Israeli army and border police troops stop Palestinians entering Al-Shuhada ( Martyrs') St., Hebron, during the demo on the twentieth anniversary of the street's closure in 1994. Wikicommons\/Mustafa Bader. Some rights reserved.Last Thursday, a video emerged, shot by \u2018a local Palestinian
\nactivist\u2019, which showed a Palestinian youth called Abdul Fatah al-Sharif being
\nshot in the head. <\/i><\/p>\n
If you haven\u2019t had the unpleasant experience of watching
\nthat video, here is what it shows. There are two young Palestinians lying on
\nthe ground, having recently been shot after one of them inflicted a light knife
\nwound on an Israeli soldier. <\/p>\n
Two Magen David Adom ambulances rush to the scene (Magen
\nDavid Adom is Israel\u2019s branch of the Red Cross). They offer no assistance to
\nthe two critically injured Palestinians (one of them was in fact probably dead
\nat this point), and do not even attempt to assess their situation. All their
\nefforts focus on the soldier, whose condition can be easily seen (and has
\nsubsequently turned out to be) far from critical. <\/p>\n
At this point another soldier \u2013 an army medic, as it turns
\nout \u2013 walks forward a few paces, hefts his rifle, and casually shoots the still
\nmoving Abdul Fatah in the head. <\/p>\n
Nobody present appears to be surprised or disturbed in any
\nway by what they have just seen. <\/p>\n
But I was present. And I was disturbed. My name is Imad Abu
\nShamsiyya. I shot that video. I was the local Palestinian activist. <\/p>\n
We
\nhave huge respect for B\u2019tselem. But we feel it is important that, as
\nPalestinians, we try to do things and speak for ourselves.The video has got a lot of coverage and generated a lot of
\ndiscussion worldwide. For my own part, I\u2019ve spent much of the past few days
\ngiving interviews for some of the big news networks. I\u2019m pleased my work has
\nhad an impact. I had hoped this video would be a \u2018media bomb\u2019 that would
\nshatter any illusion that Israeli soldiers \u2013 for all their talk of self-defence
\nor rules of engagement \u2013 do not routinely kill our children and young people in
\ncold blood and without a shred of justification. <\/p>\n
The video isn\u2019t about me as an activist. It\u2019s about a
\nPalestinian who was murdered three times \u2013 once when he was first shot, once
\nwhen he was denied first aid and for the third time in which he was callously
\nexecuted on the ground; and it\u2019s about the army who murdered him. But I do feel
\nthat I\u2019m part of the story. Because I\u2019m not an anonymous fly on the wall. What
\nI film is also what I live. <\/p>\n
As Palestinians, we never feel safe. We have lived all of
\nour lives in a country where we are made to feel that we are always in the
\nwrong place at the wrong time; where we have no stake at all in the forces that
\ncontrol our destiny, and where each of us has always had to deal with the
\nnagging feeling, sometimes waxing, sometimes waning, but always there, that we,
\nor those we love could any day be shot down. My
\ngreat uncle\u2019s house had long been abandoned, while the Israeli army had built
\nan observation post on its roof.<\/p>\n
We moved \u2013 my wife Faiza and I \u2013 to Tel Rumeida, the street
\nwhere all this happened, in 2009. At that time we were living with my parents
\nbut eager to find somewhere for ourselves. That was when the idea occurred to
\nus: why rent a new house, when the family already owned one? Back in the 1950s,
\nmy great uncle had built a handsome town house in what was then the thriving
\ncentre of a prosperous city with a world-famous shoemaking industry. <\/p>\n
But that was back then. First came the military occupation
\nof the West Bank in 1967. In 1984, a small group of Jewish fundamentalists set
\nup an ad hoc settlement of caravans right in the heart of the city, overlooking
\nTel Rumeida and Shuhada Street \u2013 the grand high street of our city, which leads
\ndown to the shrine of Ibrahim \u2013 or Abraham. Hebron is a sacred place to Jews,
\nas it is to us Muslims. But the fundamentalist settlers don\u2019t want to live in
\nthe bustling city as it is now. They live in a dream in which we don\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n
Then in 1993, a radical American settler called Baruch
\nGoldstein walked into the Ibrahimi Mosque with a machine gun and killed 29
\npeople. The Israeli state seized the opportunity to close off the centre of the
\nWest Bank\u2019s largest city to Palestinian business and traffic, and to expel most
\nof the Palestinians from it. <\/p>\n
Tel Rumeida, just above Shuhada Street was now subject to
\nintense military control. My great uncle\u2019s house had long been abandoned, while
\nthe Israeli army had built an observation post on its roof. Two months after that, by a lucky coincidence, I happened
\nto see a settler on our roof. He was trying to poison our water tank. <\/p>\n
Some people must have thought it was a crazy idea to try to
\nset up in such a place. But we needed somewhere to live, and we liked the idea
\nof reclaiming a small piece of Palestine for ourselves from under the noses of
\nthe occupiers. The house wasn\u2019t in great condition after being left uninhabited
\nfor so long, and the restrictions placed on us by the army made things more
\ndifficult. We weren\u2019t allowed to bring a car into the area, so we had to bring
\nthe furniture in piece by piece. But in the end we managed it.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long after we had moved in that we had our first
\nbitter taste of the reality of living cheek by jowl with the occupier. While
\nMadeleine, our eldest child \u2013 then in tenth grade – was walking to school,
\nsettlers standing on our own roof threw a rock which hit her in the face. <\/p>\n
That was when I got involved with the Israeli human rights
\ngroup B\u2019tselem. They were distributing cameras, encouraging Palestinians to
\nfilm the attacks we experience. I had worked in the past as a wedding
\nphotographer, so I didn\u2019t really need the training. But I did need a camera.
\nThey also provided training in how to stay safe while filming \u2013 the regulation
\nnumber of metres distant we had to be from checkpoints and so on. <\/p>\n
As time went on, the attacks against the family continued.
\nOur younger daughter, Marwa, had her hair set on fire. Saleh, the baby of the
\nfamily, was stabbed in the hand. Our eldest son, Awni, was hassled by soldiers
\nand police and arrested on numerous occasions. <\/p>\n
Then there have been the attacks against the whole family. About
\na year ago I woke up after midnight and realised that there was a fire
\nburning outside of the house which had already reached one of the rooms. The
\nneighbours rushed to help us put it out. Two months after that, by a lucky
\ncoincidence, I happened to see a settler on our roof. He was trying to poison
\nour water tank. <\/p>\n
The video camera meant we were able to document these
\nattacks. And by this time the whole family had started to film, and much of the
\nneighbourhood. With a local activist friend, Badia Dwaik, I helped found a
\nlocal grassroots organisation, Human Rights Defenders. We try to produce and
\ndisseminate videos to get the word out in similar fashion to B\u2019tselem. We have
\nhuge respect for B\u2019tselem. But we feel it is important that, as Palestinians, we
\ntry to do things and speak for ourselves. From about 2010 I started training
\npeople in how to make activist films in my turn.<\/p>\n
Faiza and I now work very much as a team. Whenever there is trouble,
\npeople call on us to come round with our cameras. It has helped a bit.
\nThe settlers will never respect us. But sometimes they respect the
\ncameras and
\nback off. It\u2019s also symbolically important. When Faiza stands filming,
\nfearlessly, in front of a gang of violent settlers, it helps to show
\nthat we
\nstill have our resolve. When you have a camera in your hands, you feel
\nthat
\nthere is at least something you can do to take control of a situation in
\n which
\nyou can easily feel powerless. <\/p>\n
A photo contrasts life in a busy Hebron market (1999) with life on that street since the centre of Hebron was closed to Palestinians. Wikicommons\/ Trocaire. Some rights reserved. <\/i><\/p>\n
Since I filmed that recent video where the Israeli army was
\ncaught red handed carrying out an extra-judicial execution, I\u2019ve known that I\u2019m
\na marked man. At the police station where they took my testimony, they warned
\nme that the settlers would have their revenge. \u2018Aren\u2019t you afraid?\u2019 they asked
\nme. \u2018Why should I be afraid?\u2019 I replied. \u2018I\u2019m not the murderer\u2019. <\/p>\n
To me, that exchange felt like a threat. But it wasn\u2019t long
\nbefore the real threat came. The next night, the phone rang. The voice at the
\nother end said \u2018we will burn you just like we burned the Dawabshehs\u2019 \u2013 a family
\nthat was completely wiped out, but for one horribly injured infant \u2013 in an
\narson attack carried out by radical settlers last summer. The next day, a crowd
\nof settlers tried to storm the house, shouting obscene insults. We\u2019ve been
\nfrightened before, but not like this. We try not to leave the house. We\u2019ve
\nstarted sleeping all in the same room. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult to have much hope for the future in Palestine.
\nWe dream of freedom and a country of our own. But it looks more and more like
\nthe two state solution is dead. And what we have experienced from the settlers
\nand the soldiers makes the idea of a just, secular regime for everyone feel
\nlike an absurd pipe dream. In the meantime, many people have started calling
\nfor an international force to protect us. But each injustice we document feels
\nlike a small step to freedom all the same.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli army and border police troops stop Palestinians entering Al-Shuhada ( Martyrs') St., Hebron, during the demo on the twentieth anniversary of the street's closure in 1994. Wikicommons\/Mustafa Bader. Some rights reserved.Last Thursday, a video emerged, shot by \u2018a local Palestinian activist\u2019, which showed a Palestinian youth called Abdul Fatah al-Sharif being shot in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}