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Palestinians Capture Violence of Israeli Occupation On Video
Bi'ilin - An Israeli child from a far-right settler group in the West Bank city of Hebron hurls a stone up the stairs of a Palestinian family close to their settlement and shouts: "I will exterminate you." Another spits towards the same family.Another settler woman pushes her face up to a window and snarls: "Whore!"
They are shocking images. There is footage of beatings, their aftermath, and the indifference of Israel's security forces to serious human rights abuses. There is footage too of those same security forces humiliating Palestinians - and most seriously - committing abuses themselves.
They are contained in a growing archive of material assembled by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem in a remarkable project called Shooting Back.
The group has supplied almost 100 video cameras to vulnerable Palestinian communities in Hebron, the northern West Bank and elsewhere, to document and gather evidence of assaults and abusive behaviour - largely by settlers.
"We gave the first video camera out in Hebron [in January 2007]," says Diala Shamas a Jerusalem-based researcher with B'Tselem. But the project took off in earnest, however, in January this year.
The video is sometimes chaotic, jumpy. Sometimes only the audio is captured and a pair of soldiers' boots.
But what it documents in all its rough reality is the experience of occupation on a daily basis for the most vulnerable families and communities - giving a voice to those who have been voiceless for so long.
"Right now we have about 100 video cameras," adds Shamas. "The largest number are in the Hebron region where the most frequent complaints of settler attacks are. And recently in the northern area and the region next to the [building] of the [separation] wall where there are demonstrations."
She explains the reason for introducing the Shooting Back project.
"The project started as response to the need to gather evidence. We were constantly filing complaints to no avail on the basis of lack of evidence, or ... we don't know the name of the settler.
"Now we are going back and forth with our video-cassettes to [Israeli] police station begging them to press rewind, freeze... it is the bulk of our work. The value of the footage is not only evidential. It also has had a remarkable value in terms of advocacy and campaigning.
'We quickly realised the media value of this footage. It is maybe an overstatement but we started bridging this gap between what was happening in the occupied Palestinian territories and what the Israeli public can see.
"There was a conspiracy of silence surrounding settler violence in particular. This footage is shocking to Israelis.'
And in particular it has been two pieces of video, shot by Palestinians this year and released by B'Tselem, that have gained massive international attention by throwing the issue of human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories back into the spotlight.
The first was footage of a group of four hooded settlers from the settlement of Susya armed with what look like pickaxe handles brutally beating a group of Palestinian farmers.
The second - not taken as part of Shooting Back programme - but supplied to B'Tselem by a 17-year-old schoolgirl from the village of Ni'ilin earlier this month showed a protester against the building of the West Bank barrier on his village's land being shot in the foot by an Israeli soldier with a plastic bullet as he was held blindfold and bound.
The protester was Ashraf Abu Rahma, aged 27. The video was shot by Salam Kanaan aged 17. A constant presence at the demonstrations in the Palestinian villages in the rocky hills of the West Bank, Ashraf is employed by the villages as a watchman on land that is threatened with being taken from the Palestinian villages for the building of the West Bank barrier.
He says he was unaware of what was happening to him until almost the moment before he was shot and wounded in the foot.
It is only when he saw the video too that he was able to understand what happened to him.
Arrested during a demonstration against the West Bank barrier in Ni'ilin on July 7 he recalled last week being almost immediately blindfolded.
"They had rounded up the foreigners [from the International Solidarity Movement] and arrested me and another guy separately.
"They put me in a jeep and started cursing me, hitting me and using bad language in Hebrew and Arabic. It had never occurred to me that they would shoot.
"They held me in the sun for a long time. Later I heard them discussing what they were going to do with me.
"I recall hearing a conversation about how to shoot me. What I recall is the words rubber bullet, rubber bullet... I was blindfolded so I was only aware of their aggression.
"It was only when I saw Salam's video that I understood what happened to me. The guy touching me on my right shoulder before I was shot.
"Just before it happened they said they're going to beat me. They said they were going to send me to hell. They know me because I've been to every protest."
Ashraf claims the abuse continued even when he was on the ground after the shot was fired. "When I asked for medical attention they said: this is nothing, we are going to beat you more."
Although the Israeli military's version is that the shooting was a misunderstanding of the orders given by the lieutenant colonel on the scene - and that the aim was only to "frighten" Ashraf examination of the footage makes it hard to credit that version.
Eyad Haddad, B'Tselem's Ramallah-based field researcher who tracked down the footage of Ashraf's punishment shooting, believes that the project has helped supply crucial evidence in documenting abuses.
"These events that happen are often so distant, or happen in the middle of the night, where there is no media.
"Where we've seen there is a lot of violation from the settlers and especially where there are demonstrations happening and we want to monitor the Israeli soldier's behaviour we are distributing video cameras.
"It is having a good effect and it will stop the violations."
Haddad says the organisation is now trying to encourage people living in areas of confrontation to use their own cameras - if they have them - or mobile phones to film potential abuses that they encounter.
"We want to encourage a mentality to use the cameras. It is the only weapon that the civilians have."
According to Diala Shamas the recent high international profile of the footage shot of the settler beating in Susya and the shooting of Ashraf Abu Rahma has meant that the group has not only been inundated with requests for cameras from Palestinian communities, but those who already have cameras supplied by B'Tselem are shooting more footage of their day to day experiences.
"In the beginning we were almost begging people to take the cameras with them when they went out. They didn't see the use of it. But after the media coverage over the Susya incident... we've gotten a flood of requests for our video cameras. And those who have got the cameras are using them much more frequently."
Commenting on the Ni'ilin footage she said: "It is one of the biggest victories because it is the troops not the settlers. It is not just a 'rotten apple' which is usually the response that we get from the government spokespeople. We didn't give out 100 video cameras to document rotten apples. It was to show there was something systematic happening and it was structural to the occupation.
"In this case it was remarkable that it was actually the soldiers themselves. They did in fact open an investigation.
"They couldn't ignore it."
© 2008 The Guardian
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Show AllLink to video:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2008/jul/30/beaumont.palestine
Cameras and the Internet are better than guns.
All that the success of capturing Israeli atrocities on video will mean is that the Israelis will start searching for the camcorders and shooting everyone who has one.
The IDF is becoming a corps of monsters.
jj
"There is a very clear and powerful connection between how much time you serve in the territories and how FUCKED in the head you get." -Former Israeli Soldier
Military Occupation dehumanizes BOTH the occupied and occupiers.
On the last day of my fifth trip to Israel Palestine, July 27, 2007, a religious Jew and former Infantry Lieutenant in the Israeli Defense Force/IDF who served six years in the occupied territories of Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah, Jenin and the Gaza Strip addressed over forty youth and this citizen journalist during SABEEL's 2nd International Conference: 40 Years in the Wilderness...40 Years of Occupation...
Mikhael Manekin, discharged from the IDF in 2002 is now the Foreign Relations Manager of Breaking the Silence which documents former IDF soldiers testimonies about the occupation and oppression of Palestinians, "I am a practicing Jew and in two weeks we go into the month of repentance; which requires acknowledging our sins. We cannot change things until we acknowledge our culpability.
"The problem is government policy that is implemented by young soldiers and whenever religion is involved, we will have fundamentalism. The Israeli peace and justice activists are less than 1% of Israeli society and anybody who is an activist is an optimist. You cannot do anything if you do not believe you can do something to change the situation. We have to remind ourselves that we are the minority; [it appears that] we are loosing, but we remind ourselves we are right!
"Everybody in Israel knows somebody who has served in the occupied territories. The situation in 2007 is worse than 2006 and it looks worse for 2008, but more and more activists-like Anarchists Against the Wall and Tayoush are actively working with Palestinians against the occupation, they are not afraid to travel in the occupied territories and are learning Arabic. Two, three years ago you wouldn't have heard anything; but now every week Israelis are getting arrested for fighting the occupation.
"A few years ago, the soldiers you have encountered at the checkpoints would have been me. Soldiers like myself who served during the second intifada, got our education on the job. You all have visited more places [the past nine days] than most Israelis ever have. Israeli's have no idea what is happening in the occupied territories. But, so far in 2007 we have given more Israeli's a tour through Hebron than we did in 2005 and 2006 combined. Hebron is a ghost town, the settlers are unbearable and every soldier who is stationed there understands the 600 settlers there are psychotic; insane.
"I became very opinionated while in the army, but I kept it all to myself. Nobody talks about it in the army and I was the commander and did not know until after I got out that one of the other soldiers in my unit was feeling the same way, until he gave his testimony. Israeli society wants you to believe you are a bad apple for speaking out because unless you trust the system, it will fall apart. Most Israelis who get out of the army leave the country and are probably all drugged out. They suffer post traumatic syndrome but we are the victimizers. My age group is getting the hell out of here or walling themselves off from society and are not involved in anything.
"Over 450 former soldiers have now given their testimonies and we don't publish any stories without the corroboration coming from another former soldier and the testimonies are kept anonymous.
"You have to understand you must preach to your own people; we want to shake up the comfortable people who may agree with us in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but are not activists yet."
What Breaking the Silence does is break down this barrier of denial and they began with stories from Hebron, the most painful place I have ever been and one time through Hebron will last me my lifetime...
In June 2005, my guide was Jerry Levin, full-time volunteer with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who had once been CNN's Middle East bureau chief in the 1980's. Jerry was a secular Jew married to Sis, a Christian, and since his miraculous escape from captivity he and Sis have dedicated their lives to the Palestinian cause for human rights.
Jerry was captured and held hostage in Lebanon by the Hezbollah for nearly a year, and experienced a mystical Christmas Eve, and was never the same. Jerry is lightly built and sprouts bilateral hearing aids and he told me, "Every time I get ready to return to Palestine, everyone asks me, 'Aren't you afraid?' I reply, Of what, the Palestinians? No way! But when it comes to the Israelis soldiers, you bet I am!"
Hebron is where a few hundred Israeli settlers/colonists/squatters have disposed the indigenous Palestinians and are surrounded by three thousand IDF. The eighteen- to twenty-one-year-old soldiers patrol the streets with their weapons at the ready and turned Jerry and I away at the first checkpoint we came to. Jerry smiled as he told me, "Most of the soldiers don't like the CPTs. Whenever they won't let us through, we just go another way, and always, eventually, get where we want to go."
The narrow, winding stone streets of Hebron are centuries old, but in the 21st century, one side is Palestinian and the other Israeli, but their only connection to the other is a thick, deeply sagging netting strung above ones head that catches the huge rocks, shovels, electronic equipment, furniture, and all manner of debris that have been flung onto it by the settlers/colonists/squatters.
I asked Jerry if it ever gave way and hit Palestinians on the head and he responded, "That's the intention, but it gets cleaned out about every year or so. Come back in a few months, and this netting will be much closer to your head. The settlers just throw whatever they want onto the netting; they do what ever they want and get away with it. The CPT's run interference by nonviolent resistance; we get the children and woman to where they need to be going and back again. Sometimes, the settlers curse and stone us all; it keeps it interesting."
Jerry pointed out all the formerly Palestinian homes that the settlers have painted graffiti, such as "GAS THE ARABS" and Stars of David upon. The oppression affected me viscerally and I was nauseous all day and threw up all that night. I felt as if I had entered into every movie set and photograph of the Jewish ghettos before the Holocaust.
Ever since my first journey to Israel Palestine in June 2005, I have tried to break the silence about the undemocratic state of Israel -and my governments aiding and abetting of it-on the world wide web via WAWA.
My target audience has always been the mis-and uninformed and apathetic Christians, for as Mikkael said, we must preach to our own, even when our own will not listen.
Some former Israeli soldiers in solidarity with Breaking the Silence who are trying to wake up their fellow citizens wrote:
"Since our discharge from the army, we all feel that we have become different. We feel that service in the occupied territories and the incidents we faced have distorted and harmed the moral values on which we grew up.
"We all agree that as long as Israeli society keeps sending its best people to military combat service in the occupied territories, it is extremely important that all of us, Israeli citizens, know the price which the generation who is fighting in the territories is paying, the impossible situations it is facing, the insanity it is confronting everyday, and the heavy burden it bears after being discharged from the IDF, a heavy burden that hasn't left us.
"That's why we decided to break the silence, because it's time to tell. Time to tell about everything that goes on there each and every day.
"We all served in the territories. Some served in Gaza, some in Hebron, some in Bethlehem and the rest served in other places. We all manned checkpoints, participated in patrols and arrests and took part in the war against terror. We all realized that the daily struggle against terror and the daily interaction with the civilian population has left us helpless. Our sense of justice was distorted, and so were our morality and emotions.
"The reality we experienced was made of: Innocent civilians being hurt, Kids not going to school because of the curfew, and parents who can't bring food home because they can't go to work.
"This reality has stayed us and will not go away. After discharge from the army, we decided that we shouldn't go on. We shouldn't forget what we ourselves did and what we witnessed. We decided to break the silence."
One of those who has testified also said, "There is a very clear and powerful connection between how much time you serve in the territories and how fucked in the head you get."
e/WAWA
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
My suggestion would be that several high ranking religous and non religous Jews publicly renounce the idea of Jews being the chosen people. No one in their right mind can claim to be favoured over all other peoples in the eyes of a deity without eventually succoming to behavior displayed by the squatters in Hebron.
The concept of being a chosen people is an insult to anyone with any degree of self respect.
If a Jewish child asks her parent why people hate them because they are Jewish, the parent who states that Jews are hated because they are "God's favorite" should be charged with child abuse.
The Israeli army is undoubtedly the most cowardly in the world.
My sympathies to those that suffered in this, but this is brilliant going after the occupation Rodney King style.
Is it too late to donate vid cams to the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/26/10627/
Thank you Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem!
Thank you The Guardian!
and thank you Common Dreams!