“Ata freier (you are a sucker),” the radio host told me this week during an interview that was supposed to be about Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you gave them your phone,” he said, referring to the day about six months ago when I was detained in the course of my journalism, and my phone was taken from me without a warrant and held for exactly half a year.
For readers abroad, “freier” is Israeli slang for someone who plays by the rules even when others take advantage.
He was hinting at the national earthquake that has dominated our headlines: the case of the IDF’s top military lawyer, the Military Advocate-General, or MAG, Yifat Tomer-Yerushalmi.
According to widely reported accounts, Tomer-Yerushalmi acknowledged authorizing the leak
of security footage from the Sde Teiman detention site (an IDF facility in the Negev) to highlight the severity of alleged abuse there.
She then resigned, and was then arrested as police opened a criminal investigation into the leak and other suspected offenses.
There were also reports about her phone and whether it might be seized, as well as alerts when she briefly went missing and was later found safe. The investigation continues as I write these lines, with many facts still contested and emotions running high across the country.
I dodged the radio host’s provocation. Not because I had nothing to say. Not because the comparison did not make my blood boil. It did. I stayed quiet because it took me a week to name what was really bothering me.
I have no problem being called a freier. I am a law-abiding citizen. Maybe I was naive when, after officers asked me “just for a minute,” I handed them my phone.
Still, I prefer to be the person who follows the rules, even if it makes me look soft, rather than the person who breaks the rules, stains Israel’s reputation, and corrodes the public’s trust in our military and legal institutions.
Let’s discuss this for a second, because it is not so simple. Over the last half year, I have come to believe that much of the public criticism of Israel’s legal and law-enforcement systems is justified.
In many cases, it is more than justified. I have met too many people whose lives were made miserable by bureaucratic force or investigatory overreach, sometimes for no good reason.
At the same time, I have watched people on the “right” side of certain cultural trenches glide past accountability, while others, often on the “wrong” side, absorb the full weight of the state.
I used to dislike the word symmetry. Lately, I’ve come to understand that in many situations, the asymmetry is exactly the point.
Accusations ranging from authorizing leak to interfering in investigation
Look at the current scandal. The former MAG stands accused in the court of public opinion of a cascade of serious acts, ranging from authorizing the leak of sensitive footage to allegedly interfering in an investigation.Some reports even suggested efforts to keep a phone out of police hands. For days, the country held its breath as rumors spiraled into a perceived personal tragedy, which later shifted again with the emergence of new reports.
It has felt like the plot of a crime film, and I say that with sadness, not with rejoicing in her failure. We deserve better than a system where leaks drive the narrative, warnings are ignored, personal allegiances cloud judgment, and ordinary Israelis pay the price.
Here is the tension I am living with. In recent months, I have often found myself agreeing with many people on the Right who criticize the legal system.
Yet some of the loudest voices still leave me uneasy. It took me time to understand why. By temperament, I am a mamlachti (state-minded, respectful of institutions) person, someone who believes in mamlachtiyut (the civic ethos of state-minded responsibility and restraint).
It is a distinctly Israeli concept that lacks a perfect translation. It is not exactly stateliness or loyalty or diplomacy.
It is the instinct that the state’s institutions matter, that they should function like a Swiss watch, that good and committed people should staff them, and that the police officer your child approaches in distress will help, without fear or favor.
I am a Zionist to my core. I love our country. I love our people. When “Hatikvah” (Israel’s national anthem) is sung, I usually close my eyes and feel a sense of spiritual uplift.
In previous roles in the world of Zionist outreach, I sang the national anthem in central squares around the world, whether in Sweden, Denmark, Miami, or Denver.
It moves me. I love our sense of ceremony. I love the culture. I love the people. I am also proud of our country.
But do I trust the police today? I am not objective. I experienced what felt like psychological intimidation that I never imagined could happen here to law-abiding journalists doing their jobs.
I remember being cut off from the world and warned I might sleep in Abu Kabir (Tel Aviv detention facility) that night, while my kids stayed with my mother, who told them Abba (daddy) had a meeting.
It was the right call in that moment. They did not need the fear. So no, I don’t trust the police, at least not as much as I used to.
I also struggle with the legal system, with the culture of leaks, and with invasions of privacy that shape a narrative first and find facts later.
The number of Israelis I have met who have sat for hours under harsh spotlights in the 433 anti-corruption unit is so large that I sometimes wonder whether this is the democracy I thought we had.
This week’s reports confirmed my doubts. Which is why I find myself in an odd place. I agree with many criticisms I hear from voices that used to make me bristle. My problem is less with their conclusions and more with the contempt they show.
Some have simply given up on the state. I have not. Some want to wage a total war on the system. I think that is a path to a different form of collapse.
I believe there is corruption on the Right and on the Left. There are bad actors on both sides. There are also good people on both sides, individuals who are trying to steer us toward sanity and fairness.
Many readers asked me this week what I think about the MAG affair. It makes me furious. I want to flip the table. I did not.
I could have been viral on social media this week and said exactly what I think about the MAG
incident, but I chose otherwise. A tweet cannot hold this complexity, and perhaps a thousand words cannot either, but let me try.
Here is my bottom line. There are indeed powerful forces that want to bring down this government, especially its prime minister. That is politics, and in a democracy, competing camps will fight hard.
The line is crossed when the fight uses illegal means. Selective enforcement, disproportionate force, and detentions that feel like pressure tactics are not a path to justice.
After my own case became public, I could point to several journalists who, if the standard applied to me had been consistently applied, might have faced the same accusations.
“Contact with a foreign agent” may sound dramatic, but every serious journalist consults foreign sources to gain a deeper understanding of reality. Others were accused of conduct that seemed far more violent than anything I was ever suspected of.
Somehow, those cases died on the vine. Perhaps the attorney-general intervened for good reasons. Perhaps investigators never tried.
Perhaps they belonged to the “correct camp.” I do not know, and that is precisely the problem. The door to selective justice is open far too wide.
Does the right-wing camp have serious problems? Absolutely. Is this government good? No, but not everything is bad either. We should judge on a case-by-case basis, with common sense.
Power tends to corrupt, especially when it remains too long in the hands of any one person. I do not wave away the problems. I live them.
So where do we go from here?
After digging deep, I refuse to give up. I will not give up on my country. I will not give up on our institutions. I will not give up on the systems of justice and law enforcement.
I will insist, and I will fight through democratic means, for a healthier Israel, a more lawful Israel, a more balanced Israel.
We need serious reforms, not performative ones. After October 7, many people suggested that we replace everyone, including all 120 members of the Knesset and the heads of our state bodies.
The longer this year drags on, the more I understand the impulse. Change will come. Maybe not in the next election. Maybe not in the one after that. It will come because a new mamlachti generation is growing up.
It is a generation that fought in Gaza, that is still fighting in the North, and that stares down Iran and its proxies. It is a generation that has felt antisemitism up close and, paradoxically, has been pushed toward a stronger Jewish identity.
It is a generation that includes young people who were kidnapped and returned, who speak with a clarity that forces us to measure our own words.
So yes, I am a freier. I am naive. I can live with that. I will not surrender my country to cynicism or to chaos. I hope you are with me, because we need everyone – the critics and the builders, the angry and the patient, the Right and the Left.
We will fix what is broken. We will hold wrongdoers to account. We will preserve what is worthy. And we will sing Hatikvah, eyes closed, because we still believe in the possibility of a country that lives up to its name.