"Breaking the [Israeli] Silence"

JERUSALEM (AP) — A former Israeli combat officer turned whistleblower has found himself in the fight of his lifetime, leading a campaign against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and drawing relentless criticism from the country’s leaders who have labeled him a traitor.
For Dean Issacharoff, the battle is even more personal: his father is Israel’s ambassador to Germany, a respected longtime diplomat tasked with defending the same policies his son so adamantly opposes.
Issacharoff is the spokesman of Breaking the Silence, a group of former fighters who served in the West Bank and now collect testimonies about the damaging impact of the occupation. While the group says it’s acting in Israel’s best interests by sparking a public debate, it has become perhaps the most reviled anti-occupation protest group in the country. The nationalist government sees it as foreign-funded subversives seeking to shame Israel by targeting its most hallowed institution, the military.

Who is a better source of information than the people who have actually "been there and done that?" Are they all -- an estimated 1,100 -- liars and provocateurs? Are they all, to use a much-bandied and poorly-defined word, "anti-Semitic?" Is it really conceivable that Israel and its motives and public face are all, so to speak, washed in the blood of the lamb? Is it really conceivable that "Breaking the Silence" is without flaws? Does it make sense for the U.S. to implicitly condone the human rights abuses attested to by those who are and have been there? It all sounds remarkably like the program used to such good effect by the former Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels... tell a lie often enough and people will start to believe it.

Don't discuss it, just believe it ... and devalue the latter-day "Untermenschen."