Background slide

Breaking the Silence (BtS) is an Israeli NGO founded in 2004 by IDF veterans that collects and publishes soldiers' testimony about abuses in the occupied territories, with the aim of exposing the realities of occupation to the Israeli public. While the political establishment has been consistently hostile, a set of respected security establishment figures (retired generals and former intelligence chiefs) have publicly defended and endorsed BtS, framing it not as an enemy of the IDF but as a guardian of its ethics and a mechanism of democratic self-correction.