Sde Teiman: What the Evidence Actually Shows

On August 6th 2024, Channel 12 aired leaked CCTV footage from Sde Teiman – a temporary IDF detention facility where Nukhba terrorists were held, including many involved in the atrocities of October 7th. In the broadcast, commentator Guy Peleg dramatically narrated over a short video showing soldiers holding shields up around a detainee, and clearly insinuated that the footage showed an “act of rape”.

Nothing of the sort appears in the video, yet because a major Israeli news channel made the claim, the world accepted it as “fact”. The clip spread rapidly, reaching over 100 million views on X and over 2 billion views across platforms worldwide.

The Viral Clip

The video shows a detainee being led by soldiers to an area in the detention centre, followed by soldiers standing with riot shields and some very vague movement behind them. As he narrated, Peleg claimed this showed soldiers hiding from the cameras and committing acts of “sodomy under circumstances of rape.” None of this was true.

It was quickly noticed that the clip was edited – combining footage from two different timestamps even though it was presented as one sequence. The video, combined with Peleg’s narration, created the illusion that a sexual assault had occurred behind the shields.

This “suggestive framing” resulted in millions being convinced they had witnessed something that never happened.

What Actually Happened That Night

On July 5th 2024, a group of Palestinian detainees arrived at the Sde Teiman detention facility and were each taken for a standard security search.

Unit 100, the IDF unit responsible for these searches, does not carry firearms and is vastly outnumbered during every intake. Soldiers explained that these detainees, mostly violent terrorists, regularly threaten to attack guards – so even a moment of perceived weakness can trigger a mass assault. That is why the unit always conducts searches behind riot shields – to create a temporary safety barrier and prevent chaos, not to “hide from cameras” as Peleg claimed.

When the detainee was taken for the intake search, he resisted aggressively and tried to ignite unrest among the other detainees. Soldiers forcefully restrained him in order to conduct the search.

Later that night, the detainee requested to use the toilet, and after his return to his mattress soldiers noticed blood on his trousers. He was sent to the Sde Teiman clinic for examination, where he claimed he had fallen in the toilet.

The Evidence

There was external bruising caused by soldiers using force. The onsite commander documented that the force used was proportionate and justified, given the detainee’s violent behaviour.

The Sde Teiman clinic examination carried out right after the incident found a rectal tear that did not match trauma caused by forced penetration – no physical indicators of sexual assault. Doctors at Assuta Hospital documented a rectal tear located 4 cm internally, no tearing or trauma to the external sphincter, and no signs consistent with forced insertion.

Prof. Alon Pikarsky, head of colorectal surgery at Hadassah, reviewed the medical documentation and concluded that:

• the injury did not resemble forced insertion of an object
• there was no clinical basis to infer rape
• the findings were fully compatible with non-sexual mechanisms (such as sudden internal pressure or self-insertion or removal of contraband)

Now for the outlier – Prof. Yoel Donchin, a doctor affiliated with Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHR-I), assessed the detainee and said he saw signs suggesting sexual assault.

PHR-I routinely accuses Israel of war crimes, labels Israel an “apartheid state,” supports ICC arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, and accuses Israel of genocide. When the only medical interpretation pointing toward sexual assault comes from a doctor affiliated with such an organization, it naturally raises questions about whether ideology may have coloured his conclusion.

From Allegations to Arrests

Despite the lack of evidence, the narrative inside Israel took a dramatic turn.

A day after the leaked broadcast on August 6th 2024, the detainee was interrogated. According to Channel 11’s Ayala Hasson, investigators pressed him to claim sexual assault – he initially denied it, but when asked again he was overheard by an Arabic-speaking soldier replying “what would I get out of it?”

Five days later, military police in ski masks stormed Sde Teiman and brutally arrested the suspected soldiers. Members of the public and some right-wing ministers were furious, and subsequently turned up at the site to protest – not to “support rapists,” as many anti-Israel commentators later claimed, but at the manner in which these soldiers were arrested.

On September 18th 2024, indictments were filed against the soldiers, but not a single sexual offense charge – making Channel 12’s narration and the Military Advocate General’s decision to leak the footage even more extraordinary.

More than a year later, after internal investigations confirmed she had authorized the leak, the Military Advocate General was forced to resign on October 31st 2025. She admitted responsibility, and on November 2nd became the highest-ranking general in Israel ever to be arrested.

The Detainee’s Mysterious Release

On October 13th 2025, the detainee was released back to Gaza in a hostage-exchange deal. As part of the agreement, low-level terrorists arrested in Gaza could be released – but absolutely not terrorists captured inside Israel on October 7th. The military prosecution insisted the Sde Teiman detainee was “just a Hamas policeman arrested in Gaza,” and therefore could be released.

Defence lawyers, however, told the court that IDF intelligence had classified the detainee as a Hamas terrorist involved in the October 7th attack. Journalist Yair Altman confirmed this by publishing a partial image of the IDF documentation identifying the detainee as a terrorist captured in Israel. Yet despite this, and despite being the supposed victim in one of the most explosive allegations in years, he was quietly added to the hostage deal and released.

As journalist Amit Segal noted:

No prosecution that believed its own case would allow its central witness to disappear.

The Damage Done

The Unit 100 Soldiers Themselves

It is impossible to ignore the human cost borne by the soldiers at the centre of the allegation. These were men in their 30s and 40s, who volunteered after October 7th and ended up in prison cells because of a fabricated allegation.

The consequences were severe: families torn apart, careers destroyed, deep psychological damage and inability to sleep. Their trust in the system collapsed – when the army’s legal system itself behaves as if you are guilty until proven innocent, no soldier feels protected.

The Female Soldiers

Another consequence of the Sde Teiman affair, one almost no one talks about, is what happened after Unit 100 was removed from the facility. In their place, the army assigned much younger, far less trained soldiers, including female personnel.

Multiple reports later revealed that several female soldiers were sexually assaulted by detainees inside Sde Teiman following this change. MK Zvi Sukkot publicly condemned the decision to pull Unit 100 from the facility and expose these young women to danger – directly criticizing the Military Advocate General.

The bitter irony was hard to miss: the unit falsely accused of sexual assault was removed and replaced by soldiers who then became victims of it.

The Hostages

Just as many Israelis feared, the damage reached Israeli hostages still held in Gaza. After his release, Avinatan Or’s mother said plainly:

After that video leak went viral, many of the hostages suffered severe beatings and other forms of abuse.

She did not elaborate further, but the implication was unmistakable.

Another hostage, Guy Gilboa, directly referenced sexual abuse during his captivity. He did not link it to the leak, but his testimony underscores the brutal environment into which the propaganda around the video spilled.

A Gift to Israel’s Enemies

The damage did not stop at Israel’s borders. What happened at Sde Teiman became one of the most effective anti-Israel propaganda weapons Israel has ever faced.

A rape allegation broadcast by a mainstream Israeli news channel became fuel for every actor invested in Israel’s delegitimization.

Israel’s enemies used the claim as confirmation of accusations they had been pushing for decades. 

Pro-Palestinian activists treated the clip as pure gold: propaganda sourced directly from Israeli TV.

 International media, highly skeptical of Israeli statements throughout the war, for once accepted an “Israeli narrative” with no need for fact-checking.

 The ICC, ICJ and NGOs hostile to Israel treated an Israeli-origin allegation as definitive proof – and will not reverse course no matter how decisively it is disproven.

The United Nations, which was eventually pressured to condemn the mass rapes committed by Hamas on October 7th, now had a convenient, undeniable counterweight.

Benjamin Netanyahu summarized this as “perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the State of Israel has experienced since its establishment.”

Final Conclusion

The Sde Teiman affair is not simply a story about a misleading video that caused immense damage to Israel. It is about how some of Israel’s most powerful institutional figures allowed a fabricated allegation to be born – and how subsequent institutional decisions have raised serious concerns about impartiality.

Multiple members of the Israeli establishment are involved, not just the Military Advocate General. The Attorney General and State Prosecutors, in an unprecedented ruling, have been barred from overseeing the investigation due to a ‘conflict of interest’. It has also since emerged that Lahav 433, the unit police unit normally responsible for investigating leaks, were blocked from heading the case after the Attorney General insisted it be transferred to another unit allegedly with ‘closer ties’ to her. 

To a growing portion of Israelis, the alignment of these actors – legal, bureaucratic, judicial and media – resembles what many refer to as “the deep state.” Whatever one calls it, the pattern is impossible to ignore: powerful institutions aligning in ways that reveal clear bias – including selective enforcement. 

There are then unavoidable questions that need answers – if the video shows no rape, why was it presented to the world as proof of rape? If the medical findings contradicted the allegation, why did the authorities push the narrative anyway?

Israelis are anxiously awaiting the answers to these questions, and hoping that the whole truth comes to light.