Israel/Palestine

The campaign which includes a video entitled “Breaking the Silence hunters,” introduces three IDF soldiers who say they were continuously pursued by the organization.

....The campaign, which includes a video entitled “Breaking the Silence hunters,” introduces three soldiers who say they were continuously pursued by the organization and encouraged to give testimonies of their service in the IDF.

In the video, the three soldiers, who served in elite units, say that following their discharge from the IDF they were contacted repeatedly by Breaking the Silence and encouraged to tell their stories of service in Operation Protective Edge. Asaf Goldshtoff, one of the soldiers, said that a representative from the group called him numerous times and was told that the organization “collects experiences from soldiers and listens to their stories.”

“What I understand today is that they take certain parts of the story and that is what they present to the public,” he said. Josh Levitan, a lone soldier from the UK, recounted a similar story, and said that a representative from the group called him eight or nine times until he finally agreed to meet with him. “They didn’t mention that they were going to record me,” Levitan says in the video. “I felt that they really took advantage of the situation, where a fighter that is going through what people went through after Operation Protective Edge, he has a need for some help.”

The video concludes with the question: “Is Breaking the Silence trying to pursue you?,” and urges soldiers who have been contacted by the organization to notify the Reservists on Duty hotline and report it. In less than 24 hours since the launch of the campaign, the hotline had received dozens of calls, Amit Deri, chairman and founder of Reservists on Duty told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. “In the last six months, we discovered that many soldiers came to us and told us that Breaking the Silence had tried to pursue them,” Deri said.