White House officials meet with Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence: report

Members of an Israeli NGO that has come under fire from a government minister this week for "working against Israel from within" met with senior White House officials, according to an exclusive report in Haaretz.

Breaking the Silence, a group of serving and former Israeli soldiers, released a report last month including testimonies of more than 60 soldiers which provided evidence that the Israeli army may have violated international law during last summer's war in Gaza. 

During this week's meeting held in Washington, the group reportedly presented the report's findings to Obama administration officials who "reacted with a great deal of interest," one of the organisers told Haaretz.

A representative from the group also met with senior officials in the State Department's human rights bureau, Haaretz reported.

In the 237-page report, unnamed soldiers said they had been told to consider all Palestinians as targets and described the wanton destruction of swathes of Gazan residential areas. 

“The motto guiding lots of people was: ‘Let’s show them',” a lieutenant who served in the southern town of Rafah told Breaking the Silence.

This week's meeting comes after the NGO came under criticism from newly appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely who tried to get a Breaking the Silence exhibition to be held in Switzerland cancelled.

The exhibit, scheduled to open this month in Zurich, is reportedly set to include the testimonies of IDF soldiers about human rights violations in the West Bank.

“We won’t ignore an organisation whose only purpose is to tarnish IDF soldiers in the international arena in order to severely damage Israel’s image," Hotovely said on Tuesday.

Hotovely is one of two officials whom Netanyahu has recently appointed to run a taskforce charged with preventing and fighting boycotts against Israel.

Earlier this week, US President Barack Obama said that Israel risked losing its credibility over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's flip-flopping stance about the creation of a Palestinian state.

Just ahead of the Israeli elections, Netanyahu said he had ruled out the establishment of a Palestinian state, but in his first interview after the vote, said he wanted a two-state solution.

US officials who met with Breaking the Silence said they "routinely meet with a range of actors from official and non-official international groups, including from civil society".