Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' spiritual leader and an arch-terrorist in every fiber of his being, is remembered in Israel as the spirit behind the horrifying wave of murderous terrorist attacks during the Second Intifada. He was released from prison under the Jibril deal of 1985. In his final years, he was ultimately responsible for the murders of 377 Israelis in attacks that left another 2,076 wounded. Former head of the Shin Bet Avi Dichter said that Yassin "only looks like the brother of Mother Theresa. I've never encountered so much evil in such a small body."
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Israeli Air Force helicopters took out Yassin On March 22, 2004, but the B'Tselem, which masquerades as a human rights organization, complained that a man whose hands dripped with blood had been "executed without a trial." In its official statement, the organization left out the fact that Yassin was a founder of Hamas and responsible for the murders of hundreds of Israelis. Journalist Yonatan Dahuh-Halevi even revealed that B'Tselem on a list of persons who "it was unknown whether they had been combatants at the time of their death." If B'Tselem had existed during World War II, then Adolf Hitler – who committed suicide with his girlfriend in his bunker and didn't go out fighting – would have been put on the same absurd list.
Moral rigidity still is still engulfing B'Tselem, with Executive Director Hagai El-Ad refusing to condemn Arab terrorism, while appearing at the UN alongside the Palestinian Authority to pressure Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria. A year ago, the organization even called on IDF soldiers to refuse orders and allow Gaza terrorists to cross the border fence and enter Western Negev communities. According to the watchdog NGO Monitor, many of B'Tselem's anti-Israel reports are based on "lies by a terrorist organization."
But paradoxically, the IDF is not only not boycotting B'Tselem, it welcomes it. One particular example is the Elor Azaria affair, which began after B'Tselem volunteer Imad Abu Shamsiyya – who later expressed support for terrorism – disseminated footage of the incident. The initial B'Tselem clip from the scene of the Hebron shooting was soundless, so we could not hear the calls of the people present, which clearly demonstrate that they were afraid the terrorist who had been shot was strapped with explosives. In an English-language version of the clip, B'Tsleem describes Azaria shooting the terrorist as an "execution," without noting that the dead man was a terrorist. Nevertheless, the IDF trusted the biased, twisted clip, and based on it, accused Azaria of murder. Hours after the incident, the prime minister, the defense minister, and the IDF chief of staff condemned the shooting based solely on the B'Tselem footage, before an operational probe could be conducted. Azaria claimed that the public condemnation sealed his fate and prevented him from receiving a fair trial.
B'Tselem didn't content itself with that, and in May 2016, shortly after the Hebron incident, announced it would be ceasing cooperation with the IDF because it was sick of serving as the "fig leaf" of an army that used it to present a false picture of a "functioning system." Nevertheless, the IDF never said "enough," and at the end of December 2018 B'Tselem's executive director announced that representatives of the military police "continue to contact us from time to time" about shootings in which Arab residents of Judea and Samaria are killed.
When asked why the army continues to work with a radical political group that refuses to condemn terrorism and calls on soldiers to refuse orders, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit told me that the military police "contact any group that might be in possession of evidence that can help an investigation and assist in finding out the truth." In other words, the army sees B'Tselem as a legitimate partner in arriving at the "truth."
This is a dangerous approach: the army must realize that B'Tselem is not interested in finding out the truth or in morality and values; it works to weaken Israel's fighting spirit against terrorism and in fanning the flames of conflicts in society and the military. The IDF must stop granting B'Tselem legitimacy and cut ties with the organization.
