The Israeli Foreign Ministry failed to stop its exhibit in Switzerland earlier this month but was able to convince Germany to cancel it.
Breaking the Silence’s exposing acts of crime and human rights violations by several soldiers tries to make the entire Israeli army look depraved.
The phrase that the IDF is the most moral in the world can never be said often and loudly enough. As a former soldier in the U.S. Army and the Israeli army, I vouch that it actually is an extreme understatement I can only compare my experience in basic training for both armies with hell and heaven, in that order. Every soldier at Fort. Knox was against his “buddy,” far from the moral support Israeli soldiers show for each other.
Israeli soldiers, like those in every Army, make mistakes. both operational and moral, but not on the scale of Britain, which bombed a school in World War II, or the United States which like every other army in the world has no trouble killing civilians when looking for the enemy.
Breaking the Silence presents the dark side and only the dark side of the IDF, and even allowing the ears of Obama’s national Security Council to listen to the group indicates how much President Obama is prepared to try to show Israel that the leftist Jewish community is mainstream.
Haaretz reported:
According to Duss, the fact that both White House staff and the State Department held meetings with Breaking the Silence shows that the organization has an open door to the administration.
‘It is in line with what Obama said recently. These are the shared values between Israel and the United States – wanting to improve our society,’ said Duss.
Obama has chosen which values he shares. Every year, he hosts a Passover Seder and twists into a universal holiday to advance his view of Judaism as a pluralistic religion and whose history is an “inspiration” for the “freedom” of homosexuals, blacks, and, of course, Palestinian Authority Arabs..
It can be assumed that Israeli officials are making every effort to convince President Obama to ignore Breaking the Silence, but this is what an Obama administration official had to say about the recent meeting, according to Haaretz:
U.S. Government officials met with Breaking the Silence, as we routinely meet with a range of actors from official and non-official international groups, including from civil society.
The State Department responded:
Officers from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor met with a representative from the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence. The State Department regularly meets with a broad array of political and civil society organizations from various countries worldwide.
If President Obama he really wanted to listen to all sides, he would invite representatives of the right-wing Im Tirtzu group to meet with National Security Officials.
His direction is clear. He has 18 more months in office, which may be a very short time,
It also may be too long for Israel.