According to the Israeli State Attorney, the spokesman for ‘Breaking the Silence’, a former IDF soldier, lied when claiming that he personally used violence against a Palestinian while serving in the army.  Prime Minister Benjamin  Netanyahu accuses the left-wing NGO with intentionally  slandering the Israeli Army.

Israel’s State Attorney found that a spokesman for Breaking the Silence (BtS), an NGO that alleges abuses by Israel soldiers, lied when he claimed that he had beaten a Palestinian suspect.  Dean Issacharoff, spokesman for BtS had spoken of an incident where he claimed that he beat a Palestinian man whom he was arresting while doing reserve duty in Hebron.

The State Attorney closed the case on Thursday “after the investigation revealed that the events he described did not occur.”

The Arab man, whom Issacharoff said he had beaten, acknowledged that he had been arrested in February 2014, as Issacharoff said, but confirmed that he wasn’t beaten.

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked had approached Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit about investigating Issacharoff’ after the spokesman made his claim in April at a Breaking the Silence rally.

“It turns out that the Breaking the Silence spokesman is a liar defaming the State of Israel in front of the world,” Shaked said in a statement in reaction to the State Attorney’s decision. “Kudos to his comrades in his company who refused to remain indifferent and were unwilling to remain silent while he lies. It is good that the truth has come to light about this organization, which is making money at the expense of IDF soldiers and Israeli citizens.”

Numerous soldiers and commanders had questioned Issacharoff’s claim.

Prime Minister Netanyahu wrote in reaction, “Breaking the Silence lies and slanders our soldiers internationally. Today, in case anyone had any doubt, this fact has received further proof. The truth wins.”

Breaking the Silence is no stranger to controversy.

“This merely confirms what we have known all along: Breaking the Silence’s ‘testimonies’ are in fact fabricated propaganda with the sole purpose of slandering the IDF and delegitimizing Israel. There is no limit to the depths that Breaking the Silence and its foreign government and New Israel Fund financiers are willing to go in order to defame Israel,” said Im Tirtzu Chairman Matan Peleg.

Acting on Behalf of Foreign Governments

Breaking the Silence, an anti-Israel organization is comprised of veteran IDF combatants who are ostensibly committed “to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.”

They are financed by foreign bodies and countries, including an organization operating within the Palestinian Authority (PA)-administered territories

Breaking the Silence received $1,352,500 through the governments of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK and the EU in 2015.

Between 2008 and 2014, the left-wing New Israel Fund allocated  $707,300 to.Breaking the Silence.

It also received $303,500 and an additional emergency grant from the Palestinian Fund Secretariat for Human Rights and International Law, operating out of PA-controlled Ramallah—which noted in its 2015 report that it paid Breaking the Silence to bring them negative testimony against the IDF.

While claiming that their goal is to “raise awareness over the everyday reality of serving in the [so-called] occupied territories and to create a discussion about the cost of military control over a civilian population for so many years,” the NGO refuses to post the names of the soldiers who testify.

They have also refused to pass along their accounts to the IDF’s Military Advocate General’s Corps for investigation, despite repeated requests by senior IDF officials to do so.  Instead, Breaking the Silence members routinely go abroad to spread their allegations instead of taking their complaints directly to the IDF or civilian courts.

In December 2015, influential Israeli columnist Ron Ben-Yishai blasted the group for its “dissemination of unsubstantiated claims abroad” and charged that by doing so “actively cultivates, perhaps unwittingly, both anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism among those with an already strong prejudice against the State of Israel and its citizens.”

By: The Tower and United with Israel Staff