s phone recovered off Herzliya coast; investigators now probe data deletions in Sde Teiman leak affair.
In a dramatic twist to one of Israel’s most controversial legal scandals, Israel Police confirmed Friday night that the mobile phone retrieved earlier in the day off the Herzliya coast indeed belonged to outgoing Military Advocate General (MAG) Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi, currently under house arrest for her alleged role in the Sde Teiman video leak.
The phone—discovered by swimmer Noa Itiel on the seabed—has now become the centerpiece of a high-stakes criminal probe involving breach of trust, obstruction of justice, and abuse of authority at the highest levels of Israel’s military legal corps.
“During her arrest, the MAG did provide us with the phone’s passcode,” a police source told Channel 12 News, confirming that cyber investigators are now extracting and analyzing every byte of data.
Authorities are checking whether files were deleted, manipulated, or remotely wiped before the device was hurled into the Mediterranean. The police Cyber Division is tracing the phone’s serial number, activation history, and cell-tower connections to reconstruct its movements and last known use.
According to Ynet, investigators have labeled the discovery’s circumstances as “strange,” hinting that someone may have attempted to destroy evidence crucial to the case.
The incident has sent shockwaves through Israel’s defense establishment, already shaken by revelations that classified military material was leaked to media outlets in what officials describe as “a deliberate act to damage Israel’s image during wartime.”
Sources within the Justice Ministry say the phone’s contents could either expose a sophisticated internal cover-up—or confirm suspicions of a politically motivated smear campaign against senior legal officials. Either outcome, analysts warn, could reshape Israel’s military-judicial hierarchy.
For now, the phone lies in the hands of cyber forensics experts—its data possibly holding the key to one of the most sensitive scandals in Israel’s recent history.
