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Breaking the Media's Unhealthy Reliance on Breaking The Silence
(The Algemeiner) Rachel O'Donoghue - Rarely a day goes by that the name "Breaking the Silence" does not appear in the media in some capacity. Breaking the Silence was founded in 2004 by former IDF soldiers who are highly critical of Israel. Breaking the Silence's latest big media blitz came in the form of a contribution to an "investigation' by CNN about the February 26, 2023, settler attack on the Palestinian village of Huwara, in which a number of properties and vehicles were set alight. Featured prominently in CNN's largely fact-free piece is the conjecture of an anonymous soldier - provided by Breaking the Silence - who alleges that the police did nothing to intervene during the rampage through Huwara, and that the IDF is unsure of how to deal with what he terms "settler terrorism." As is par for the course with Breaking the Silence, there is no way of probing the veracity of the unidentified soldier's account, nor are there any corroborating testimonies from any of the multiple other soldiers who were on the scene. CNN's reliance on Breaking the Silence to support its misleading investigation into the events in Huwara is reflective of how the organization has managed to present itself as an unimpeachable source of information about daily life "under occupation" in the West Bank. In publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, Breaking the Silence is regularly featured in articles that pertain to Israel and Gaza, without any mention of the group's ideological leanings and profoundly anti-Israel agenda. However, this carefully constructed image of integrity is belied by the group's long history of presenting unverifiable "testimonies" as the unvarnished truth and even allegedly falsifying first-hand accounts. The author is a contributor to HonestReporting.