More self-hating Jews: "Breaking the Silence"
From Israeli researchers on recipients of New Israel Fund ("NIF") support (in this instance, the organisation whose allegations have received prominence in the Australian media recently, and which is financially supported by NIF, the EU, the NGO Development Center, Holland, Britain and Spain):
Overview
“Breaking The Silence” (BTS) is a fringe group
of former Israeli soldiers who served in the Territories during the height of
the Intifada. They claim they support Israel, but they charge that
IDF operations have no purpose but to humiliate Palestinians and that IDF
soldiers are callous and unethical, and commit gross human rights abuses. In
short, they create one-sided, anti-IDF presentations that distort facts by
omitting the context of Israel’s counter-terrorist war, by focusing only on their own unverified allegations, and by ignoring the IDF’s efforts to uphold high moral standards while
fighting a difficult terrorist war.
BTS’ goal is not to bring
offending soldiers to justice or even to encourage reforms in IDF policy. Instead, BTS wants to put international pressure on Israel to unilaterally and immediately pull out
of the rest of the Territories and hope to do so by vilifying one of Israel’s most
revered institutions, the IDF. Unilateral
withdrawal is a legitimate topic of debate, but instead of arguing the merits
of this position, BTS chooses to vilify the IDF.
BTS speakers claim that their allegations of brutality are regular occurrences. Their claims blacken the reputations of the vast
majority of young Israeli soldiers who did not lose their moral or ethical
compass. BTS hunts for former soldiers who will testify that they saw or
committed abuses.
A recent interview with a
founder of Breaking the Silence, Yehuda Shaul, is typical. His one-sided
presentation does not give an informative picture of the actions, attitudes or
policies of the entire Israeli army, yet he implies that it does.
Even the name of the group,
"Breaking the Silence," is misleading. The implication is that the
speakers will unveil the "real" story about IDF abuses because Israel’s press
and politicians do not air controversies about IDF policies when in fact they
do, and that the IDF does not punish soldiers who violate moral standards when
in fact they do. The implication is also that the IDF would not be responsive
to these soldiers’ concerns when in fact it has been trying to develop more
humane policies to deal with an enemy that attacks Israeli citizens and then
embeds itself among Palestinian civilians. BTS speakers even fail to
acknowledge that as a result of their presentations in Israel, the IDF
considered resuming official probes into each Palestinian death.
Instead, you will hear
disconnected observations made by individual soldiers. The campaign of
Palestinian terrorism is ignored, even though many of these men served at the
height of the Intifada in 2002. Such programs, with their unqualified moral
denunciations of the IDF, have become part of the larger anti-Israel propaganda
war. In Israel,
where most of the population has served in the IDF, audiences can reasonably
evaluate BTS claims, compare them to their own experiences and put them into
proper context. That is not true around the world where obsevers are
often ignorant and are regularly inundated with malicious anti-Israel charges.
If BTS members were sincere, they would be presenting accurate facts about
terrorism, the goals expressed in the charters of HAMAS, PLO and Hezbollah, the
anti-Israel incitement, and the ways the Palestinians have contributed to
perpetuating the conflict and to harming the lives of ordinary Palestinian
civilians. If they were sincere, they would be raising awareness about the
moral dilemmas the IDF faces.
For more, refer to NGO Monitor's report
Breaking What Silence? A Critical Reading of Allegations from "Breaking the Silence"
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