Soldiers' evidence must remain Israel's secret

This posting has these items from Haaretz, the only Israeli paper to give significant space to the work of BtS.

1) The Great Betrayal: American Jews Stay Silent as Israeli Democracy Withers, Chemi Shalev asks why American Jews must believe the IDF as the epitome of Israel;
2) Why Breaking the Silence Became the Most Hated Group in Israel, Anshel Pfeffer answers a key question;
3) New Knesset Bill Seeks to Outlaw Breaking the Silence, the bill’s Jewish Home promoter says the crime of BtS is to exhibit and publicise their evidence abroad;

All photos from Breaking the Silence by soldier members except for the portrait of MK Moalem-Refaeli.

It is part of the purpose of Breaking the Silence to make public the actions of ‘the most moral army in the world’. That included taking an exhibition, with BtS speakers,  to Zurich (above) in 2015. Berlin cancelled the exhibition as did Cologne, initially.

The Great Betrayal: American Jews Stay Silent as Israeli Democracy Withers

The existential danger facing the Middle East’s only Jewish and democratic state may not be Iran, but Israel itself.

By Chemi Shalev, Haaretz
January 04, 2016

On Sunday, The Washington Post denounced the Israeli government’s proposed new legislation against leftist NGOs, euphemistically called “The Transparency Law.” In a sharply worded editorial,  “A Danger to Israeli Democracy,” the newspaper wrote: “The proposal reflects the kind of tactic that Russia and China have employed to squelch dissent, and it is not in keeping with Israel’s core values as a democratic state.”

The editorial was one of the strongest reactions yet in the United States to Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s efforts, transparent indeed, to suppress antigovernment NGOs and human rights groups by branding them, in effect, as foreign agents. And it resonates doubly loud when juxtaposed against the deafening silence of most American Jews in response to the waves of chauvinistic antidemocratic legislation and incitement in which Israel is increasingly drowning.

The authoritarian campaign, waged by Israel’s ruling coalitions since Likud returned to power in 2009, has accelerated in recent months. It is now all-encompassing. It is being waged in the Knesset, in government ministries, in universities, in schoolrooms and in the media, both social and general.

It includes legislative assaults on free speech, incitement against dissenters, the withholding of government funds for political reasons, regulatory measures against – and greater government control over – television and other media, compulsory changes to school curricula, reinforced Orthodox hegemony over religious affairs and repeated attacks on the Arab minority. All this is accompanied by the constant drone of victimhood and xenophobia emanating from Israeli cabinet ministers, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on down.

Cynically or genuinely, the proponents of this antidemocratic surge have convinced themselves and many others that Israel faces a grand conspiracy of internal, backstabbing “enemies of the state” who have joined forces with an irredentist Israeli-Arab fifth column and malicious anti-Semites abroad.

They have already succeeded in curtailing freedom of expression, chilling academic and media criticism of the government’s policies and inflaming vicious hostility against left-wing politicians and spokespeople – up to and including the Israeli president himself – on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. With every success they get bolder and more ambitious, while Israelis who disagree with their policies grow more despondent about the present and more apprehensive about their future.

Imagine the outcry among American Jewish liberals if the U.S. government in 2016 banned a book from public schools because it could promote racial intermarriage. Try to conjure the reaction to congressional legislation stipulating that Native Americans could not be taught in their own schools about the tragic history of their own people.

Picture the outpouring of horror and dismay if a desperate GOP presidential candidate tried to spur his white constituency to vote by telling them that Hispanics were flowing to the ballot boxes in droves. Envisage the shock if a U.S. president reacted to a murder or even a terrorist act carried out by an individual African American by pledging to “eradicate lawlessness” in the entire black community, as Netanyahu did Saturday regarding Israeli Arabs after the murderous attack on innocents in Tel Aviv.

Yet American Jews have kept mostly mum as such events and countless other manifestations of this dangerous drift have unfolded in Israel. Even though they rightly pride themselves on being the most liberal religious group in America, they have remained closemouthed about the Israeli assault on the values they hold most dear, the same values they describe as “shared” when lauding the supposed bedrock of U.S.-Israeli relations.

If this were a picture of two blindfolded and manacled African-Americans on either side of the man with the ‘I am the master-race’ grin on his face, would not American Jews interpret this photo differently? From the BtS exhibition.

When Peter Beinart wrote in his famous 2010 New York Review of Books article that  “the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door,” he was referring to the great divide between the military occupation of Palestinians and Israeli democracy inside the Green Line. Six short years later, it seems American Jews are “checking their liberalism at Zionism’s door” even when the malignant side effects of the occupation have infiltrated across the 1967 borders and are eroding the democracy that they and many Israeli Jews hold most dear. What’s good for the American-Jewish goose, it seems, is not necessarily applicable when it comes to the Israeli gander.

I am not talking about groups such as the Zionist Organization of America, whose chairman Morton Klein wrote this week in support of Shaked’s offensive against “phony NGOs that seek to demonize the Jewish State with falsehoods.” I would not expect Klein, whose organization has been heavily funded by Sheldon Adelson and others of similar ilk, to be bothered by the blatant hypocrisy of a right-wing government exempting its own interventionist billionaires from its war against so-called “foreign intervention.” I would expect, perhaps naively, that other American Jews would be up in arms.

In his end-of-year appeal for last-minute donations, for example, American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris proudly noted his organization’s main activities in 2015, a year marked by what he described as “fear and anxiety.”

We convened a strategy conference in Brussels to fight global antisemitism, he boasted, “worked shoulder to shoulder with our elected leaders to help America show the necessary leadership abroad” and “leveraged our unparalleled diplomatic infrastructure to facilitate new and deeper friendships between Israel and countries around the world.”

Photo from the BtS exhibition showing a soldier having a happy time with a blindfold and shackled Palestinian.

Harris seems to have missed the “fear and anxiety” gripping a sizable portion of Israelis as they watch their country grow estranged from the values embodied in the Declaration of Independence, a document increasingly derided and undermined by Israel’s new leaders. Perhaps the AJC differentiates between Advocacy for Israel, the first item on its website agenda, and advocacy on behalf of Israelis themselves.

Of course, there are countless valid reasons as well as lame excuses for the American Jewish reluctance to confront the Israeli government or to dedicate funds or efforts to constrain it. First and foremost, it is not in the Jewish community’s nature. Whatever the faults of the current government – and they are too grievous and too blatant for anyone but the most zealous right-wingers to deny – the bulk of American Jews who remain committed to Israel are wary of lambasting Israel or, even worse, handing its enemies valuable ammunition. And contrary to last year’s divisive dispute about the Iran nuclear deal, there is no powerful U.S. administration pulling American Jews in the opposite direction.

Many Jewish groups are also wary of jeopardizing their own ties to Netanyahu and his ministers: trans-Atlantic hobnobbing at the top is often a measure of their own influence and prestige in Washington and other world capitals. They are understandably concerned about operating outside their comfort zone of helping Israel fend off its external adversaries, not least of which because their increasingly conservative, militant and influence-wielding benefactors might withhold financial support in return.

Most American Jewish groups, national or local, JCC or synagogue, are also afraid of joining the ranks of J Street and the New Israel Fund on the right wing’s Enemies List; the two organizations are wrongly but consistently ostracized and delegitimized as BDS-backers and Israel-haters. The same chilling effect that is already palpable in Israel can probably be felt in New York, Los Angeles and other U.S. cities as well.

Perhaps American Jews remain unconvinced by the cries of anguish emanating from Israel’s peace camp; it is certainly more convenient for them to accept the government’s reassurance that it’s all much ado about nothing. And they can certainly point to the lack of any convincing counterbalance to Israel’s persuasive prime minister, someone who could rally the troops and enlist American Jews in a just war for decency and democracy.

“We need a leader, we need a leader” is the mantra voiced nowadays by Israelis who oppose the government, and while it is an accurate reflection of the sad political situation of Israel’s center-left, it is also an excuse to continue sipping lattes and planning the next family trip abroad while moaning and doing nothing. If Israelis themselves aren’t up in arms, why should American Jews be bothered?

One can empathize with many American Jews, especially older ones, who prefer to keep on supporting the Israel of their dreams, the Israel of their youth, while averting their eyes and ears from the clear and the present. And one can understand why they would prefer to postpone a confrontation with Israel as long as its very real enemies such as Iran and Hamas continue to threaten its security and perhaps its existence. That is the fight they are used to, the battle that they feel most comfortable with, the war that has kept them united for so many decades.

But time is running out. By staying silent, by refraining from the kind of forceful, game-changing protest that the current situation warrants, American Jews are not only abandoning like-minded Israelis, they are betraying Israel itself. They don’t owe it to Israeli liberals to come to their aid: They owe it first and foremost to themselves.

After all, the biggest existential danger facing the Middle East’s only Jewish and democratic state may not be Iran, but Israel itself. And the time for American Jews to cry foul and raise hell against a government that is running roughshod over Israel’s liberal legacy while intentionally alienating a large part of the population will soon be gone. Notwithstanding the thousand differences, it would not be the first time American Jews stayed silent and hoped for the best as clouds gathered and a storm threatened their brothers and sisters – nor would it be the first time they came to regret it forever more.

Dubliners view a Breaking the Silence exhibition, backed by Trocaire, in the city’s Gallery of Photography, 2014.


Why Breaking the Silence Became the Most Hated Group in Israel

The campaign to delegitimize a group of combat soldiers who are shining a light on the darker side of Israeli military operations is a sign of how big a threat it is to the comfortable consensus.

Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz
December 17, 2015

In one way at least, Breaking the Silence – the name chosen by a group of ex-Israel Defence Forces soldiers dedicated to documenting the darker side of the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s campaigns in Gaza – is disingenuous. There never was complete silence and the organization didn’t actually invent anything.

The tradition of Israeli soldiers telling an alternative narrative to the official hagiography goes all the way back to 1949. Then, shortly after the end of the War of Independence, S. Yizhar’s novella “Khirbet Khizeh” – a semi-fictional retelling of an Arab village’s evacuation – was published. It was the first of a handful of subversive books and articles told or written by soldiers, revealing the less glorious aspects of Israel’s wars. And while they were always in a minority, they were nonetheless accepted as part of mainstream culture.

In October 1967, four months after the Six-Day War, “Soldiers Talk” (released in English as “The Seventh Day”) was published and became an instant best seller. It featured transcripts recounting the experiences of Kibbutz members who had fought in the war and returned home with conflicted emotions.

While some, particularly on the Zionist left, saw these soldiers’ accounts (which continued during the first intifada in the 1980s and early 1990s) as a vital contribution to the democratic debate, others pejoratively labelled them yorim ve’bochim: shooting and crying.

A photo from the 2015 BtS exhibition, showing perhaps the disproportionate size and number of armoured vehicles, manpower and munitions used against Gaza in 2014. All the photos are taken by Israeli soldiers.

The stories of the anguished warriors infuriated many on the right, who saw them as besmirching the “most moral army in the world.” But they also angered the radical left: they accused the soldiers of trying to salve their own consciences by coming clean, but not being prepared to take the next step and refuse to continue serving as reservists.

So why, if it is merely continuing an Israeli tradition, is Breaking the Silence causing such controversy now? Why is President Reuven Rivlin under so much fire for delivering a speech at Haaretz’s New York conference, which also included Breaking the Silence members (but not on the same stage)? Why is the Israeli government mobilizing its diplomatic resources to try and prevent the NGO from appearing abroad and receiving funding from European governments? Why has Education Minister Naftali Bennett forbidden schools from holding classroom discussions with Breaking the Silence representatives?

It starts with the scale and longevity of Breaking the Silence. “Shooting and crying” used to be a one-off act of catharsis in the wake of a war. But since the NGO was launched in 2004 by a group of ex-soldiers (who arranged a small exhibition detailing their service in Hebron), it has evolved into a full-fledged organization with teams of interviewers, fact-checkers and periodic reports published in Hebrew and English. It has become a constant thorn in the establishment’s side, and a convenient target.

It’s no longer a convenient interlude to air our collective, burdened conscience and then return to business as normal. Breaking the Silence doesn’t offer us quick relief; it keeps coming back at us with more.

Breaking the Silence employees at the organization’s Tel Aviv office, December 16, 2015. Photo by Reuters

And then there is the enthusiastic reception the group receives abroad, in “hostile” international forums and the global media. If you have issues, why air them outside, people ask – unless your real motivation isn’t fixing problems at home but spreading antisemitic libel among the goyim?
This is a ridiculous claim that wilfully ignores the fact that we’re in 2015: even if Breaking the Silence was only publishing in Hebrew and talking exclusively to local news outlets, its reports would still be immediately translated and distributed around the world.

Right wingers have no problem fighting their battles overseas, and did so vociferously when they were in the opposition (especially in Diaspora countries). Likewise, Breaking the Silence is right to want to control the narrative wherever it is told and, as patriotic Israelis, its members believe there should be an alternative presented abroad. Besides, running an organization costs money and publishing in English is a necessary part of fundraising – and right-wing NGOs are certainly no slackers in that regard.

But the “libellers” label sticks, not only because it is used by critics from the right, but because it’s a convenient way for centrist politicians like Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni to prove their patriotism and distance themselves from Breaking the Silence.

A Palestinian boy left sitting, blindfold and manacled, while soldiers enjoy their leisure time. Photo from BtS.

New Knesset Bill Seeks to Outlaw Breaking the Silence

Lawmaker from right-wing Habayit Hayehudi calls soldiers’ anti-occupation NGO ‘subversive.’

By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz
January 13, 2016

MK Shuli Moalem-Refaeli (Habayit Hayehudi) submitted on Wednesday a bill to outlaw Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation organization that gathers testimony from Israeli soldiers about their military service in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

“Breaking the Silence is a subversive organization that harms Israel and slanders it in the world,” Moalem-Refaeli [L, Flash90] said on Wednesday. “If their agenda was to fix real problems in the IDF’s  activity, they would do it through the acceptable channels instead of spreading lies around the  world. I’m sure that all the MKs who understand the BDS threat will support the bill, including the  members of the Zionist Union.”

The explanation accompanying the bill says the  NGO is “a subversive organization acting to change Israel’s policy by ways that are not part of the acceptable rules of a democracy and by exerting international pressure that causes Israel damage.”

It also says the NGO gives the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement significant help and by actively inciting against Israel “serves as a BDS branch. This can also be seen in recent reports of demonstrations, in which the NGO’s activists attack IDF soldiers physically and verbally during their activity in the West Bank,” she wrote.

“The organization presents itself as a legitimate group that raises the flaws in the IDF’s activities toward West Bank Arabs to Israeli consciousness,” the explanation says.

“In fact it doesn’t [work with] the IDF and the law enforcement authorities, as it has been asked to do several times by senior IDF officers. Breaking the Silence refused to give the testimonies to the IDF and chose to give them to international officials, presenting a false reality in which IDF soldiers and hundreds of thousands of West Bank settlers are portrayed as criminals,” she says.

“The NGO takes the dirty laundry outside and gives information that is either false or doesn’t attest to the general [state of affairs] or to Israel’s policy,” the explanation says.