Breaking The Media’s Unhealthy Reliance on Breaking The Silence
Rarely a day goes by that the name “Breaking the Silence” does not appear in the media in some capacity.
Indeed, a Google search for the controversial Israeli group brings up thousands of results and HonestReporting’s own data reveals the NGO was featured in the international media more than 2,300 times in 2022.
The organization, which was founded in 2004 by former IDF soldiers who are highly critical of Israel, claims to “expose the public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories” using testimonies that are purported to be “meticulously researched” while “all facts are cross-checked with additional eyewitnesses.”
However, as its critics have repeatedly alleged, the group appears to frequently rely on “either fabricated or exaggerated” testimonies from former soldiers — some of whom received a salary from Breaking the Silence — and are “motivated by financial and political concerns to further a pro-Palestinian agenda.”
Breaking the Silence’s latest big media blitz came in the form of a contribution to an “investigation” by CNN (subsequently covered by other media outlets) about the February 26, 2023 settler attack on the Palestinian village of Huwara, in which a number of properties and vehicles were set alight.
Featured prominently in CNN’s largely fact-free piece is the conjecture of an anonymous soldier — provided by BtS — who alleges that police did nothing to intervene during the rampage through Huwara and that the IDF is unsure of how to deal with what he terms “settler terrorism.”
As is par for the course with Breaking the Silence, there is no way of probing the veracity of the unidentified soldier’s account nor are there any corroborating testimonies from any of the multiple other soldiers who were on the scene.
While there is no question that the horrific settler rampage in Huwara should be, and was, condemned at the time, @CNN's new investigative report raises some serious questions concerning its own credibility. 🧵https://t.co/gvchfCrDDu
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) June 16, 2023
Playacting Credibility
CNN’s reliance on Breaking the Silence to support its misleading investigation into the events in Huwara is reflective of how the organization has managed to present itself as an unimpeachable source of information about daily life “under occupation” in the West Bank.
However, this carefully constructed image of integrity is belied by the group’s long history of presenting unverifiable “testimonies” as the unvarnished truth and even allegedly falsifying first-hand accounts.
For example, a 2015 probe by Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, found that financial supporters of Breaking the Silence had conditioned more funding after the 2009 Gaza conflict on the group gathering as many incriminating “testimonies” against the Israeli army as possible.
In addition, an analysis by NGO Monitor into a 2010 BtS publication of accounts from Israeli soldiers who had served in the Palestinian territories revealed the book was “rife with methodological problems and appeared to tailor the testimonies to predetermined ‘analyses’ that falsely claimed that Israeli actions are not aimed at self-defense but at ‘terrorizing the civilian population.’”
Breaking the Silence has also helped amplify the “poisoning the wells” conspiracy, which alleges settlers have poisoned Palestinian water sources and harkens back to the medieval antisemitic canard that Jews are responsible for spreading disease.
Hebron Propaganda Tours
In spreading its anti-Israel message, Breaking the Silence has focused much of its efforts on its tours to the West Bank city of Hebron in which BtS activists claim to expose the “harsh consequences of the policy of separation and the military presence in the city.”
As HonestReporting has previously noted, however, such tours have distorted the reality of life within the contested ancient city, which holds significance for Jews, Muslims and Christians.
One of the most egregious misrepresentations that BtS makes about Hebron is that it is some kind of ghost town, despite it being a bustling sprawl that is home to more than 200,000 people. Breaking the Silence concocts this image by taking tour participants to the few city streets that have restrictions on Palestinians using them due to repeated outbreaks of violence against the city’s 700 Jewish residents.
The Hebron tours have also been criticized for only showing participants the Israeli-controlled part of the city, which accounts for just 2o percent of the land, while the other 80 percent is under the control of the Palestinian Authority. While IDF soldiers are permanently deployed within the Israeli-controlled side, there is no Israeli presence in the PA-controlled areas.
The overall impression of Hebron that Breaking the Silence gives is that the hostility between Muslims and Jews is a recent development — that is, something occasioned by the rise of Zionism. However, impressionable tour participants are not given information about Hebron’s dark history as the site of centuries of anti-Jewish persecution, except for one brief reference to the 1929 massacre in which 67 Jews were murdered.
Breaking the Reliance on Breaking the Silence
Breaking the Silence is one of a handful of Israel-based NGOs that are dedicated to demonizing and delegitimizing the Jewish state using any and all means available, including furthering the demonstrably-untrue apartheid libel and defending the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.
Despite repeatedly revealing its chronic anti-Israel bias and unreliable evidence, the media continues to treat Breaking the Silence as an irreproachable source.
In supposedly reputable publications like The New York Times and Washington Post, BtS is regularly featured in articles that pertain to Israel and Gaza, without any mention of the group’s ideological leanings and profoundly anti-Israel agenda.
Breaking the Silence may like to masquerade as a credible authority on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but news organizations have a duty to their readers to give the full facts. And the fact about Breaking the Silence is that it is not as trustworthy as it purports to be.
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