'Breaking the Silence' exhibition at the Kulturhaus Helferei in Zurich
'Breaking the Silence' exhibition at the Kulturhaus Helferei in Zurichצילום: Arnd Wiegmann/REUTERS

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked (Jewish Home) approached Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and requested he open an investigation following recorded testimony issued two months ago by the Breaking the Silence organization's spokesman, in which he relates a seemingly unlawful attack on an Arab during his military service.

"Breaking the Silence spokesman stands up and says that he himself committed a crime against a Palestinian and beat him up. If it really happened, he should be investigated and punished. If the incident did not happen, then the state should say officially that it did not happen," Shaked said in an interview with Galei Tzahal.

Last month, the Reservists at the Front organization published a viral video of dozens of former Nahal Brigade soldiers who claim that Breaking the Silence spokesman Dean Issacharoff's story never happened.

"An entire platoon that says that its platoon commander, the spokesman for Breaking the Silence, is lying!Simply inventing and falsifying a fictional event," Reservists at the Front said. "Dean Issacharoff gave testimony by which he allegedly committed a crime and ill-treated an innocent Palestinian.He began by saying, 'My soldiers were looking at me.'So we gathered all his soldiers (and the company commander) to tell him what they think. We will present this inciting and false testimony to the prosecutor."

A few days earlier, Major (res.) Omri Seiner, former company commander of Issacharoff, published a long post in which he wrote, among other things: "Dean Issacharoff, I was your company commander, I will not let you lie and smear my name and my soldier's names. A week ago a video was published, in which you stand proudly and tell two 'interesting' stories:

"In the first story, you claim with incomprehensible contempt and cynicism that our operational success in Hevron as fighters was 'catching stone throwers who were not children.' In the second story, you tell of an incident in which you hit a person until he bled as your direct commander (who was myself if I am not mistaken) and his soldiers stood by watching you," wrote Seiner.

The company commander continued to tell of cases in which he and his fighters arrested terrorists and thwarted terrorist attacks, and did not act only against stone-throwers.

"I remember the Seder night, when we arrived at an incident after a terrorist shot and killed the late Chief Superintendent Baruch Mizrahi, and injured his wife in front of his children. I remember how for weeks every night, we looked for that terrorist until he was caught - it was an operational success.

"I remember you and the soldiers who are no longer your comrades catching an armed terrorist at a checkpoint - that was an operational success, and I remember how we prevented an armed terrorist from approaching a police checkpoint to carry out an attack in a Jewish neighborhood - that was an operational success.

"I almost forgot about operation Shuvu Achim, how every day, for a month, 24/7, we searched for three children who were murdered for no reason, and we did our best to bring them home ... and when we managed to find them and help capture the terrorists - that was an operational success, Do me a favor, do not denigrate and do not diminish the holy work that the soldiers who are no longer your comrades have done!"

On the incident itself of which Issacharoff speaks, Seiner says, "Let me look at you in the whites of your eyes and tell you, 'Dean, you are a liar!' It never happened! There was no incident that was even close to the story you told.

"It sounds strange to me that you were being ordered to hurt an innocent person, that you were helpless and did not know what to do because you were so afraid of repercussions (I'm really about to shed a tear) and decided to simply bust up a person while your commander Satan and the demons watch what's happening like wild animals. Where were you ever a platoon commander in the IDF who received an illegal order? Why did you 'do' this?Are you lacking a spine?So, how the hell do you have the nerve to invent so many lies?!?!"