Bibi: Break Silence on Hamas

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday criticized European government that finance anti-Israeli groups such as Breaking the Silence. “They are breaking the silence regarding the only democracy in the Middle East with an independent judiciary and investigative media,” he said in an answer to a reporter following his meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Breaking the Silence hunts down comments from Israeli soldiers who testify on supposed abuse of Arab groups, and it has alleged that soldiers used Arabs as “human shields” in the Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign last winter.

The organization recently staged an exhibition in the United States that was co-sponsored by the Americans for Peace Now group. Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon last week charged that the ideology of Peace Now is a “virus.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu stopped short of using critical adjectives for Breaking the Silence but asked, "Why don't they break the silence over what is happening in some of the regimes in the Middle East? In the case of Hamas, I have not seen the same enthusiasm and the same concerted effort to break the silence over what is happening in Gaza.”

Breaking the Silence’s supposed testimonies of Israeli soldiers turned out to be rumors and second-hand evidence, although the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper and foreign news agencies headlined the original report without checking the sources.

IDF Golani Brigade commander Col. Avi Peled stated that one of the soldiers who testified in the report was not even in the field at the time, according to the Honest Reporting media watchdog group. "He told his commander about a week [during] which he wasn't even in the field,” Peled stated. “He reported about what he heard happened."