Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Exclusive Translation from Hebrew: The Code of Silence - Amnon Lord



by Amnon Lord

Translated from Hebrew by Sally Zahav




Breaking the Silence ignores the slaughter in the al-Yarmouk Refugee Camp and al-Sisi’s war in Gaza. The true goal of the organization is to exacerbate the conflict and not concern for Palestinian lives


Breaking the Silence is an especially abhorrent body. It makes use of the mouse trap of the Israeli conscience in order to pull young soldiers in, and their testimonies join ultimately to a propaganda document that aids in the terror of jihadi organizations, which preach and act to promote genocide.

In Breaking the Silence’s propaganda they pose the question:  Is the IDF the most moral army in the world? There is a clear answer to this. An army that fights the Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and all the rest of the terror organizations with one single goal – to defend the citizens of its state, is a moral army. An army that continually gives warnings and cautions the terrorists, thus losing the element of surprise  is indeed the most moral in the world, and so much so that in losing the advantage it has gained by Intelligence, it becomes immoral. This is because its policies allow master terrorists to escape.

And on the other hand, an organization that creates propaganda documents  to support the terror organizations for the next war – is certainly not moral. Moreover, at some time in the future those who compose reports for Breaking the Silence and Betselem, knowing well how they have ignited hatred toward Israel, may even be considered collaborators with terror operatives in the course of action leading toward genocide. Everyone understands these organizations’ atrocious propaganda is intended to create another layer of human shields for terror.

It is not difficult to prove that Breaking the Silence deals with propaganda and psychological warfare instead of matters of ethical conscience. About one month ago, similar things were written in the British Guardian, and broadcast on the Al-Jazeera network regarding the siege that has been imposed and the slaughter that the various forces are carrying out in the area of Damascus in the al-Yarmouk camp, populated by Palestinians: “Let’s by straight with ourselves, How differently this would have been handled, how noisy and passionate our coverage would have been  if the people carrying out the siege on al-Yarmouk had been wearing an IDF uniform”, said Mehdi Hasan, an Al-Jazeera writer. A Palestinian humanitarian activist said: “I am furious and outraged about this frightful silence”.

Okay, it’s hard to expect Breaking the Silence, Betselem or other local Arabs of conscience to speak on the subject of the slaughter in al-Yarmouk. That’s far away. Some 60 kilometers. But what about Palestinians that are residents of Gaza? Those people who are suffering from the Egyptian fighting against Hamas terror in Egyptian Rafah and the rest of the Palestinian settlements, that are suffering badly from operations to destroy tunnels that General al-Sisi is waging? These are the same human beings. There is killing going on here too, and the threat to evacuate all of the residents from Egyptian Rafah gets a cold shoulder and a very thin response, since the soldiers that are carrying out this  work are not wearing IDF uniforms, to say nothing of the fact that they are Muslims, and not Jews like most of “the people” who wear the IDF uniform. For the thunderous and frightening silence of Breaking the Silence in the case of Gaza-Egypt there can be only one interpretation: the suffering of Palestinians does not interest them. For them the Palestinians are cannon fodder in the repulsive anti-Zionist propaganda. They are partners only in ethical counter-attacks when Israel is involved. If their suffering serves no purpose in this propaganda, their existence has no value.

The Young Conscientious Objectors Caught in the Mousetrap

If we use the thought pattern of David Zonshein, who serves today as the head of the management of Betselem, we could claim that this is the intended policy. “In the West Bank and Gaza, there have been many years of war that is not the continuation of the policy by other means, but the policy itself”, he wrote about a week and a half ago in his article for Haaretz. For anyone who doesn’t understand, continuous war against the Palestinians – is Israeli policy, according to Zonshein’s accusation. According to the way he describes reality, the conflict escalates from year to year in the battlefield between Israel and Hamas and the rest of the jihadi organizations, and, in a superficial sense, he is correct. But if you judge according to results, then the ones who led to this result are David Zonshein and his comrades on the Left and the various human rights organizations. Many years before anyone raised the idea of F-16s and helicopters bombing Gaza, they were urging the establishment of a Palestinian state after negotiations with the PLO. In Gaza specifically, they got two withdrawals that were not obligatory according to principle, law or agreements, but the predecessors of the Breaking the Silence organization supported the disengagement which will mark its tenth anniversary this year. The disengagement was intended to improve conditions for the residents of Gaza, who would no longer see Jews in the area, and on the ruins of the communities multi-story towers were to have been built foreign investors would come, and Gaza would be an island of economic pride on the order of Hong Kong. The result, as Zonshein, the spokesman for these organizations wrote, is “war that is not the continuation of a policy…it is the policy itself”. A policy of jihad and Palestinian revolution until victory, until the destruction of Israel. 

Lately the question has been raised that perhaps this is also the policy of Breaking the Silence. Because this is the result: the Palestinians today hold an arsenal of missiles that cover most of the territory of the state. After every round of fighting, each one worse than the one before, the organization’s people get to work, creating another barrage of reports, that will be used to support the legal, political agents in the fight against Israel, and if possible, to deter the IDF from carrying out a destructive war when the next round comes.

But why do we see Breaking the Silence as an especially repulsive organization? Because of their connection to the international battle the basis of which is anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The journalists  and the Palestinian themselves have already said all that there is to say, about the “frightful silence” regarding Yarmouk. The reason for the silence is that there is no anti-Semitic/anti-Zionist motivation in reporting on al-Yarmouk. When this fatal obsession exists, when it is the IDF that is fighting, then the “conscience-stricken” youths who have been caught in Breaking the Silence’s  guilt trap are enlisted to give testimony.

The basic laws of anti-Semitism states that any [negative things] said about Jews are immediately accepted as absolute truth. This is axiomatic in the attacks of anti-Semitism throughout the generations. It is borne out in the dark chapters of the previous century, and it was proven again during the second intifada with cases such as Muhammad al-Dura and the battle of Jenin. When there is a Jew from the State of Israel who expresses positions that validate and grant confirmation to that external anti-Semitic and hateful propaganda from within, it has twice the dangerous power that an external attack has. Actually, the entire anti-Zionist campaign that today threatens Israel’s existence relies on internal Israeli sources – in the press, in reports and in political declarations. 

Zonshein and his cronies will try to say that they are Zionists and that Israel is strong and has great military power, therefore anti-Zionist forces in the world do not present a real threat. I would say that this is a mistake, if I thought that their approach was truly an ethical position based on moral principles. It is a mistake to consider  them naifs  who have simply made a mistake; they project onto others their own flaws.  The things that they accuse Israel of reflect their own policy: the obsession of the two-state solution, the partition between Jews and Arabs, and afterward, the acceleration of internal rifts among the Jews themselves, is their policy, this itself is the policy. Exacerbation of the conflict is the policy. Using Palestinians and their suffering as international anti-Zionist cannon fodder – this is the result and this is their intention.



Amnon Lord

Source: Makor Rishon, Yoman section, issue no. 927, pg. 4, 15-20-15

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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