The B'Tselem Video Archive

B’Tselem has been documenting, researching and publishing statistics, testimonies, video footage, position papers and reports on human rights violations in the occupied territories since 1989. The video archive is the part of that output that reaches furthest, because film is harder to argue with than a table, and because a camera in the hands of the person the incident happens to produces a record that no official account has to be trusted for.

The archive is arranged as running channels rather than as a chronological reel, which is how it should be used: Gaza; East Jerusalem; Minors; Israeli forces; and “Settler Violence = State Violence,” a channel whose title carries B’Tselem’s analytical claim that the two are not separable. Recent entries in the archive document the food crisis in Gaza under blockade, Palestinian children and teenagers killed in the West Bank, expulsions from East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, and the pressure on shepherding communities in the South Hebron Hills and Area C. Alongside the channels sit longer video projects — “East Jerusalem: 6 Voices,” “Gaza: An Inside Look,” “My Own Private Gaza,” and short documentaries.

The organisation’s own framing has shifted, and that shift is part of what a researcher is citing. B’Tselem states that its initial mandate focused on the occupation regime in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza, but that over the years it became clear that the idea of two parallel regimes — a permanent democracy west of the Green Line and a temporary military occupation east of it — “is divorced from reality,” and that the entire area Israel controls is ruled by a single apartheid regime. Footage collected before that reframing is presented within it now.

Practical notes. B’Tselem publishes in Hebrew, Arabic and English, and the three versions are close to parallel. The site rate-limits aggressive automated access, so bulk harvesting will fail; work through the channel pages. And for citation purposes it is worth recording B’Tselem’s standing in the field alongside the footage: the organisation received the Carter-Menil Award for Human Rights in 1989 jointly with Al-Haq, which is a useful reminder that the Israeli and Palestinian documentation projects of the occupation began, in the same year, as counterparts.

Sources

• Video — B’Tselem
• About B’Tselem