Palestinians Use Video Cameras To Document Attacks By Settlers

In recent years, Palestinians have been subjected to daily attacks by settlers. Video cameras have become a crucial way for Palestinians to document the daily harassment inflicted on them by Israeli settlers. Reports by Palestinians of physical attacks and damage to property usually go unattended by the Israeli military and police. On Friday the 13 B’tselem, a human rights organization based in Israel, released a video showing an attack on a Palestinian family living on the southern hills of Al-Halil. The family was attacked by four settlers armed with baseball bats while farming their land.
The video was shot by the Palestinian family and the camera was given to them as part of a project called “Shooting Back” in which more than a hundred cameras were given to Palestinian families who live in close proximity to settlements.

B’tselem on its website explained that:
“Shooting Back" works with families who live in close proximity to settlements, to military bases or at the sites of frequent army incursions. Settlers daily harassing a family in Hebron or attacking farmers in the South Hebron Hills, soldiers invading Qalqilya, daily life in the village of Yanun… these are just some examples of the material filmed by over 100 cameras that we have distributed to families throughout the Occupied Territories. B'Tselem has succeeded in airing this material on major Israeli and international news networks, exposing global audiences to the previously unseen.”

The video provided evidence against two settlers, who were arrested by the Israeli police. The police spokesperson Mickey Rosenfeld, however, in a typical blame the victims strategy that Israel have been using for so long, have suggested that the women in the Palestinian family have provoked the attack by dressing improperly.

According to Yesh Din (Hebrew for "there is law"), an organization dedicated to opposing the continuing violation of Palestinian human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, more then ninety percent of complaints filed by Palestinians against and ninety six percent of all files about trespassing, including cases of uprooting olive trees, are closed without indictments being processed, are closed. Yesh Din, from studying 42 cases of complaints filled by Palestinians, has concluded that, among other things, the failure to present charges against the attackers was because the language that the compliant was written was in Hebrew and not in Arabic, the original language in which the testimony were given. Yesh Din also observed the fact the many files of complaints were closed almost immediately after the complaint was received.

Yesh Din report,
http://www.yesh-din.org/site/index.php?page=summary〈=en .

You tube video of the attack on the Palestinian family,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjLetYR91nA&e

B’tselem “Shooting Back” project
http://www.btselem.org/english/Video/Shooting_Back_Background.asp