Rivers of condemnation, criticism and vitriol have washed over the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem since its executive director's appearance before the UN Security Council. I searched for an iota of disagreement with a single fact or figure Hagai El-Ad presented at the debate on Israel’s West Bank settlements and came up short. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dubbed B’Tselem a “negligible organization” and claimed, “Most of the Israeli public knows the truth.” But Netanyahu did not point to any distortion in El-Ad’s presentation and hid behind the mantra that the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its Jewish settlements there, but rather the ongoing Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish state. The chairman of the centrist Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid, echoed Netanyahu's label of “negligible organization” and claimed B’Tselem and its likes had “severed themselves” from Zionism. He, too, ignored the content of El-Ad’s review. His reaction went up on Facebook even before El-Ad took the stage in New York.

So what enraged the right, and what got politicians and pundits who define themselves as “centrist” and even “moderate left” so agitated? The answer lies in Netanyahu’s remark: “What these organizations fail to achieve in democratic elections, they try to achieve through international force. … We will continue to defend justice and our state against international pressures.” Lapid put it in crowd-pleasing terms: “They decided to join up with the anti-Semitic [boycott, divestment and sanctions] organizations in order to force Israel to its knees.”

In other words, the problem is not in the credibility of his speech. Had El-Ad simply reported factually on the human rights situation in the territories, his words would probably not have so disturbed Israeli politicians on their holiday break. But El-Ad remarked at the start of his speech, “What I’m about to say is not meant to shock you. It is, however, meant to move you.” The director of B’Tselem flew all the way to New York to tell the world that “anything short of decisive international action will achieve nothing but ushering in the second half of the first century of the occupation.” And it is imperative that you take action now, not tomorrow, he insisted.

Ever since the 1956 Sinai Campaign, which marks its 60th anniversary at the end of this week, the Israeli public has not pressured its government to avoid war or promote a peace arrangement. David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, decided to withdraw from Sinai Peninsula and shelve his plan to establish a “third kingdom of Israel” (a term he used in a famous 1956 letter) only under heavy US and Soviet pressure. The refusal by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir into paying the price of peace with Egypt cost Israel almost 10,000 dead and injured in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Two years later, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the force separation agreements with Egypt and Syria, after Kissinger threatened a “reassessment” of American ties with Israel. Fear of the reaction by US President Jimmy Carter had a decisive contribution to Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to cede Sinai Peninsula captured by Israel in 1967 in return for peace with Egypt in 1978. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir agreed to take part in the 1991 international Middle East peace conference in Madrid following concerted pressure by President George Bush Sr.