Israeli media and the public are in turmoil over the call by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked to open a police investigation against Dean Issacharoff, the spokesperson for Breaking the Silence, the anti-occupation organization. Having delivered a personal, difficult-to-take testimonial, according to which he beat a Palestinian unconscious for no justifiable reason during military service, Issacharoff must be investigated in the public interest.

In April, Breaking the Silence had publicized the filmed testimony by Issacharoff, 25, a first lieutenant in the reserves. In it, he courageously confesses how during his regular service as an officer in the Nachal division, he was asked one Friday to restrain a Palestinian who had thrown rocks at Israel Defense Forces soldiers: “My company commander looked at me, my soldiers looked at me, and I stood there and thought what I am going to do with a person who didn’t try to stab me, didn’t try to shoot me. He doesn’t speak Hebrew, and I don’t speak Arabic. So I grabbed him by the back of the neck, and I started hitting him in the face and the chest until he was bleeding and unconscious, in front of my soldiers and my commander. And then we dragged him from there while he was dazed, and we put him in the military post.”

Issacharoff's testimony is unique because it is not anonymous, as with most of the stories by Israeli soldiers that appear in Breaking the Silence reports. In many cases, according to the organization, their testimonies describe war crimes. Issacharoff speaks with his face exposed and provides detailed testimony of an incident that is an especially ugly expression of human evil in the impossible situation of occupation, in which he is the main actor. In his testimony, Issacharoff emphasizes that he acted on his own initiative and does not claim that he obeyed an illegal order.

The uproar was swift in coming. Reservists on Duty, an organization that attempts to counter Breaking the Silence, publicized filmed testimonials by soldiers and officers who served with Issacharoff and contradict his statements. Some of them call him a liar as they speak, like he did, with their faces exposed. Soon after the release of Issacharoff's video, Reservists on Duty had demanded that he be investigated. Two months later, following a request from Shaked to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, Issacharoff was called in for questioning by the police. On June 23, he was questioned under caution at the Hebron police station on suspicion of assault.