Ever since Breaking the Silence published testimonies from Israeli soldiers who participated in Operation Cast Lead, various government bodies and public figures in Israel have waged an aggressive smear campaign against the organization. Rather than engaging in meaningful analysis and debate of the disturbing contents of these testimonies, Israeli officials have chosen to try to silence and discredit the messenger while completely ignoring the message.
Breaking the Silence is comprised of veterans of the Israel Defense Forces who have collected and published testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the second intifada. Having served in the territories themselves, and seen with their own eyes the human rights abuses engendered by the prolonged occupation, members of Breaking the Silence are committed to exposing the Israeli public to these grim realities.
The testimonies from Cast Lead reveal a sharp disparity between the official IDF narrative of the Gaza campaign and the events on the ground as seen through the eyes of combat soldiers. The soldiers’ testimonies paint a troubling picture of rules of engagement that encouraged indiscriminate shooting, the wanton destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure, the unlawful practice of using Palestinians as human shields and the firing of white phosphorous into heavily populated areas.
Since the war, Israeli human rights organizations have repeatedly demanded that Israel launch an impartial and independent investigation into alleged violations of the laws of war during its military operation in Gaza. Instead, the government has left the responsibility for investigating alleged abuses to the military. Needless to say, inquiries of this sort are neither impartial nor independent.
Given the extensive international criticism of Israel’s Gaza campaign, an impartial investigation should be seen as an opportunity to clear Israel’s name — assuming we don’t, as the government insists, have anything to be ashamed of. The ongoing refusal by the government to cooperate with international investigations or to initiate one of our own, however, raises the question: What are we trying to hide?
Even as they refuse to conduct a credible investigation, Israeli officials are working to undermine the credibility and effectiveness of those who have raised valid concerns about the conduct of Cast Lead. Haaretz recently reported on efforts made by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to pressure the Dutch government to stop funding Breaking the Silence. “A friendly government cannot fund opposition bodies,” explained a senior Israeli official. The fact that the testimonies generated widespread media coverage across the globe is used to cast Breaking the Silence in the role of disaffected traitors intent on damaging Israel’s image and reputation.
Unfortunately, such attempts to stifle important public discussion on sensitive or controversial topics have become commonplace in Israel. During Israel’s Gaza campaign, hundreds of anti-war demonstrators were arrested or detained for questioning, often without any legal basis. Since then, there have been efforts in the Knesset to legally restrict Nakba commemorations, to criminalize public denial of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and even to bar existing Arab political parties from participating in elections. Now, in response to the Breaking the Silence testimonies, senior government officials have reportedly begun discussing the possibility of banning Israeli NGOs that criticize government policies from receiving foreign funding. This is a sad commentary on the current condition of Israeli democracy.
Freedom of expression, open discourse and access to information encompassing a wide spectrum of sources and perspectives are integral elements of any healthy democracy. Breaking the Silence and other organizations that ask difficult and important questions publicly and fearlessly are essential to the well-being of our society. Instead of trying to delegitimize such groups, government officials — and Israeli society as a whole — need to carefully consider the questions they are raising.
Gila Orkin is director of international relations for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
A very lucid and balanced article by Gila Orkin. It is ceratinly true that in times of war, truth goes out the window. Apart from the government smear campaign, readers should also be aware of the outrageous abuse Shaul and his volunteers suffer from settlers when they attempt to lead tours to Hebron, etc. Breaking the Silence are indeed true heroes and commited to the truth.
most posters on sites i post use an alias or just an abreviation. Who can blame them?
there really isn't any longer nationalism, law, or free speech. And people can be punished in more that one way. One can be silenced by simply a lawsuit or accusation that one is an antisemite.
i am 77, but i am still s'mwhat afraid; mostly because i have a wife. can one imagine a young person being sued by 'zionists' and draging him/her in costly and time wasting processÉ such a case had happened last year in vancouver; even tho lawsuit cldn`t have been won, acording to lawyers.
in israel also there is no nationalism; israel is a mere haven for cultists! What a failed country! I wldn`t wish it even to nazis. tnx
Zionists oppose this organization because it produces anti-Israel fiction. Even when Israel puts out the full story, like the minimal civialin casualties in Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin, no one believes Israel. Thus, why bother investigating when only a negative report will be believed. Paradoxically, the automatic hatred of Israel provides an impetus not to investigate
I am a Zionist. We need Israel as a haven from persecution, and we need Israel so that Judaism can continue to evolve by coming to grips with the problems that beset a modern nation state. But, we don’t need an Israel that will let its children die or be maimed or be malnourished or slip from a scholarly first place among those of 25 other industrialized nations to last place or turn its youth into juvenile delinquents – an Israel that has done all this and continues to do so just so that it can acquire some more land. We don’t need an Israel governed by such corrupt politicians that they can be found either in the Knesset or, more appropriately, in jail or an Israel governed by politicians whose first and only priority is staying in office, even if it means looking the other way as religious crazies beat up territory Palestinians or steal their land or treat Arab Israelis as second class citizens. And, we don’t need an Israel that buys guns with the money formerly used to support its senior citizens and with the money due to those of its aged who were victims of the Nazis. We need an Israel that honors its treaty obligations and its Basic Laws, an Israel that is in fact trying to become “a light unto the nations.” If you are a Zionist who wants this kind of Israel, I urge you to do all that you can to end Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, to rebuild respect for the law and to bring a sincere Israel to the negotiating table.
Do our leaders not know that their words are weapons of power. And their message is clear-ctt but terrifying. What is happening now is echoing the words of Ezekiel, Isaiah and others.
What is happening has a sensitive religious side: G-D'S judgment, when it comes, does not make fine distinctions between those who are ready for it and those who are not. This point is picked up in Ezekiel 21. The punitive disaster that is to fall upon the people will affect "both righteous and wicked.
For it is written......Ezekiel 21...And say to the land of Israel, Thus says the LORD: I am coming against you, and will draw my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you both righteous and wicked.... Moan therefore, mortal; moan with breaking heart and bitter grief fefore their eyes. And when they say to you, "Why do you moan?" you shall say, "Because of the news that has come. Every heart will melt and all hands will be feeble, every spirit will faint and all knees will turn to water. See, it comes and it will be fulfilled," says the LORD G-D.
The world events, and the prophet here presents a series of short scenes, not unlike those of a movie, indicating the various steps leading up to our getting G-D'S Judgment.
G-D cannot be expected to intervene and stop the show that these people have planned, as soon as they begin, to do their will. By choosing to take on the might of Babylon yet again, who is in Ezekiel, King Zedekiah (who is called "wicked prince" in this chapter of Ezekiel 21. This wiched prince has chosen a policy that from the outset had only the slenderest chance of success. Jeremiah shows how wek-willed and uncertain the king has been and how easily he has allowed others to make up his mind for him. It is written in Jer. 37:1-27. Now he has to pay the price. The most tragic is for all concerned, many others will be brought down in his fall. They too will be paying the price fo this royal foolhardiness.
The sword of G-D will cut off "both the righteous and wicked" it is written. It is written....in Ezekiel chapter 18, about the way in which G-D recognizes and respects individual responsibility. Yet this can never be the whole truth, for every human being is caught up in a larger world of events. Here in this chapter 18 it is poenly admitted that those who deserve punishment will suffer, along with the righteous, who clearly do not. Human individuality is real and creates a genuine mesure of freedom, but nevertheless, this does not mean that each of us is an island, we were created to be united, with our Creator, in unity with Him and with each other.
Many that die in war are not guilty of having sought it or wanted it. They are innocent victims of other people's ambition and folly.
So, Ezekiel, who with Jeremiah, has come down to us as a prophet who most strongly emphasizes individual responsibility, sets this in a realistic context. Comunities too are involved in individual choices, and innocent and guilty alike will suffer in the aftermath of bad decisions.
The Israel, we need is the G-D Israel was named after, not the nation. Make war--or come UNITED with G-D and all of mankind. For it is written of the G-D of Israel.....Jeremiah 32..."I am the LORD, the G-D of all mankind. Is anything too hard for Me?" For it is written all will pass away.
Frank,
Where did you serve in the military?
Ms Chartier, Thanks for your warning. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if only we would learn from our Jewish history and honor our own religious/legal tradition. I suggest one amendment. You wrote: “So, Ezekiel, who with Jeremiah, has come down to us as a prophet who most strongly emphasizes individual responsibility, sets this in a realistic context. Communities too are involved in individual choices, and innocent and guilty alike will suffer in the aftermath of bad decisions.” You are a little too hard on G-D. I suggest substituting “cowards and slothful” for the word “innocent.”
It is often said that we all want the same sort of Israel, but, as evidenced by their past and continuing crimes against Israel, the Palestinians won’t permit it. That the Palestinians have been as guilty as Israel is undeniable. That they won’t ever agree to the existence of an enduring two-state peace is incorrect. In this matter, the results of the careful surveys of Israeli and Palestinian opinion which have been produced by the cooperative work of the Truman Institute of the Hebrew University and the Palestine Center for Policy and Survey Research are most informative. The majorities of both the Israelis and the Palestinians believe that conditions in their areas of residence are bad. The late May through early June survey polled 528 Israelis and 1270 Palestinians (living in the West Bank and in Gaza). Of the Israelis polled, the opinions of 75% of the respondents as to conditions in Israel ranged from “So-So” to “Very Bad,” the opinions 86.9% of Gazan Palestinian respondents as to conditions in Gaza ranged from “So-So” to “Very Bad,” and the opinions of 64.8% of the West Bank Palestinian respondents as to conditions in the West Bank also ranged from “So-So” to “Very Bad.”
The majorities of both peoples think that the solution of their current problems is a negotiated two-states-for-two-peoples peace (63.2% of the Israelis and 60.8% of the Palestinians concurring). But, the majorities, 61.3% of the Israeli respondents and 69.2% of the Palestinian respondents, believe that the chance of a successful negotiation within 5 years is “Low” to “Nonexistent.” What is the cause of this pessimism? Fear! 6o.5% of the Israeli respondents are worried that they or members of their families could be hurt by Arabs, and 44.7% of the Palestinian respondents are worried that they or members of their families could be hurt by Israel.
Given believable security assurances from the international community, only small religious factions, the ardent supporters of Gush Emunim and of Hamas, will try to subvert an agreed peace, and such attempts will be suppressed by the rest of their societies.
I agree with Frank, the second poster.
Orkin and ACRI seem to subject to the same questions of credibility as the group Breaking the Silence. And Orkin does not refute the charges of foreign funding and biases.
To attack the Israeli government and actions with unidentified witnesses, which really is no testimony at all, especially given the prior biases of the organizations involved, only serves those who are already ideologically in agreement with your position, facts be damned.
The foreign funding and the lack of credibility due to unnamed witnesses are real issues. I wonder why the Forward does not investigate them?
I believe in one state for one people. Palestine for the Palestinians. Israels can go to their countries of origin, ie Poland, Ukreaine, Belarus, Brooklyn, etc. No justice, no peace
Why am I against Breaking the Silence: Israel is at war. This organization, backed by interfering European countries prints third party gossip and presents it as facts thereby weakening us. I'd feel differently if they produce facts instead of rumors. Those of us who served in combat units in the IDF know of the stress placed on trying to avoid casualties among non-combatants.
Those who say that there is a problem with the reliability of anonymous testimonies are hypocrites. We are not talking about a court of law here. Show me the newspaper that does not publish stories based on anonymous sources. Show me the readers that claim that such newspapers are not trustworthy because they publish anonymous sources. You would have to throw out your favorite newspapers, right or left.
The reason why newspapers and Breaking the Silence publish anonymous sources, after the newspapers and the group have verified them, is because people won't go public because they are afraid of retaliation. In the case of soldiers' testimonies that fear is justified. As soon as the BtS soldiers published their first testimonies in 2004 -- not anonymously -- the IDF police went and interrogated them. (Some were doing military duty at the time.) And even if the IDF doesn't get to them, the society will. When a popular radio announcer on IDF radio calls on people to smash the BtS soldiers faces and leave scars, you can understand why some soldiers don't want the hassle. As it is, the BtS booklet only published around 40 of 700 testimonies the grup collected -- because these were verified by the group's strict standards.
As for foreign funding, the best solution would be to ban all foreign funding for Israeli non profits. The most affected will be the Settlers, who raise enormous sums from Christian evangelicals and rightwing groups. NGO Monitor would also go out of business. So would Hadassah.
Read the testimonies at
www.shovrimshtika.org/oferet/ENGLISH_oferet.pdf
The main issue is not whether Israeli soldiers commited abuses. All wars have abuses. That is the meaning of war. This article completely ignores the reasons for "cast lead". For years during and after it abandoned the settlements in the Gaza strip the arab terrorists in Gaza fired thousands of missiles and mortars on Israeli civilians. The bleeding hearts for Human Rights were silent!
Where was HRW and Rabbies for Human Rights then?
But now months after the withdrawal by the IDF from Gaza suddenly there are anonymous complaints by certain soldiers about the behavior of Israeli forces in Gaza. Have you seen any testimony to this effect? You haven't because there isn't any. The only complaints are fabrications by certain people that for whatever reason refuse to sign such testimony. The efforts of the Israeli Government and NGO's to silence these sources are both justified and approriate. See also: http://ibn.worldmedianetworks.com/bin/content.cgi?ID=3691&q=2
There is another reason why those who say that there is a problem with the reliability of anonymous testimonies are hypocrites.
B'Tselem has published many reports, based on signed affidavits from named eyewitnesses, documenting crimes under Israeli law by the IDF. The IDF refused to investigate, and denied that there were any violations.
In one case, and IDF lawyer sent B'Tselem a letter saying there was no basis to investigate -- and by mistake, she included in the letter a copy of her memo to her own supervisor in which she admitted that there was a basis to investigate. The IDF and the Israeli government lies all the time.
Dishonesty is typical of anti-Israel propagandists - J Streets "polls" have been cooked:
.....
STREET FOUNDING VP SECRETLY COOKS ITS LEFT-LEANING POLLS
Noah Pollak in Commentary reveals that Jim Gerstein, who conducts public opinion polls that invariably show US Jewish opinion further left than any other surveys, was a founding vice president of J Street, the anti-AIPAC lobby that seeks to build pressure for concessions on Israel. The revelation, suppressed in the publications of the organization but uncovered in its IRS filings, casts into further doubt the already questionnable polling data used by the left-wing lobbying group in its campaign to support Obama Administration criticism and bullying tactics against the Israeli leadership, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
......
"Since its founding, J Street has employed polling as a central tactic in its effort to convince people that American Jewish opinion on Israel is ideologically aligned with its own far-Left views. The three-step is simple but shrewd: if Jewish opinion does not support your agenda, 1) create some polls to show that it does; 2) declare yourself the new mainstream; 3) accuse the traditional organizations of being the real extremists.
Much skepticism of J Street’s polls has accompanied their release, and many have pointed out their clever, results-oriented phrasing. But this hasn’t diminished their ability, when people accuse them of advocating an agenda that has little support among American Jews, to point to their own polling and declare themselves the true representatives of Jewish opinion.
J Street’s polls have always been conducted by Jim Gerstein, who runs a far-Left progressive political consultancy in Washington. As J Street says on its polling pages, “Survey analysis from Jim Gerstein, Principal at Gerstein | Agne, the firm that commissioned the poll.”
Now J Street is an advocacy organization, not a newspaper or a judge, so it need not police its conflicts of interest with fastidious rigor. But Jim Gerstein is not simply a principal at the firm that conducts polls for J Street. He was J Street’s vice president.
You’d never know this from J Street’s staff page or the voluptuous promotion that accompanies the release of a J Street poll. You wouldn’t know it from all the mentions of Gerstein on J Street’s website, in which he is always portrayed as an independent actor. In order to know that he was J Street’s founding vice president, you’d have to look at J Street’s 990 IRS form.
So J Street not only commissions polls—it writes the questions, conducts them, analyzes the results, and then carries out promotional campaigns with the findings. If you were wondering how it was possible that J Street could repeatedly produce “polling data” that almost perfectly complements the group’s political agenda, now we have one important clue."
Apologists for anti-Israel propagandists attempt to justify anonymous libels. The suggestion that some newpapers' quoting unnamed sources somehow justifies anonymous accusations ignores the following: (1) newspapers are not sources of "testimony", and, when they use "unnamed sources" often engage in yellow journalism, and engender serious doubts about the unverified claims, (2) responsible newspapers consider it a violation of journalistic ethics to permit people to criticize others while remaining anonymous; "cheap shots" are not permitted, (3) reporting secondary and tertiary sources (those who have no personal knowledge and are only reporting what they claim they were told by unnamed sources) has no credibility at all [it is called double or triple hearsay]. In criminal cases (implicated here) judges will often require reporters (here the libeling NGO's) to disclose their "sources".
I would like to see Israel sue the leftist enemy libelers and force them to prove the truth of their apparently false - and certainly malicious and defamatory accusations. Moreover, there is a point at which these NGO's defamatory accusations, falsely made with actual malice, may be treated as criminal by Israel. It would be interesting to see how these enemies respond when the shoe is on the other foot, and they are the targets of "lawfare".
Who should conduct this independent investigation? Hamas or the Al Asqua Brigades? Or the UN? Or perhaps Thomas Freidman and Norman Finklestein?
Or perhaps George Mitchell, a board member of the Boston Red Sox, who, not seeing a conflict of interest, conducted a steroid investigation that targeted New York Yankee players, but somehow missed Mannie Ramirez and David Ortis? The only true investigation would compare Arab human right violation and the conduct of their wars against that of Israel's. Do not hold your breath.
Mr. Grossman,
In October I met a young member of an Orthodox kibbutz south of Haifa. She had just been on a PR mission in Australia, and was putting in her hundred days of labor before leaving for university. About what is actually happening, she said that she was very confused. The papers report different news or, when they cover the same occurrence, they report different versions. Her brother, who had just returned from IDF service, told her to not believe any of them.
Typically, when soldiers return home they say little or nothing about what happened during their term of service. It is this silence that Breaking The Silence has been breaking. It was started by kippah-wearing men who had been serving in Hebron. Their job was to protect the Hebron Jews; protecting the Palestinians was the job assigned to but not done by the police. These soldiers were ashamed and horrified by the things that they had seen and done.
The testimony of these soldiers makes it more difficult for the Israeli Government to pursue its expansionist and ethnic-cleansing program, and the government has done all it can to intimidate them into silence. The Israeli Government is even more antagonized by their testimony about Gaza, which imperils the careers of quite a few obedient IDF officers, hence the title of this article.
The conduct of the IOF in Gaza makes the aktions of the SS look like a playground fight. I call upon the EU to swoop in and forcibly abduct officers of the IOF to stand trial at the Hague
I am sick of the "Jewish" Forward allowing arabs and other Jew-haters to spew their Nazi propaganda.
The arabs in Gaza are the scum of the earth. These people care nothing for human lives, including those of their own people. They torture and murder. They murder their own children and "non-combatants" for policital gain. They are cowardly rats hiding under hospitals, and shooting from behind school children. They would happily murder school children and blow up hospitals for propaganda purposes, but they know the Israelis will not do so - even if it means not disposing of those arab terrorist scum. These arab seek the mass murder of Jews. They spew Nazi propaganda - the most outrageous is to liken Jews to the very Nazis who the arabs emulate.
On the other hand Israel is an extraordinarily civilized self-restrained and humanistic country. When most countries would have simply bombed the terrorist enemies who fired rockets into their cities, Israel goes to unbelievable lengths to avoid harming arabs who are not at the moment engaged in terrorist attacks.
Israel is being defamed by the arabs and Jew-hating "progressives" - those who use the "Big Lie". The posts by anti-Semites should be removed as anti-Semitic graffiti.
The anonymous libels published by Jew-hating NGO's are obviously not "testimony". For sworn "testimony" to exist, there must be a "testifier". Here, there are none - not one single "testifier" willing to swear that he actually witnesses anything! If even one soldier claimed to have personally witnesses anything, Israel would investigate it. Israel is an open democracy that has a liberal judiciary which is more than willing to stick its nose into even national security issues which threaten Israel's safety! If there is any truth to any of these libels - lets see it!
This is a sick joke. Anyone arguing that this is anything but anti-Semitic propaganda is an anti-Semitic propagandist.
Only in totalitarian and "progressive" fascist regimes are unamed accusers allowed to broadcast false claims. Israel is beset by vile enemies, including those published by the anti-Israel Forward.
I accuse the Forward of being an extreme leftist anti-Israel propagandist.
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