UPDATE: Breaking the Silence Won't Attend Knesset Hearing

Jerusalem, 27 December, 2016 (TPS) -- Breaking the Silence, the Israeli organization that publishes testimonies of IDF fighters who say they violated the IDF Code of Ethics or international law during their military service, said Tuesday that the group would not appear tomorrow at the Knesset Education Committee for a hearing on a bill proposal by Education Minister Naftali Bennett that would ban the group from entering Israeli schools.

The current uproar is not new to the group. Earlier this year, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon investigated the group  on suspiscions of using classified material. And a year earlier, Education Minister Bennett banned the group from schools on grounds of maintaining malevolent motives harmful to both IDF soldiers and the State of Israel.

Tuesday, Bennet said he would table legislation aimed at preventing “organizations that harm the IDF” from entering Israeli schools, spokespeople for the minister said Tuesday. The bill, authored by Jewish Home MKs Shuli Mualem and Bezalel Smotrich, enjoys support from MKs from nearly  all Knesset factions.

The measure “aims at giving the Minister of Education, who is responsible for Israeli students, the authority to prohibit individuals or organizations that are not part of the education system to conduct activities within the educational institution when such activities are of a nature undermining the goals of education or are acting to harm IDF soldiers who are a consensual within Israeli society.”

“Organizations going around foreign countries and harming IDF soldiers will not set foot in our schools,” stated Minister Bennett. “The education system is heavily invested in promoting values such as service to the state and no body hurting the state from within Israel or abroad shall smear these efforts […] we will work together with all our  partners in the government and the Knesset and we will pass this important legislation.”

Chairman of the Yesh Atid party MK Yair Lapid, who supports the bill, added: “It should be prohibited for the school system of the State of Israel to permit entry to organizations slandering officer and soldiers, calling them criminals and encouraging insubordination. Consider the impact of these stories to a student who hears them just before joining the army. What it does to his motivation and willingness to contribute.”

A spokesman for Bennett said the bill, if it becomes law, would not be limited to left-wing organizations like Breaking the Silence, but also to right-wing groups that call on IDF soldiers to refuse orders to evacuate settlements  or refer to the IDF as the “Israel Deportation Force” instead of the Israel Defense Force. But Breaking the Silence rejected the clarification, writing on Twitter that “Bennett can try to continue his attempt to turn the education system into an education system that supports the occupation and that sacrifices every democratic value on the altar of the settlement enterprise. But [his efforts have] failed in the past and it will fail this time around.

“The people who strike a blow to IDF soldiers are the people who turned the Israel Defense Force from a defensive army to one that defends illegal outposts. In response to the indignation of Bennett and ‘brother’ Lapid, we will continue to fight Bennett’s and Smotrich’s occupation everwhere, including in the education system,” BTS said.

The bill will be presented to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation in the coming weeks.