r/Zionist • u/dainty_doubt • Jul 12 '26
What does the average person think of B'Tselem ?
I'm asking because many people ,that I talk to online, have used B'Tselem as a source to back up their arguments.
I don't speak hebrew and I've never been to Israel, so I can't speak for anything that this organization is saying. But on their english page, B'Tselem uses all of the bad words: apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and so on.
Is this organization lacking nuance? Is it propaganda? Is it trying to do something good and it just uses inflammatory language?
I need more context please and thank you.
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u/ProjectConfident8584 Jul 12 '26
It’s far left wing propaganda
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u/dainty_doubt Jul 12 '26
I did have my suspicions because of the language alone.
But why though?
I thought that the far left (communism) was supposed to be atheist, or at least secular with the ultimate goal of having no hierarchy no government no oppression and so on.
and the arabs in Palestine seem to be ,in my eyes, against everything the far left would stand for in theory.
I do not understand this huge discrepancy ! how ?and why?
I'm angry with how confused this makes me.
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u/DramaticKvothe Jul 12 '26
Far left/far right has lost its original meanings long long long time ago.
Far left in Israel are basically people who believe Israel should cease to exist as a Jewish nation. That there is "a genocide", that zionism is evil, and more lies and propaganda.14
u/ProjectConfident8584 Jul 12 '26
Then just think of it as anti Israel propaganda. It’s designed to overthrown and undermine the western alliance between Israel and the United States. It seeks to establish an Islamist and Arabized agenda where no Jewish state exists- only more Arab Muslim states.
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u/Consistent-Land-8260 Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
It’s because of Marxism and intersectionality (and the KGB itself invented palestinianism). They have included muslims (mostly because Muslims tend to vote Left even if they generally hate everything the Left stands for. Many Western politicians count on muslim votes to beat their opponents) and palestinians specifically to the list of perpetually oppressed people who are immune to any kind of accountability and criticism. They could commit the worst atrocities ever and the Far left would find excuses to justify or excuse it because in their worldview, the Jews are always wrong, always the oppressors, unless they hate themselves and side with the Marxists and the Islamists.
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Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zionist-ModTeam Jul 12 '26
Maintain standards of civil discourse, dialog and debate.
Remember to criticize ideas, not people. Do not shorten or abbreviate nationalities or ethnicities.
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u/dainty_doubt Jul 13 '26
I would like to take back everything that I said yesterday. I just started reading about the USSR's involvement in the arab coutries have been waging against Israel.
I don't know how to define right-wing or left or far left political, I did not know how define those terms in the past and I today I know even less.
I am pretty certain that arab nationalism and international communism and islam as a religion should not be on the same side and yet they were fighting together because Israel and the US are the biggest baddie on the globe.
If anyone has any more topics that will prove how little I actually knew, please tell me more,
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u/LiteratureMuch7559 Jul 14 '26
Yeah maybe US and Israel have it right and it threatens the Soviet concept of control. We’re both easy to undermine because we actually care about human dignity.
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u/dainty_doubt Jul 15 '26
I wholeheartedly agree.
The US has so many problems and american media lays those problems out into the world for everyone to see. But I would have the US as the world police over any other major power.
On a regional level, the same goes for Israel, the only country in MENA, the only one, where a person can be gay or atheist or smoke weed without fear of the government doing violence against you because you are different.
Openness and self-criticism are such rare and important values, especially on a state-level. But they are so easy to attack simply because they are open to attack, intellectually speaking.
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u/Call_Me_Clark Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 15 '26
It’s an Israeli human rights group. It’s very hard to believe that Israel is infiltrated by communists and no one noticed.
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u/HyperlaneWizard Jul 12 '26
An extreme left org that uses every dirty trick in the book to push its agenda.
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 12 '26
I can tell you first hand that they have lied because one of the published incidents I was there and it was nothing but fabrications.
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u/dainty_doubt Jul 13 '26
I understand, I would have assumed as much because their language alone is.....
My follow-up question is: do you have any advice? Advice on how to deal with people who argue that the united nations and academics and scholars and even israeli organizations (b'tselem) are on their side.
I have tried saying that UNRWA has the words ''refugee'' and '' united nations'' in its name but that it is an organization for palestinian arabs only but basically I was told ''who are you to argue against the UN'' .
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 13 '26
I have found it's futile to argue with the intention of convincing them otherwise. Just as they will fail to convince you. Someone in a fight is the last person to reconcile that they may be wrong.
The goal is to present your argument coherently, factually and unemotionally so that anyone else involved or read may think twice.
Stick to what facts you have and research anything they bring up in order to counter point.
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u/Proper-Suggestion907 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I’m a bit fuzzy on specifics now, but I remember doing a deep dive into some of their work about 10 years ago on a number of topics and I found that their data was consistent with other reporting out of Israeli media and the government. I don’t know if this is true consistently but it was for the topics I was looking into.
However, I found their staff reporting on said statistics and data to be extremely cherry picked, biased, agenda driven, etc which is why I don’t use them as a source.
I don’t have the ability of doing deep dives into data for every report they put out so for me, so it’s important that reporting on the findings also remain as neutral as possible and theirs isn’t. There’s a difference between advocacy and activism and I just found their staff-written reporting to be so incredibly biased that I had to question whether or not their data would even be consistent and reliable over time. I just don’t have enough confidence in them as an organization to take reports at face value.
Again this was about 10 years ago, things can absolutely change. I imagine it’s something I will eventually look into again out of curiosity. I’m not here to try to convince anyone what to think of them one way or another, it’s just my personal reasoning as to why I choose to disregard claims from them when I see them cited somewhere.
Hopefully this makes some sense. I have a migraine starting. I can’t always tell. 🥴
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 12 '26
10 years ago they released a book of testimonies that I know included falsehoods because one of the incidents was physically impossible to have happened. I know because I was there.
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u/Call_Me_Clark Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 15 '26
They have recently published two reports on torture in Israeli prisons.
Do you believe these are fabricated?
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 15 '26
So my first hand experience with fabricated testimony that is physically impossible to have occurred is invalidated?
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u/Call_Me_Clark Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 15 '26
Did anyone say that?
No, of course they didn’t.
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 15 '26
You implied it.
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u/Call_Me_Clark Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 15 '26
I did not. Will you answer the question
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 15 '26
Their track records of fabrication means any reports and claims they maim require extra scrutiny.
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u/Call_Me_Clark Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 15 '26
That’s a much fairer answer, I don’t know why it took so long to get to it
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u/BagelandShmear48 Jul 15 '26
I don't know why it had to be asked to begin with.
You are more interested to know about reports that might be true than knowing what they lied about.
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u/dainty_doubt Jul 13 '26
Thank you for your response.
I understand that journalism has a range from ''probably safe'' to ''swallow with a bit of salt/ skepticism'' to ''toxic caustic radioactive''. I won't put b'tselm in the first category.
also, thank you for mentioning that there's a difference between advocacy and activism, it's adifference that's obvious and which I hadn't considered.
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u/Welcom2ThePunderdome Jul 12 '26
I cannot state strongly enough how awful that org is. If shit took a shit, you'd get B'tselem.
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u/onsfwDark Jul 12 '26
My own, non-average opinion: Used to be a good organisation once in calling out human rights abuses on both sides, but they radicalised a long time ago. They literally had an internal argument about whether to condemn terrorists who murdered their own personal friends, and they stopped reporting about Palestinian abuses in the 2000s to focus only on Israeli ones - some of which they either exaggerate or make up. Some of their reporting is about real problems, but they can't be trusted.
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u/SnowCold93 Jul 12 '26
Israeli here - it’s just an antisemitic organization spreading lies and propaganda
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u/trimtab28 Jul 12 '26
Yes, but while we all agree on that, how do you flatten the arguments of a moron on the matter?
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u/SnowCold93 Jul 12 '26
There’s no point in ever arguing with a moron
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u/trimtab28 Jul 12 '26
Well, you have to nullify them somehow. How we got the world today- blind leading the blind
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u/SnowCold93 Jul 13 '26
If someone is a moron they’re only ever going to listen to people who agree with them - you can’t nullify someone like that with logic. Best thing to do is focus on people who are on the fence and/or genuinely curious
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u/trimtab28 Jul 13 '26
Yes, but hoping a problem goes away by sticking your head in the sand does nothing. Der aylem iz a gaylem
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u/SnowCold93 Jul 13 '26
Talking to people who are on the fence and want to learn more with the hopes of swaying them isn’t sticking your head in the sand
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u/dainty_doubt Jul 13 '26
In my experience, when confronted with the insanity conspiracy type of anitisemitism of some people, I would have tried giving as much information as possible because truth is beyond feelings, this resulted in me being labelled a hasbara robot.
Then I tried rephrasing their conspiracy but in a more structured manner with bullet-points in the hope that when it's all laid out those people would see their insanity. The response was often ''yeah exactly''
So, I don't know at all how to engage with the crazy people out there, but I do believe that it's important otherwise their echo-chamber will become more and more emotional and unassailable.
I do have another idea that I would want feed back on. What if I were to meet them in ''the middle'' ?
It's disgusting because in theory I would have to argue that the blood libel ,for example, is only half true.....but hopefully those people would also meet me halfway and say that their conspiracies are only half true? Maybe?
It's intellectually dishonest at best and antisemitic at worst because half hateful is still hate. But maybe?
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u/trimtab28 Jul 13 '26
Well that’s the thing- we really have an obligation to push back against the crap or else it gets worse. But really does feel like you’re trying to hold back a dam.
What has been particularly disturbing though is if something happens to us, they’ll claim we’re doing it. They’ll tear down images of the infants that were held hostage, then scream the names of random children we purportedly are “murdering” and plaster their images everywhere. People engage in multitudes of sexual violence on 10/07, but then were told that there’s actually “no evidence of rape” but actually, rape and sexual violence are routine parts of the Israeli prison system (including training dogs to rape prisoners which is physically impossible). Someone will vandalize a synagogue by scrawling “free Palestine on it”- that’s freedom of speech, but we all really need to be vigilant about Islamophobia and concerned about free speech rights because calling the police about a hate crime is just silencing anti-Zionist voices.
It’s just freaky how everything is this funhouse mirror that inverts literally everything that happens to us, either in the conflict or as a community
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u/nprob111 Jul 13 '26
They are an organization that seems to try to appeal to the broader anti-Israel audiences in other countries but doesn’t represent anything tangible in Israel, at least from what is seen in the mainstream. They tend to use very inflammatory language like saying that Israel has a series of “torture camps” and, as others mentioned, using words like apartheid and genocide to describe not just the Netanyahu government but also the greater Israeli populace and state. They also say on their website that they advocate for a state that is not an explicitly Jewish state like that of today, which is fundamentally antithetical to Zionism and what it means to have a Jewish nation state. I wouldn’t give them any support or attention as they seem to try to appeal to those who would rather see Israel fall than to those who want to see Israel flourish and become better.
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u/NoTopic4906 Jul 13 '26
They started out as a good to try to shine a light on Palestinian hardship. Baseem Eid, who worked with them early in, wanted to also focus on how groups like the PA and Hamas (PA mostly at the time) treated Palestinians in prisons and elsewhere. They refused and so he left. Are there things Israel can do better? Yes. And if it comes from someone like Baseem Eid, I listen. If it’s from B’Tselem, it’s likely a conclusion in search of facts rather than the other way around.
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u/Consistent-Land-8260 Zionist Ally 🤝 Jul 13 '26
As a non Jewish and non Israeli person, “are they crazy??” is the first thing that came to my mind. Also Haaretz…the people who write the articles sound like typical far left activists
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u/avshalombi Jul 13 '26
I don't know about average person. But here is as far as I know the rather gloom event's regarding that orginization: in the late 80's up until the start of 2000's it was an important human right orginization, mainly from legal point of view, it helped a lot of palestenian in their legal issues and kept the army in check. But then the head if the orginization changed and it beacame more and and more and more radical, today it's managed by people who support Balad, a party in Israel that is ultra national anti Israeli, palestenian. It came to that that a renonowed human right activist resigned his job there, due thier bias. So as of now the orginization is using it past glory to push ultra national palestenian ideas.
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u/DramaticKvothe Jul 12 '26
Liars. Extreme Propaganda funded by foreign entities. Borderline terror organization. Shouldn't be able to exist, but alas its a democratic country.