Israel Matzav

Exposed: 'Breaking the Silence' collects intelligence on the IDF - Does it reach their European masters?

Greetings from Boston where I have been working all week, and where the Sabbath does not start for several more hours. I will be here until Sunday morning. Sunday is a travel day, but I'm not heading back to Israel just yet. I'm heading West... (and should have WiFi access on the plane, so you may see a few more posts on Sunday). And for those who watch the weather reports, it looks like I will once again escape a serious winter snowstorm by the skin of my teeth, God Willing.

For those of you who have forgotten 'Breaking the Silence,' they are an organization that claims to be dedicated to exposing IDF abuses of 'Palestinians' in Judea and Samaria. They are funded by European governments, by the European Union (which awarded them the prestigious Andrei Sakharov prize) and by private American citizens (as well as by UNICEF and OxFam). Br'eaking the Silence' interviews discharged IDF soldiers and debriefs them regarding their IDF service. Or so they claim. It now seems that they do a lot more.

You might recall that recently, an organization called Ad Kan (Until Here) turned over video evidence to Israel's Channel 10 about human rights violations by 'human rights' groups Taayush and B'Tselem.Spreading the wealth, the group handed over material on 'Breaking the Silence'  to Israel's Channel 2, which reported on it Thursday night (link and video in Hebrew). The material shows that 'Breaking the Silence' is collecting military intelligence which has no connection to 'human rights' violations in Judea and Samaria or anyplace else. And the unanswered question is 'with whom does 'Breaking the Silence' share that intelligence material?' That intelligence material could clearly and presently endanger the State of Israel.

Here's a summary in English.

In its investigation, Channel 2 cited unpublished testimonies from Israeli soldiers that were obtained by the right-wing NGO Ad Kan, which sent some of its members to join Breaking the Silence undercover. The report claimed that Breaking the Silence collected “operational and intelligence” information about IDF activities from both current and former soldiers.

Channel 2 also broadcast videos of Breaking the Silence asking soldiers “questions [that] appear to revolve more around their operational activity rather issues regarding Palestinians and human rights.”

While Breaking the Silence says it gathers anonymous testimonies from Israeli soldiers about the IDF’s purported human rights abuses, these testimonies have been previously criticized as being unsubstantiated and lacking context. In recent months, the group has come under increased scrutiny over the ethics of its practices.

In the wake of the new Channel 2 report, Breaking the Silence denied any wrongdoing and emphasized that it works closely with Israel’s military censor. Breaking the Silence CEO Yuli Novak added that several organizations and members of the Knesset were trying “to silence” her group.

And it seems that the next group to come under scrutiny may be 'rabbis' for 'human rights.'

In How Non-Governmental Organizations Became a Weapon in the War on Israel, which was published in the February 2016 issue of The Tower Magazine, Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor, wrote about a subsequent investigative report involving Breaking the Silence and Nawi.

The broadcast became headline news and the fallout continued for weeks. Nawi was arrested at Ben-Gurion Airport when he tried to flee the country.

A few days later, a follow-up program aired more hidden-camera footage, this time showing Nawi with officials from two other prominent “human rights” NGOs—Breaking the Silence (BtS) and Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR). Both groups were shown giving money to Nawi, who then handed out checks to Palestinians, apparently for taking part in violent demonstrations. RHR claimed that Nawi was paid for providing transportation services. BtS denounced everyone involved in the program as “Stasi,” a reference to the notorious East German intelligence service.

Steinberg observed that even before the broadcast of Nawi with representatives of Breaking the Silence, there was growing criticism of the group across the political spectrum in Israel.

Prior to the Uvda broadcasts, BtS and its patrons were the particular focus of growing anger among many Israelis on the Right, center, and even the center-Left. This anger followed a major jump in the visibility of BtS, which reflected the group’s million- dollar budget. BtS events in churches, universities, and national parliaments around the world featured “anonymous testimony” that alleged systematic immorality by IDF soldiers, with no corroborating evidence.

In response, hundreds of IDF reserve officers petitioned the Minister of Defense, demanding that BtS activists be barred from speaking on military bases. In parallel, relatives of terror victims and fallen soldiers demanded that Education Minister Naftali Bennett prohibit BtS from speaking to high school students. NGOs like B’Tselem were also criticized. On Israel’s popular Saturday night satire program Gav Hauma, host Lior Schleien did a ten-minute routine based on the issue, primarily lampooning BtS and related NGOs.

I'm amazed that B'Tselem is allowed to speak on military bases.... But what Professor Steinberg says about anger coming from 'even the center-Left' is true. Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid has accused 'Breaking the Silence' of digging under the foundations of the State of Israel, and causing it both internal and external damage (link in Hebrew).

For those of you wondering why Israel feels the need to stop foreign governments from financing its NGO's, this is another data point.

Labels: B'Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Channel 2, European anti-Semitism, European Union, Gerald Steinberg, IDF, NGO funding, NGO Monitor, Oxfam, Rabbis for Human Rights, Ta'ayush, UNICEF

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:55 PM 1 comments

The New York Times brushes off attempted murder

The New York Times does a story on the arrest of Ezra Nawi for turning a 'Palestinian' land seller over to the tender mercies of the 'Palestinian security forces' and manages to turn it into an indictment of free speech in Israel.

Ezra Nawi, an Israeli Jewish plumber, has a long history as a left-wing activist helping Palestinians in their struggle against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Now he is under arrest in Israel, after a right-wing activist surreptitiously filmed him bragging about exposing Arab brokers who tried to sell Palestinian land to Jewish settlers. Such sales are a capital crime under Palestinian law.

Considered variously as a big-mouthed provocateur and a colorful human-rights adventurer, Mr. Nawi has become the latest symbol in the battle between advocacy groups on opposite sides of Israel’s political spectrum, and the increasingly fierce debate here over the nature of Israeli society and democracy.

The debate has heated up as Israel’s conservative government is pushing forward contentious legislation that would require nongovernmental organizations to disclose funding they receive from foreign governments in their publications, advertising and meetings with public officials. The proposed bill, which supporters say is meant to increase transparency, would apply mainly to leftist groups critical of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, since rightist groups mostly receive private funding from abroad, and it has already drawn harsh criticism from the Obama administration and European diplomats.

It is an odd case. Mr. Nawi, described in a 2009 New York Times profile as “the Robin Hood of the South Hebron Hills,” helping Palestinians who love him and “thwarting settlers and soldiers who view him with contempt,” is now accused of endangering the lives of Palestinians. That is because selling land to Israeli Jews is punishable by death according to the Palestinian Authority. Although the authority is not known to have carried out any executions for any offense in more than a decade, there have been reports of torture in its prisons.

The Ad Kan video, from about a year ago, shows Mr. Nawi behind the wheel of his jeep, bragging about what appeared to be a dubious sideline to his activist work in the West Bank. He told the man sitting next to him, whom he believed to be a fellow sympathizer, that he sometimes posed as a land broker and engaged with other land dealers mediating sales of Palestinian-owned land to Jewish settlers, then handed over their details to the Palestinian Authority security services. 

Asked what the Authority did with such people, Mr. Nawi said it “catches them and kills them.”

Days later, he was arrested at the airport as he was about to leave the country.

Odd? Not to anyone who knows the history of Israel's prosecutorial regime burying charges against the Left. Only by gathering evidence so convincing that even the Left-leaning Uvda had to run with it or lose all credibility could Nawi's disgusting behavior be exposed.

There is a story here. Too bad it's not the one the Times chose to tell.

Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Arab land sales to Jews, B'Tselem, Ezra Nawi, human rights, human rights activists, human rights NGO's, Israeli Knesset, New York Times, NGO funding, Ta'ayush, traitor

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:41 AM 0 comments

Jewish Voice for 'peace' seeks to free accessory to murder

Israel Radio reported this morning that a Jew and a 'Palestinian' - both 'peace activists' - are being held for meeting with an enemy foreign agent.

While the radio did not disclose who they are, the uber-Leftist Jew-haters at Jewish Voice for 'peace' are petitioning for his release (if you think my description of JVP is an overstatement, go here).

If you're wondering why this Jewish-born drek is being held, go here.

Labels: ADL, Arab land sales to Jews, B'Tselem, Ezra Nawi, human rights, human rights activists, human rights NGO's, Israeli Knesset, Jewish Voice for Peace, NGO funding, Ta'ayush, traitor

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:32 PM 0 comments

Video with English translation of Ezra Nawi saying he turns 'Palestinian' land sellers over for torture and death

Thursday night's video showing Leftist 'human rights' activists Ezra Nawi and Nasser Najawa ran 44 minutes long. Now, StandWithUs has translated two of the key minutes into English (subtitles).

Let's go to the videotape.



By the way, I hope the gentleman referred to in the video as 'Arik' (the one who did the recording) is well-hidden. Nawi undoubtedly knows who he is and surely wants to have him killed.

Labels: Arab land sales to Jews, B'Tselem, human rights, human rights activists, human rights NGO's, Israeli Knesset, NGO funding, Ta'ayush

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:32 PM 1 comments

The Israeli Hard Left circles the wagons

Israel's Left is circling the wagons around two of its own. Ta'ayush's Ezra Nawi (pictured) and B'Tselem's Nasser Nawaja were shown on Israeli television on Thursday night telling a Right wing activist with a hidden camera that they turn over 'Palestinians' who wish to sell land to Jews to the 'Palestinian security forces' for torture and death.

Although the story has gotten little exposure outside of Israel, here it's all the rage. Over the weekend, Israel's hard left has been circling the wagons to defend Nawi and Nawaja.

Both Nawi and Nawaja are among the most internationally renowned members of Israel’s radical left. Earlier this year, Nawaja published an anti-Israeli op-ed in The New York Times, accusing the Jewish state of “dispossession and oppression.” Nawi is considerably more prominent: when he was arrested, in 2007, for attacking Israeli policemen during a West Bank demonstration, more than 20,000 people—including a long list of prominent Israeli academics as well as progressive American celebrities like Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein—signed a petition demanding his release.

Responding to the piece with a statement on its Facebook page, B’Tselem said that while it opposed tortures and executions, reporting Palestinians interested in selling land to Israelis to the PA was “the only legitimate course of action.”

These revelations comes at an inopportune moment for the two NGOs, as the Israeli government is considering measures to regulate non-profit organizations receiving financial support from foreign governments. Ta’ayush, according to the Jerusalem-based group NGO-Monitor, receives some foreign donations but does not disclose its funding.

B’Tselem, on the other hand, is considered one of Israel’s leading civil rights organizations, and receives financial support from the governments of Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, as well as the European Union and the New Israel Fund.

And from prominent American Jews....

Amazingly, B'Tselem, a favored grantee of the American non-profit organization The New Israel Fund, defended the action portrayed on today’s show, claiming that “This is the only legitimate channel for a Palestinian.”

Israel’s Education Minister Naftali Bennett accused the New Israel Fund and the European Union of funding Israeli human rights activists who turn in innocent Palestinians, and later urged foreign ambassadors to Israel to stop transferring funds to these organizations. (Both, B’Tselem and Ta’ayush receive funding from France and the United Kingdom, as well as from American Jews.)

Ta’ayush has in the past partnered with Rabbis for Human Rights – of which Rabbi Gordon Tucker of Temple Israel of White Plains is a donor - to bring “hundreds of volunteers to work side-by-side with Palestinian farmers during Olive Harvest campaign.”

The pushback from the Left has been so fierce that even journalists like Maariv's Ben Caspit and Haaretz's Barak Ravid (both Leftists themselves) have criticized the Left wing organizations for not disavowing Nawi and Nawaja (links in Hebrew).

Of course, then there are the real Jew haters, like Gideon Levy, who still has a platform at Haaretz.

In a report on left-wing groups which operate in the West Bank, Uvda aired secretly recorded footage of Israeli activist Ezra Nawi saying that he had exposed Palestinian land brokers who sold West Bank land to Jews, and turned them over to the Palestinian Authority.The right wing and the settlers celebrated the event of course. Another outpost has fallen into their hands. They have already compared the left-wing activist Nawi to the Duma murderers, no less. The rightists and settlers, known for their deep concern about the lives of Palestinians, were shocked by Nawi’s statements. But the right is not the story. The story is how a lethal virus has penetrated what is almost the last outpost of real journalism.

How has a McCarthyist right-wing organization, whose motives are clear (and despicable) and whose sources are unknown, succeeded with such ease in enticing such respected journalists as Ilana Dayan and Omri Assenheim? How has this flagship joined the ranks of the false propaganda which masquerades as journalism?

That is how to conduct delegitimization. That is how it is done to liberal organizations in the darkest of regimes, and now here too, and on Uvda – no less.

Presenting the human rights organizations as dangerous groups, and penetrating them, is compared to penetrating ISIS. The McCarthyists are glorified, depicted as heroes of Israel who excelled in battles in Gaza. All these are well-known ploys. And against this background, all that is left is to record Nawi boasting, to catch him uttering the taboo words, to present him as a “senior” activist, to ignore the entire context — the crimes of the occupation and the expulsion form the Southern Hebron Hills, which you never heard about on Uvda. Just ignore the holy work done by left-wing activists in this battered region, spice it with a few lies such as “execution” by the Palestinian Authority, add a few generalizations, suspicions and slander – and the dish is ready.

To those of you with even the slightest suspicion that Levy is onto something, I suggest that you go watch the video of Thursday night's broadcast (it's in Hebrew only, but I summarized it here). It doesn't get much more clear cut. Nawi and Najawa turned 'Palestinians' who wanted to sell land to Jews ('Palestinians' whose existence the Israeli Left denies) over to the 'Palestinian security services' for torture and murder. And they did it with a sadistic smile.

It doesn't get much more disgusting.

Labels: Arab land sales to Jews, B'Tselem, human rights, human rights activists, human rights NGO's, Israeli Knesset, New Israel Fund, NGO funding, Ta'ayush

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:21 PM 2 comments

'Human rights' organizations @taayush and @btselem turn 'Palestinian' land seller over to 'Palestinian security services' for torture

For those who can, I strongly recommend watching the original report (44 minutes in Hebrew). Unfortunately, Blogger only allows the uploading of videos up to 100 megabytes - this one is nearly 180 megabytes.

Here's a brief summary:

Ilana Dayan's Uvda (Fact) program on Israel's Channel 10 last night featured an expose on a group of Right wing activists from the center of the country who managed to place a mole in Taayush, a Jewish-Arab organization that advocates for 'Palestinian human rights.'

The mole, an alumnus of an elite IDF combat unit who won an award for bravery during the war in Gaza in the summer of 2014 (while this was going on!), managed to record Ezra Nawi, the Jewish leader of Taayush, in conversations with an Arab land owner who wished to sell land south of Hebron (near Jewish villages) to Jews.

Nawi met with the land seller (in the mole's presence), and then proceeded to conspire with a Btselem 'Palestinian' activist named Nasser Nawajeh to turn the land seller over for 'investigation' by the 'Palestinian security services.'

Yes, that's right, the European-financed 'human rights organizations' turned over (and apparently not for the first time) a 'Palestinian' who wished to sell land to Jews to the 'Palestinian security services' for torture (Nawi says it outright) and 'neutralization' (i.e. murder).

I'm hoping this video will be translated into English because it rips the mask off the 'human rights' activists and the self-hating Jews who are trying to destroy the Jewish state.

JNi.media has written a more lengthy summary. Here is some of it:

The laws on ownership of land under the Palestinian Authority (PA), originally enacted during the Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria (1948–1967), prohibit Arabs from selling Arab-owned lands to “any man or judicial body corporation of Israeli citizenship, living in Israel or acting on its behalf.” According to several media sources, including the NY Times, Ha’aretz and Jerusalem Post, selling land to Jews is considered an act of treason by the Arabs because it threatens the future Palestinian state and leads to “the spread of moral, political and security corruption”. Arabs in the Palestinian Authority who sell land to Israelis may be sentenced to death. The interrogation by PA security forces of Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews involves severe torture.

...

When asked what happens once Palestinian Authority police lays its hands on the sellers, Nawi says, “It catches them, kills them.” He then added with a vicious smile, “First Zubur, then Gazanga.” Zubur is an Arabic word used in Hebrew to describe hazing—humiliation and physical torment. The Gazanga part is not a known word, but implies, in the context of the tape, the demise of the victim.

Ezra Nawi and his Arab associate, B’Tselem activist Nasser Nawaj’ah, from the village of Yatta, are left-wing stars, who have been part of the anti-settlement movement for decades. This is why the Israeli left, before and immediately following the broadcast Thursday night, began a campaign in their defense.

The left has praised Nawi and Nawaj’ah to high heaven over the years, including accolades from linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist Noam Chomsky; author, social activist, and filmmaker Naomi Klein; Ben-Gurion University Prof. Niv Gordon; and Meretz Chairperson MK Zehava Galon. They will not allow for these two folk hero activists to gain a new renown as agents of death.

B’Tselem accused the show of legitimizing what was, essentially, a right-wing operation. In that sense, the fact that journalist Dayan described sending to their certain death Arabs whose only sin is wanting to sell land to Jews, appears from B’Tselem’s point of view like her embracing of the “occupation.” Gideon Levy told Dayan on air that “If that’s all that those plants discovered, it’s a badge of honor for the human rights organizations.”

...

Deputy Knesset Speaker MK Betzalel Smotrich said “what we’ve watched tonight is the loss of a moral compass, a betrayal of the State of Israel and an injury to life under the guise of defending human rights. This phenomenon is not an invention of Ezra Nawi, unfortunately it is typical of many of the extremist left wing organizations which are concealing an extremist political agenda under the cover of human rights.”

The report’s editor, Ami Assenheim, told Makor Rishon about the process that preceded the screening: “Nawi is not alone,” he said. “You see a mix of left-wing activists from other places. Nawi collaborates with another Jewish activist in Ta’ayush. These are not the actions of a single individual in a single organization. You see people conspiring to turn in a land broker to the Preventive Security Force (PSF), knowing what would be the fate of people like him. They were very embarrassed when we called them up for a response. There were long silences and phone hang-ups.”

Nawi himself accused the report of being an effort to sabotage his heroic work on behalf of the Palestinian population in the southern Hebron Mountain. “I wasn’t the one trapping the land broker, the opposite is true,” he said. Nasser Nawaj’ah also denied his role as it was described in the report, but not quite with the same level of self-righteousness.

A couple of comments. The timing of this show's release is probably not accidental. As I have noted previously, the Knesset is currently considering a bill to expose foreign government funding of 'NGO's. This show could well advance that bill.

The comments by the Right wing infiltrators at the end were particularly notable. They said that they actually feel sorry for the ordinary 'Palestinians' who are being used not only by their own 'leadership,' but also by organizations that purport to protect their human rights. In other words, the Israeli Right is far more humane to 'Palestinians' than are the 'human rights' organizations.

Sadly, this story is unlikely to get a lot of publicity outside of Israel. But that shouldn't stop us from trying.

Labels: Arab land sales to Jews, B'Tselem, human rights, human rights activists, human rights NGO's, Israeli Knesset, NGO funding, Ta'ayush

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:15 PM 0 comments