{"id":90949,"date":"2021-11-26T17:05:22","date_gmt":"2021-11-26T15:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=90949"},"modified":"2021-11-22T15:57:09","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T13:57:09","slug":"23-05-66","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=90949","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: How Radical Fringe Groups Manipulate Westerners Against Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Revealed: How Radical Fringe Groups Manipulate Westerners Against Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Emanuel Miller<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men are seen through a panel as they pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem\u2019s Old City while Israel observes a day of mourning after dozens were crushed to death in a stampede at a religious festival on the slopes of Israel\u2019s Mount Meron, May 2, 2021. Photo: REUTERS\/Ammar Awad.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Jamaal Bowman<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Had the honor of meeting with children today in the occupied West Bank city Hebron. There are streets they cannot walk and places they cannot go, simply because they are Palestinian. When I asked about their dreams, their answer was simple: freedom. The occupation must end.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

8:43 PM \u00b7 Nov 10, 2021<\/span><\/a>\u00b7<\/span><\/span>TweetDeck<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n
\n

Bowman is the latest in a long line of people to have visited Hebron over the years \u2014 as guests of radical fringe groups \u2014 and to have come away repeating false talking points to the media.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same messaging has been repeatedly transmitted by foreign dignitaries, novelists, film stars, and other celebrities, who have been shown select parts of the city by members of groups such as Breaking the Silence and B\u2019Tselem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Breaking the Silence in particular is a highly controversial group, with a history of spreading false and misleading allegations against the Israel Defense Forces, many of them given anonymously. Its tours are a notable source of misinformation regarding Hebron<\/a> specifically, and the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians in general.<\/span><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, this strategy has resulted in a trove of quotes slamming Israel being reproduced in prominent English-language media outlets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Israel Vilified While Palestinian Terrorism Overlooked<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1967, Israel defeated numerous Arab states openly threatening it with extermination in a stunning six-day victory. As a result of that war, Israel tripled in size, with eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights coming under its control. Although Israel forged peace deals with Jordan and Egypt, surrendering parcels of land in the process, it has still not reached final agreements with Syria and the Palestinians.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2017, to mark 50 years since the war, Breaking the Silence organized a VIP tour of Israel together with Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman, herself a well-known writer, resulting in an anthology of essays about the life of Palestinians.<\/span><\/p>\n

The ensuing Associated Press<\/em> report<\/a> detailed how the resultant book included essays that \u201cdescribe the segregated city of Hebron,\u201d and identified Breaking the Silence as the driving force behind the project. Omitted is the fact that Hebron was divided in accordance with an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) whereby Israeli citizens, including Arab Israelis, can access only 20% of the city and not the other 80%.<\/span><\/p>\n

By comparison, Palestinians in Hebron are able to wander approximately 97% of the city. They were banned from entering the remaining 3% following rampant terrorism, including countless shootings and sniper attacks in which even a three-month-old baby was targeted; suicide bombings; rock-throwings; Molotov cocktail attacks; and stabbings of Israeli soldiers protecting Hebron\u2019s minuscule Jewish community and Judaism\u2019s second-holiest site, the Cave of the Patriarchs.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book was also reviewed by The New York Times,<\/em> which wrote of a work detailing \u201ca status quo of chronic entwinement, choking the Palestinians.\u201d The Irish Times<\/em><\/a> headlined its piece, \u201cIndignation and horror: 26 writers visit Palestine\u201d; and a Financial Times<\/em><\/a> article about the book described the conflict as one \u201cwhich doles out small injustices and humili\u00adations to Palestinians more often than it does rank brutality,\u201d and names the writers \u201cas guests of Breaking the Silence, a pro-peace non-governmental organisation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Even though the New York Times\u2019<\/a><\/em> Gal Beckerman saw through the charade, describing Chabon and Waldman as having \u201cgathered their friends, most of whom, they admit, had never given the occupation more than a glancing consideration,\u201d and panned the book as \u201cfairly superficial, full of unearned authority and exhibitionist empathy,\u201d it still accepted the basic premise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Beckerman slammed \u201cIsrael\u2019s occupation of large swaths of Arab land to which it had no legitimate right besides brute force,\u201d and spoke of \u201cdeeply etched marks of subjugation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The book received yet more exposure in the Los Angeles Review of Books<\/a><\/em>, in which co-editor Ayelet Waldman is quoted as describing Hebron thus: \u201cIt is absolutely reminiscent of apartheid South Africa. It\u2019s reminiscent of the areas of German cities from which Jews were barred.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That same year, \u201cPretty Woman\u201d actor Richard Gere visited the city, and was shown around<\/a> by Breaking the Silence. The Hollywood star\u2019s visit caught the attention of Israeli television and the international media alike, with reports citing Gere as having described Hebron as a place reminiscent of the Jim Crow-era US South, where black Americans were subjected to apartheid-like structural discrimination. An Associated Press<\/em> article reported how \u201cDuring the visit, Gere said \u2018it\u2019s exactly what the Old South was in America.\u2019<\/a>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This exploitation of \u201chuman rights\u201d rhetoric led to Breaking the Silence being selected by the European Parliament as a finalist for the 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought \u2014 an award intended for defenders of human rights and other freedoms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Core Messages Spread by Willing Foreigners<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As The Jerusalem Post<\/a><\/em> noted, \u201cBowman\u2019s inclusion [on the recent congressional mission to Israel] is particularly noteworthy, given the New York Democrat\u2019s alliance with a prominent group of legislators that includes some who openly back the boycott-Israel movement. The Squad<\/a> comprised the most outspoken critics of Israel during the May conflict.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It remains unclear whether Congressman Bowman came to really listen, learn, and work together with his Israeli counterparts, or whether he used the opportunity to raise his profile by leveraging the highly contentious Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n

A review of his Twitter feed reveals that his posts typically garner in the range of 50-200 likes. But when he tweeted about the inability of Palestinians to walk around certain areas in Hebron, the message received over 3,500 likes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever Bowman\u2019s true intentions, it is clear that he left having spread a misleading message about Israel\u2019s relationship with the Palestinians. And he\u2019s not the only one.<\/span><\/p>\n

The message is one of a number of core narratives propagated by the likes of B\u2019Tselem and Breaking the Silence.<\/span><\/p>\n

A search of the Internet shows that the term \u201cGhost Town\u201d has been in use by B\u2019Tselem in relation to Hebron as far back as 2007<\/a>. But the reality is that Hebron is far from a ghost town. While it is true that the old center is now mostly depopulated, the PA-administered part of the city is home to close to 200,000 Palestinians, an eight-story shopping complex,<\/a> one of the largest in the Middle East, and boasts numerous factories and distributorships, accounting for a significant portion of the PA\u2019s economy.<\/span><\/p>\n

In short, when people, including reporters, refer to Hebron as a ghost town, it\u2019s almost certain that they have only visited a small part of the city at most, under the auspices of NGOs bent on defaming Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

For example, Roger Cohen of The New York Times<\/em><\/a> described visiting Hebron in a 2018 column in which he saw \u201cbiological metaphors of classic racism that accompanied [the Jews\u2019] persecution over centuries.\u201d Cohen depicted a soldier as \u201cclearly uncomfortable with his mission, enforcing segregation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The claim is not backed up with any evidence, and ignores the reality that soldiers are not allowed to speak to the media unless given express permission from their commanders.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the very first paragraph, he identifies the old center of Hebron as having \u201cbeen a ghost town for many years.\u201d A few paragraphs later, Cohen writes that he visited the city \u201cwith Yehuda Shaul, who served in the infantry in Hebron and later became a founder of Breaking the Silence.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaul is no stranger to the media. In 2019, after Jason Greenblatt, then-US president Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East peace envoy shared a tweet describing an iftar celebration in Hebron attended by Israelis and Palestinians as \u201claying the groundwork for peace,\u201d Shaul penned an opinion piece published in the Guardian <\/em>that slammed the city as \u201cnot a model of coexistence, but rather of segregation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As HonestReporting noted at the time<\/a> in a column published by the Jerusalem Post,<\/em> Shaul\u2019s piece contained 780 words. Only two, \u201cSecond Intifada,\u201d referred to Palestinian violence against Israelis. While Shaul obsessed over Palestinian suffering, literally not one word was devoted to describing the carnage wreaked by Palestinian terrorists.<\/span><\/p>\n

The media campaign has also involved dozens of op-eds, interviews, and exposure in some of the world\u2019s most-read and most well-known news outlets, including the BBC<\/a>, CNN,<\/a> The Daily Beast<\/em><\/a>,  The Washington Post<\/a>, Foreign Policy<\/a>, The New Yorker<\/a>,<\/em> and many more.<\/span><\/p>\n

It has also led to the production of a documentary film based on Breaking the Silence testimonies, which was then shared by The New York Times<\/em><\/a> in November 2021. However, the Times<\/em> failed to note the connection to Breaking the Silence, instead allowing filmmaker Rona Segal to cast herself simply as an \u201cindependent director\u201d looking to \u201coffer a view that has rarely been seen by the public.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Partnering With Fringe Groups<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Tourists visiting with Breaking the Silence are taken on a highly selective tour of a small fraction of the city of Hebron<\/a>, and meet with members of an organization called Youth Against Settlements, headed by Issa Amro, a man who professes \u201cnon-violence\u201d and whose business cards call him a \u201cHuman Rights Defender.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In reality, his group has been documented as repeatedly glorifying Palestinian rock-throwing attacks<\/a> on Israelis and sharing blatantly antisemitic smears.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, Youth Against Settlements awarded a prize to the governor of Hebron for supporting the \u201cpopular resistance\u201d<\/a> against Israel, a codename for widescale violence including the frequent throwing of Molotov cocktails and stones, and sporadic stabbing and vehicular attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2016, Breaking the Silence partnered with a T\u2019ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, to sponsor \u201cGo and See\u201d<\/a> trips for Jewish groups visiting Israel. And in 2018, the organization partnered with another radical group, IfNotNow, to organize a \u201cwalk-out protest\u201d by five participants on Birthright trips who claimed that the tour did not adequately address Israel\u2019s relationship with the Palestinians. The live-streamed stunt<\/a> culminated with the five embarking on a visit of Hebron with Breaking the Silence.<\/span><\/p>\n

And just this month, a New York Times<\/em> article, \u201cInside the Unraveling of American Zionism,\u201d<\/a> named Breaking the Silence as partly responsible for \u201cA reliable subcurrent in American students\u2019 conversions away from the ardent Zionism of their youth is firsthand confrontation with reality in the West Bank.\u201d The article was widely panned on Twitter by many Jews for showing a highly unrepresentative subsection of American Jewry.<\/span><\/p>\n

Influencing Foreign Dignitaries<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In 2012, Martin Indyk<\/a>, former US ambassador to Israel, said that Breaking the Silence was trying to \u201csensitize\u201d Israelis to the effect of the occupation. This stands in stark contrast to the group\u2019s activities, which include delivering lectures at leading American universities, taking high-profile foreign visitors on its one-sided tours, and releasing several highly tendentious books translated into numerous European languages. These books have repeatedly been criticized<\/a> as premised on predetermined \u201canalyses\u201d that falsely portray Israeli actions as \u201cterrorizing the civilian population.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Breaking the Silence has repeatedly posted to social media about meeting diplomats from the European Union<\/a> and other countries. In 2017, then-German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel met with Breaking the Silence and B\u2019Tselem,<\/a> despite then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that their scheduled meeting would be canceled if the top German diplomat insisted on meeting the groups first.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2019, British consulate staffers reportedly chauffeured Breaking the Silence\u2019s co-founder<\/a>, Yehuda Shaul, as he gave them a tour of a settlement near Jerusalem. Such meetings have become standard for many diplomats, and consequently serve to undermine the positions of the Israeli government.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notably, in October 2021, Breaking the Silence CEO Avner Gvaryahu met with Ilhan Omar, a Democratic Congresswoman with a history of antisemitic and offensive anti-Israel statements. <\/span><\/p>\n