Media accountability is first and foremost on the minds of those running B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Beginning in 2007, B’Tselem“armed” ordinary Palestinians in the territories with video cameras to document their lives under the occupation. The evidence of repeated and consistent violations gathered by B’Tselem serves to refute Israeli claims that such incidents are isolated, and paints a clear picture of entrenched and systematic human-rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza. The hundreds of videos that B’Tselem has produced tend to fall into three categories: personal testimonies, footage shot from afar (for example out of a window), and direct altercations. In the first two categories, the camera is clearly used as a witness. Yet when it is brought into a given situation, such as a clash between Palestinians and settlers or soldiers, it takes on an additional role as a non-violent form of protection. The camera’s presence can act as a deterrent to violence in many cases in which settlers or soldiers realize they are being filmed. It thus prevents situations from escalating, because settlers and soldiers fear being held accountable. For example, B’Tselem reports that an elderly Palestinian man from the southern Hebron Hills refused to give up his camera even though it was broken, saying that it still provided him with protection. On the other hand, the camera may instigate or fuel violence. In many of the altercation clips, the people being filmed – both soldiers and settlers – lash out at the camera or cameraman, aggressively protest its presence, or even claim that filming is prohibited and hit or break the camera, turning the act of filming into a violent encounter.
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