zaterdag 18 juli 2009

De stilte doorbreken over Breaking The Silence


Zo gaan die dingen achter de schermen.
Een en ander versterkt de twijfel die ik toch al had over de intentie van Breaking the Silence. Wil men misstanden aan de kaak stellen met het doel dat het leger zaken verbetert of wil men Israel aan de schandpaal nagelen?
 
Het is jammer dat het artikel in de Jerusalem Post maar op enkele gemelde incidenten een reactie van het leger geeft. Is dat uit ruimtegebrek of omdat het leger op die andere zaken niet een-twee-drie een reactie had?
 
RP
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Breaking the silence on Breaking The Silence

Breaking The Silence, a small group of former Israeli soldiers on Wednesday embarked on an international campaign to show the world what it says are testimonies from soldiers pointing to immoral Israeli actions committed during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza earlier this year.

I'm not going to get into the report itself, which may be totally true, somewhat true, entirely false, who knows. It is undoubtedly an important report that is reverberating globally. Instead, a brief look behind the scenes into the way Breaking The Silence operated on this report.

It promised the exclusive to Haaretz, because it knows the report would have gotten prominence there. What it didn't count on was Haaretz learning its lesson from its huge mistake last time it was given a report into alleged Israel Defense Forces human rights violations in Gaza. Last time Haaretz didn't do its journalistic job and published unsubstantiated hearsay. This time Haaretz military reporter Amos Harel had the presence of mind to send the Breaking The Silence report to the IDF for response.

My military reporter, Yaakov Katz, was in the right place at the right time, and got hold of most of the report himself. Breaking The Silence tried to get Yaakov off the story because it didn't fit into their strategy to have The Jerusalem Post take a critical look at their report. They promised Yaakov they would give him other stories in the future if he dropped this one for now. Katz refused, rightly so, and we published.

Several days before all this, Breaking The Silence gave out their report to a wide array of foreign media, and not to the IDF to probe into itself, with the caveat that they observe the embargo until after Haaretz published the report first. All of which shows their original intent was to get as much uncritical worldwide publicity for their report. Legitimate, sure. Fair? Not so sure.

 

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