A North American human rights rabbinic group and a controversial organization of Israeli Defense Forces veterans have joined forces to offer daylong learning trips to the West Bank and Gaza. T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, which represents 1,800 North American rabbis and their constituents, and Breaking the Silence, IDF veterans who speak out…
Israel is trying to force a leading anti-occupation NGO to reveal the identities of the soldiers who testified to it about alleged military misconduct during the 2014 Gaza war — a move that the group says will effectively put it out of business. Government lawyers told a May 22 hearing that they need to question…
After word got out this past week that J Street U would be hosting the Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence at the Columbia/Barnard Hillel, the eyes of the Jewish world were drawn to our campus. Debates erupted. Many pro-Israel activists called on us to cancel the event. Hillel was accused of abandoning its pro-Israel principles….
Breaking the Silence, the organization of former Israeli soldiers who speak about their experiences serving in the occupied Palestinian Territories, has recently come under heavy attack from right-wing forces in Israel’s government and society. As a pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian activist and student, I have found it deeply frustrating to see brave soldiers denigrated and persecuted as…
They’ve been banned from Israel’s schools and forbidden from speaking to Israeli soldiers. Israel’s prime minister denounced them from the floor of Knesset. A right-wing group has accused them of being foreign moles. The Israeli veterans’ group Breaking the Silence has been controversial since it was founded in 2004 by soldiers who had served in…
Swiss government officials defended their decision to fund an exhibition by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group that exposes alleged Israeli war crimes. Breaking the Silence is scheduled to put on the exhibition next month at Zurich’s Kulturhaus Helferei with funding from the Swiss federal government and the municipality, Swiss officials confirmed this week to…
“Three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty,” Carl von Clausewitz wrote in On War. Von Clausewitz was addressing the unpredictability and uncertainty of even the best-planned military campaigns. Military and political leaders cannot see far and thus need to be…
Breaking the Silence Despite the concept of the occupation being an oddly contested one in some American political circles of late, there is much to decry about Israel’s military rule over the Palestinians in the West Bank. And while some security-minded observers focus on the need for an IDF military presence to widen Israel’s narrow…
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