Israel/Palestine

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. Out of ten random testimonies cross-examined by the reporters, two testimonies were found to be not true at all. Two testimonies were only partially true, missing substantive details or had exaggerated or misleading titles. A further four testimonies could not be verified, even after the reporters received access to the testimonies’ sources. Only two out of the ten testimonies were validated as true and not misleading.

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.