Breaking The Silence, a small group of former Israeli soldiers on Wednesday embarked on an international campaign to show the world what it says are testimonies from soldiers pointing to immoral Israeli actions committed during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.
I’m not going to get into the report itself, which may be totally true, somewhat true, entirely false, who knows. It is undoubtedly an important report that is reverberating globally. Instead, a brief look behind the scenes into the way Breaking The Silence operated on this report.
It promised the exclusive to Haaretz, because it knows the report would have gotten prominence there. What it didn’t count on was Haaretz learning its lesson from its huge mistake last time it was given a report into alleged Israel Defense Forces human rights violations in Gaza. Last time Haaretz didn’t do its journalistic job and published unsubstantiated hearsay. This time Haaretz military reporter Amos Harel had the presence of mind to send the Breaking The Silence report to the IDF for response.
My military reporter, Yaakov Katz, was in the right place at the right time, and got hold of most of the report himself. Breaking The Silence tried to get Yaakov off the story because it didn’t fit into their strategy to have The Jerusalem Post take a critical look at their report. They promised Yaakov they would give him other stories in the future if he dropped this one for now. Katz refused, rightly so, and we published.
Several days before all this, Breaking The Silence gave out their report to a wide array of foreign media, and not to the IDF to probe into itself, with the caveat that they observe the embargo until after Haaretz published the report first. All of which shows their original intent was to get as much uncritical worldwide publicity for their report. Legitimate, sure. Fair? Not so sure.
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http://jewinthefat.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/actions-speak-louder-than-words/
Mr. Mizroch,
I’ve got a good reason for you why they didn’t want the Jerusalem Post to report on it first.
I don’t know in what right-wing cocoon you and your buddies are holed-up in, but ask any mildly liberal person in Israel, or Jew in the States, and theyll tell you the Jerusalem Post is a mouthpiece for the propaganda of the IDF and everything that’s rightist in Israel.
We all know that the Jpost’s line, including “your reporters”, would have it that the IDF and Israel’s claims are totally right (as usual) and everyone else is wrong (as usual), including these brave combat soldiers.
I suppose the word liberal is a dirty word to you as well.
Please, don’t even bother to deny this (like the IDF propagandist that you are).
BTW
Mr. Mizroch,
I’ve got a good reason for you why they didn’t want the Jerusalem Post to report on it first.
I don’t know in what right-wing cocoon you and your buddies are holed-up in, but ask any mildly liberal person in Israel, or Jew in the States, and theyll tell you the Jerusalem Post is a mouthpiece for the propaganda of the IDF and everything that’s rightist in Israel.
We all know that the Jpost’s line, including “your reporters”, would have it that the IDF and Israel’s claims are totally right (as usual) and everyone else is wrong (as usual), including these brave combat soldiers.
I suppose the word liberal is a dirty word to you as well.
Please, don’t even bother to deny this (like the IDF propagandist that i’m guessing you are).
BTW, i support the war in gaza to this day and think it was crucial.
How’s that to bust up your idea of what it means to be a liberal?
BTW, what makes your claim of Right-wing IDF propaganda through the columns of the JP any more valid or idealistic than the same claim of left-wing bias through the columns of HaAretz ? In fact, when you read some of the utterances of writers such as Gideon Levy you might as well read a paper published in Ramalah. Whether you support the war in Gaza or not is not the issue – the issue is the knee jerk reaction that you liberals have in support of anything that is stated by anyone that places Israel in a poor light. It would be hard not to support an action in response to 8000 rockets fired against a sovereign state’s civilian population just as it would have been difficult to regard 9/11 as no more than a criminal action that should have been handled by the FBI. I’m not saying that everything that Israel does is right but then neither is everything wrong and the one word that always seems to be missing is “context” – certainly when it comes to criticizing Israel.
Thank you.
An illuminating report.
I read an account of the funding for this little exercise, coming from our friends and others
Someone estimated that it It works out to be about $21,000/signature
BTS has alleged crimes. That is ground for the Israeli Attorney General to subpoena all BTS records and haul the soldiers before a grand jury (or equivalent) so that the accusations can be properly investigated.
The soldiers themselves have likely violated military law by revealing operational details outside proper military channels, and should be court-martialed.
Correcting spelling: I think in other countries (including even US or UK) this might have resulted in arrests. Having evidence of crimes and failing to report it – or refusing a subpoena – results in prison even in major democracies like US, UK, etc. It’s considered obstruction of justice.