To the long list of hot-button topics embroiling the Jewish state, from Iran to terrorism, the spillover from Syria and the prospects for peace, we can now add one more: irresponsible nongovernmental organizations that use underhanded tactics in the name of human rights.

NGOs that claim to promote peace and human rights are big business in Israel, with dozens of groups competing for money and headlines. One group, Breaking the Silence, or BTS, with a 2014 income of $1 million, may not be the country’s largest, but it’s been making the biggest waves.

With about 10 activists on staff, BTS publishes anonymous and unverifiable testimonies from Israeli soldiers who claim to have witnessed Israeli forces committing war crimes. Representatives of BTS travel the world repeating these stories, appearing in parliaments and before United Nations bodies, university campuses and in the media.

To audiences with no experience in combat with terror groups, the emotional claims of these soldiers can easily appear authentic. Many of the details in these accounts are unreliable or are later proved false. But the accusations go unquestioned, and the political damage is significant.

This has helped fuel the boycotts targeting Israel, as well as the publication of the 2009 Goldstone Report on the fighting in Gaza, which has since been discredited even by its own author, the South African jurist Richard Goldstone. Efforts in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to “arrest” Israeli leaders such as Tzipi Livni, the former foreign minister, based on allegations of war crimes, become international headlines and push Israel further toward pariah status.