Breaking the Silence – exposed for their lies

I previously posted about the lies of Breaking the Silence and their treasonous activities in “fishing” for classified information for their own nefarious purposes.  Now Israel’s Channel 10 TV, itself a bastion of leftist  bias, has aired an investigative report on the organization which Matan Katzman, founder of the My Truth organization dedicated to debunking BtS’s lies, praises as comprehensive and meticulous:

Last Tuesday, the award-winning investigative Channel 10 TV show, HaMakor (The Source), aired an hour-long report on Breaking the Silence (BTS), an Israeli NGO which has come under sustained criticism over the last year. The report was comprehensive, meticulous and I highly recommend watching it in order to truly understand how Breaking the Silence works. Although the reporters’ sympathy towards the work of Breaking the Silence and their importance in Israeli society was clear (as one of the reporters, Itay Yarom openly mentioned on his personal Facebook page), the report raises a number of indisputable conclusions regarding Breaking the Silence:

A substantial number of Breaking the Silence testimonies are not true or are distorted

The report shattered the most powerful card BTS has: Its credibility. Two myths regarding Breaking the Silence were ‘busted’ in an indisputable manner:

The first myth Breaking the Silence likes to propagate is that “none of our testimonies have ever been refuted”. For over a decade since being founded, BTS has declined to disclose its sources. However, HaMakor reporters were given unprecedented access to the “Holy Grail”, BTS’s testimony sources. What the investigative team found deserves to be noted by anyone taking an interest in the moral state of the IDF – the report explicitly stated that Breaking the Silence publishes inaccurate and false testimonies.

Screenshot from Channel 10 TV: Graph showing the number of untruths in Breaking the Silence reports

…

The second myth that Breaking the Silences attempts to sell is that Breaking the Silence testimonies are cross-referenced with two sources. The reporters found that in several testimonies there is no evidence of two sources. Even Raviv Drucker, the journalist who established HaMakor and is known for his left wing leanings, could not hide his disappointment at the poor level of investigation in BTS’s work. In response, Breaking the Silence’s CEO Yuli Novak responded that “we are not an investigative body and we do not claim to be one”. This is quite disturbing, as Breaking the Silence testimonies were widely used in the work of official international investigative bodies such as the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict (which released the so called ”Schabas” report on Gaza). Testimonies provided by Breaking the Silence appeared 32 times in the UN report’s footnotes.

In its early stages, why did Breaking the Silence turn to audiences outside of Israel?

Breaking the Silence claims to stimulate public debate in Israel and expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the West Bank. If so, of what relevance is their work overseas?

When asked why they turn to non Israeli audiences they answer that “The Occupation is not an internal Israeli Issue and should be discussed overseas”.

In fact, in 2004, a few months after the organization was founded, two of four Breaking the Silence founders left the organization after it began to appeal to non-Jewish audiences overseas. When one of the HaMakor reporters asked one of the founders why he left, the latter, replied: “when you speak abroad, the money comes with it… There was a dependency between going abroad and the budget of the. … I guess what stood before their eyes was that with more money they could create a larger effect”.

Read Katzman’s whole article. I’m sure your blood will be boiling at the end.

Gidon Shaviv of CAMERA, writing in UK Media Watch, also comments on the Channel 10 report, concluding:

In an Op-Ed in the Israeli Walla news site, Goren and Rom argued that while they did not think BtS was intentionally lying, the organization’s vetting process was “superficial and not strict enough.” In their opinion, BtS would be more credible were it present the soldiers’ accounts as testimonies for the public to debate and raw material for journalists to investigate, as opposed to verified actual events.

Matan Katzman’s conclusion was more pertinent in my opinion:

To be clear, if Breaking the Silence wants us to take its testimonies seriously, it’s time it steps up its investigative work and reliability. Until then, it should be described for what it is — propaganda.