Steinberg isn’t the only Israeli public intellectual to respond disdainfully to the foreign funded slam against the IDF.
“It is clear that Breaking the Silence is less interested in uncovering the facts and instead seeks to defame the State of Israel,” Amb. Dore Gold said after reviewing BtS’s latest report.
Gold is the president of the well-respected Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which issued its own full-length report about the 2014 Gaza conflict. It contains a chapter on Israel’s efforts to limit civilian casualties.
This resource reveals the lengths to which the IDF soldiers go to ensure that only military objectives are targeted and collateral damage is minimized. These objectives were measured, after the fact, with statistical and other analyses to reveal the degree to which the IDF conformed to their legally mandated standards.
This report is also in stark contrast to Israel’s enemies who have no similar standards for avoiding civilian harm. Quite the opposite. But you’ll never find a Breaking the Silence (or any other) report on that.
FUNDING SOURCES SHARED WITH DEMONSTRABLY UNBALANCED ENTITIES
Im Tirzu also made an important discovery: one of the funders of the BtS report is a European-funded foundation based in Ramallah, otherwise known as terrorism central. This “Foundation” provided guidelines for collecting information on IDF activities during Operation Protective Edge.
That foundation, Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, is funded primarily by the governments of Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway. As Im Tirzu learned, during 2014 the Secretariat distributed more than 11 million dollars to dozens of Israeli and Palestinian NGOs, including “organizations with connections to terrorism.” The grantees included Breaking the Silence.
In response to the Breaking the Silence report, Im Tirzu issued its own, which included a collection of intriguing questions:
• Why have these Israeli organizations agreed to receive funding from an Arab fund based in Ramallah, a fund located in enemy territory that supports Palestinian organizations affiliated with terrorist organizations? • Are in fact, these Israeli organizations serving as agents of enemy organizations who have as their ultimate goal the destruction of the State of Israel? • Why do Israeli organizations agree to partner with Arab organizations which are connected to terrorist groups? • Why are European countries interested in transferring funds to those Israeli organizations specifically through that Arab Fund? • Is it possible that all of the accusations made by B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Physicians for Human Rights, Adalah and others concerning the so-called perpetration of war crimes by Israel in Operation Protective Edge, were only intended to ensure that they continue to receive working budgets from that Ramallah-based Fund?
Matan Peleg, the CEO of Im Tirzu, told the JewishPress.com that although most of Israeli society is Zionist and the government is nationalist, not enough has yet been done to “combat the terrible phenomenon” and danger of “BDS from within organizations” that “enjoy great foreign funding (European, Arab and New Israel Fund).”
Peleg reveals a further and significant weakness of the BtS report. He pointed out that BtS tries to interview thousands of soldiers each year, especially after specific IDF operations. But most of the “soldiers don’t answer their questions,” because, Peleg says, “of the understanding that they are an anti-Israel foreign agent that has been financed by funders seeking to destroy Israel.”
“Of the hundreds of soldiers who answer them,” Peleg continues, “they manage to coordinate [only] 60 witnesses, some silly, some unfounded.” And because the reports are all anonymous, it is impossible for the IDF to review the complaints and make any improvements that might be warranted.” In other words, the goal is not to improve potentially bad situations, the goal appears only to be to demonize Israel on the public stage.