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Posted in: Netanyahu's proposed ban on NGO funding raises questions for U.S. groups
08/06/09 02:07 PM
Ron, Any reason why you didn't bother to contact Breaking the Silence. for a response? Do you need their email? BtS is not a political group. Most of your commenters have never read the testimonies, most of which JUSTIFY the Gaza war. Some of the members have left wing view; big deal. Show me anything *political* about the group on its website. John Kerry led Vietnam Vets against the War. BtS doesn't even call for an end to the Occupation. It is focused entirely on getting the IDF to do a better job of living up to its own Code of Conduct. There are members of the group who vote Likud. It pains me to see a good reporter as yourself just accepting a right wing government's spin to discredit a bunch of combat veterans as leftwingers. These guys are not anarchists against the wall; they are not Jeff Halper's ICAHD. They just saying to Israeli society -- know what your children are doing and don't bury your heads in the sand by saying, what goes on in Gaza (or in the Occupied Territories) stays there. Maybe the IDF was justified in doing what it did. But the first step in any democracy is to know what the army did. Quick responses Why give interviews to foreign press? People in Israel only pay attention when the story is picked up by the foreign media. BtS tried keeping their soldier testimonies in Hebron internal in 2004. The story died after a week. *Why anonymous testimonies? Of the 700 testimonies collected, only around 40 were published after verification by two sources and the interviewers. BtS's methodology is more stringent than JTA, the Washington Post, the New York Times. or the Jerusalem Post, all of whom rely on anonymous sources. *How trustworthy are anonymous sources? Ever read a newspaper? Without anonymous sources whose identity is protected they wouldn't exist. Why are all the people who diss BtS for protecting their sources -- some of whom are still on active duty -- readers of Makor Rishon, Jerusalem Post, and the Wall Street Journal. *Why get foreign government funding? Because foreign governments support Human Rights NGO's all over the world, as well as other things. Why should evangelical Christians who think that the End of Days is around the corner and the Jews will die or convert to Christianity be allowed to fund settler groups who support illegal outposts. Isn't what BtS is doing treasonous? BtS has never violated a law and none of its testimonies has ever been discredited. Personally, I think it would be a good idea if Israel passes a law outlawing all foreign funding -- government and non-government, Jewish and gentile -- of groups within Israel. The hardest hit will be the settlers. *Will Israel pass a law banning foreign funding. No, it won't. Because such a law could not be crafted to ban groups like Breaking the Silence without hurting other groups. Download the testimonies at http://www.shovrimshtika.org/oferet/ENGLISH_oferet.pdf
Posted in: Sarah Leah Whitson of HRW answers my questions
08/04/09 04:00 AM
Ron, good piece, not just because I support HRW, but mostly because I support moderates who ask legitimate questions, and are willing to listen to replies - and to let the reader judge whether they are satisfactory. This is particularly so in this case, when folks like Steinberg of NGO Monitor are publishing lies about HRW, calling it a "subsidiary of Saudi Arabia" a "Saudi-supported human rights organization" (direct quotes from NRO, July 21). But Steinberg is known for his instinctive ability for tarring by association (in the same piece he writes that "HRW's annual income grew as fast as Bernie Madoff's balance sheets," i.e., HRW=Madoff. Your post brings needed perspective here. Yasher Koah.
Posted in: New Israel Fund's red lines
07/26/09 04:04 PM
NGO Monitor is an ultra right wing organization funded by right wing Jews in the US that fund Stand with Us and the Israel Project, together with evangelical Christians. It never has shown a single testimony of Breaking the Silence to be false; instead it goes after the fundraiseing. NGO Monitor has had to retract several of its claims because it never checks its facts. It doesn't have to -- it just discredits with cheap shots. But more than that -- according to NGO Monitor, all human rights organizations are biased against Israel. Yet it has never done a serious study of any of the same human rights organizations' reports on other countries. Fortunately, NGO Monitor has no standing in any of the communities and can be safely ignored as a knee-jerk ultra rightwing site.
Posted in: New Israel Fund's red lines
07/26/09 04:58 AM
Amos Oz, David Grossman, A. B. Yehoshua, Nahman Shay, Avishai Margalit -- all of these are mainline Zionist intellectuals and writers -- and all have supported Breaking the Silence and have called for an external and independent investigation into Operation Cast Lead. Is the New Israel Fund out of line in supporting BtS after these people express their support.? Or is anything to the left of Labor considered a red line, accordning to Heilman?
Posted in: New Israel Fund's red lines
07/26/09 04:52 AM
All of the BtS testimonies published were verified by double-confirmation, i.e., more than one soldier confirming that an event had taken place. BtS collected over 700 testimonies from Gaza but only published thirty of them. Two of them were confirmed by Amos Harel, who published the stories in Haaretz. Harel met with the soldiers. More testimonies will be forthcoming in the media after being checked my reporters. And as a result of the publication, more soldiers are coming forth to give testimony to the group. Why anonymous? Simple. Some of the soldiers are still on active duty and they are violating IDF policy by going to the group. Others who have given their names and detalis in the past have been questioned and interrogated by the military police. In other words, the IDF will do anything to make sure that soldiers do not tell the Israeli public what they have done or seen. If the testimonies are not anonymous, then there will be no testimonies. On the other hand, there is more than enough identifying material in the testimonies for them to be taken seriously. In the five years of BtS publishing hundreds of testimonies, not a single one has been shown to be false. The truth is that much of the Israeli public is lying to itself about what goes on in the army. It doesn’t really care what the army does. And many of the soldiers don’t care. But soldiers with a conscience who witness the use of human shields and the use of white phosphorus, both illegal, who wish to tell their stories to an unbelieving public, are faced with being considered “enemies of the people”, as the comments above will prove.
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