Netanyahu to boycott foreign leaders who criticise Israeli military

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Likud lawmakers on Monday he would not meet with foreign leaders who meet with organisations "working against Israeli soldiers", Haaretz reported.

"I say to the leaders of the world, you can meet with organisations working against Israeli soldiers, but not with me," Netanyahu told his party's MPs.

In April, Israeli-German relations became strained when Netanyahu cancelled a meeting with visiting German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel because he had insisted on meeting with Israeli human rights NGOs Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem.

Breaking The Silence has particularly been under fire by the Israeli political establishment, because its main purpose is to expose what it says are crimes of the Israeli military against Palestinians, in order to instigate a moral reformation within the Israeli army.

Through the group, former soldiers have shared accounts of what they have done to Palestinians, from extinguishing cigarettes on bodies during questioning, to exposing war crimes committed in the 2014 Israeli offensive on Gaza.