Mar 22, 2016

Israeli Channel 2 aired on March 17 an investigative report documenting the activists of the Breaking the Silence organization allegedly collecting classified information about Israel Defense Forces (IDF) activity. In one of the high points of the report, former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter makes an appearance. Dichter, who is currently a Likud Knesset member, responds to the investigative material by telling the Channel 2 interviewer in a worried tone, “If you hadn’t told me the background, and told me what I was watching, I would have said it looked like information gathering by the handlers of an agent.” Dichter concluded with the following punchline: “and I didn’t hear a word about Palestinians or Gazans.” The words of the former Shin Bet chief were designed to back up what was presented as a Channel 2 investigative report. But in reality, it seemed like a propaganda clip of the right-wing Ad Kan ("No More") nongovernmental organization (NGO).

The Ad Kan people were the ones to supply the ostensibly incriminating material to Channel 2. In the last two years, the Ad Kan organization planted its activists in Breaking the Silence, an NGO that attempts to fight against the occupation by revealing testimony of soldiers about their army service in the territories, during conflicts and also during daily life.

In an attempt to give the report a serious dimension, Channel 2 correspondent Ofer Hadad said, “At our request, we received all the unedited materials from all those hidden cameras. Unedited, not shortened. Hours of meticulous questioning and, yes, some of the evidence deals with questions regarding IDF activity in the territories.”

On the assumption that Hadad indeed viewed all the long, jam-packed, unedited filmed materials, and all that he succeeded in collecting from them was barely 2 minutes of “transmission of [ostensibly] classified material” on weapons and events that can be read about in any newspaper, it is not at all clear what new details were disclosed by his work, if at all. And what about most of the material that was not broadcast; material that probably featured problematic behaviors of IDF soldiers in the territories? Dichter did not hear a word about Palestinians only because Channel 2 did not air those sections of the evidence.

Former head of Israeli Central Command Maj. Gen. Avi Mizrahi said in the report that the confidential material could cost human life. But Hadad and his apparatus did not need dramatic accusations leveled by Mizrahi or Dichter as to whether their report was serious, in-depth and tight, and met press standards. What Hadad did bring is information collected by a right-wing organization in its war against Breaking the Silence. Thus, there is a significant and substantive problem in presenting that information as the result of an “investigative report.” If Channel 2 had planted its own reporter inside Breaking the Silence, the situation would be different. But for considerations of ratings and left-wing bashing, something that has become popular recently in the Israeli public, Israel’s senior news provider chose to act like a member of the Ad Kan NGO.