A new report from the pro-Israel advocacy group Ad Kan presents testimonies from IDF soldiers that contradict the NGO Breaking the Silence's allegations that the IDF perpetrated human rights abuses during Operation Protection Edge in 2014.
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After the conclusion of the operation, which came after Hamas operatives kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, Breaking the Silence distributed a booklet containing 111 anonymous "testimonies" supposedly delivered by IDF soldiers, which led to IDF officers and soldiers being investigated on suspicion of having committed war crimes. The allegations were determined to be baseless.
The IDF Military Police investigated whether or not the soldiers in question had acted in accordance with IDF protocols and found that them to be in compliance. However, Breaking the Silence claims that the protocols themselves are problematic and launched an international campaign that included media interviews and newspaper columns translated into multiple languages, all of which served to solidify the claim that Israel and the IDF committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza operation.
The Ad Kan report focuses on a few incidents described by Breaking the Silence and argues that the "testimonies" of the soldiers were presented in a biased manner. Some of the witnesses, when questioned, admitted they had not been present at the incidents they described, or even more seriously – that Breaking the Silence had edited their testimonies to change what was said.
One anonymous testimony from an Armored Corps soldier published by Breaking the Silence describes how members of the tank crew intentionally fired at innocent civilians, without any operation need to do so: "Like in a computer game." The soldier, Yaron Zeev, and his comrades were investigated by the Military Police and they explained that Breaking the Silence had "edited" their testimonies.
The NGO also published five different descriptions of another incident in which an elderly Palestinian who appeared suspicious approached a contingent of Nahal Brigade soldiers fighting in Beit Hanoun was shot and killed.
Breaking the Silence published the testimonies separately, creating the impression that they described five different incidents. Ad Kan reports that a debriefing of 10 soldiers and officers who had been presented showed that they had operated in accordance with regulations, and that the man had continued to move closer to them despite being told in Arabic to stop and after the troops fired warning shots in the air.
"Publishing the testimonies, which are baseless, benefitted the organization [Breaking the Silence] by causing its donations to double as a result of the storm, also baseless, that it created," Ad Kan says.
Breaking the Silence issued a response: "This is a pack of lies. As former combat soldiers, our criticism has never been toward IDF soldiers but rather toward policy and the decision-makers. We will dismantle the rest of Ad Kan's false claims in court, like we have done in the other proceedings waged against us."
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