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[Excerpts:]

"Its detractors claim that nothing could be further from the truth. “Breaking the Silence appears uninterested in uncovering individual violations, but instead is fueled by a political motivation to condemn the entire IDF for institutional wrongdoing,” claimed Gerald Steinberg, chairman of the Political Studies Department at Bar-Ilan University and executive director of NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem organization that critiques nongovernmental organizations." "Breaking the Silence’s director, Mikhael Manekin, states that the group’s main purpose is to tackle the “large gap between what’s happening in the territories vis-à-vis the Palestinian population and what the civilian population thinks is happening.” Steinberg said that such statements hide the fact that it is really “a political organization that uses claims of human rights violations by very few soldiers as a means of opposing the Israeli government and military, and to promote efforts against ‘the occupation.’” Critics such as Steinberg accuse the group of doublespeak when it claims to be apolitical. Manekin told the Forward that Breaking the Silence takes no position for or against the occupation, but holds that “inherent to occupation is abuse of the civilian population.”"