Nablus- No one would have known what happened on the night of last November 13 with the Palestinian citizen Iyad Banat after the occupation soldiers stormed his house in the city of Hebron in the south of the West Bank, if he had not filmed what happened in the smallest details and conveyed it to the world directly after he documented it on his account on the “Tik Tok” platform. “.
A video clip that was widely broadcast on various social media shows two Israeli soldiers severely beating the young man, Iyad, in the middle of his family and children, similar to other videos that Palestinians began filming and publishing to expose the crimes of the occupation, and filming became their way to protect themselves from the violence and arrogance of the occupation.
That night, occupation soldiers surrounded the house of the Banat family in the southern neighborhood of Hebron and stormed it at one in the morning. The young man rushed to broadcast a live broadcast of the incident on his phone after he had hidden it from their eyes “to show their violence as they stormed the safe homes of Palestinians, and to document any assault committed by the soldiers.”
Iyad told Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “They beat me violently with their hands, feet, and rifles, and with the iron crowbar with which they opened the door of the house in front of my wife and six children, one of whom the soldiers almost killed after they threw the cupboard on top of him.”
Great echo
Outside the house, Iyad and his elderly relatives were taken and detained for 4 hours. They were handcuffed and blindfolded, amid severe beatings that left some of them seriously injured.
The photography that Banat published on all his platforms had a great resonance, and was rich material for many human rights institutions that visited him and learned closely what happened to him and documented him. For him, it was enough to expose the crimes of the occupation and expose the “regular army,” as he described it.
But these platforms punished him and closed all of his pages, and when he opened his account on “Tik Tok” with a new name, they notified him “not to photograph the security forces operating in his area, and that he would be held accountable for that by law.”
He says, “I am well aware that the occupation soldiers will not be held accountable, but what happened was enough to deter them, and I call on every citizen to install hidden cameras inside their homes to document the occupation’s violations.”
As fate would have it, the occupation contented itself with beating Iyad without executing him, as happened with the two young men, Rami Al-Aboushi and Thaer Shaheen (25 years each) in the Al-Far’a camp near the city of Tubas in the northern West Bank on December 8, when the occupation soldiers opened fire on them from zero distance even though they were… They did not pose the slightest threat to them.
Filming from a camera fixed to the wall of the martyr Thaer’s house, and another filming on the phone, showed two military vehicles approaching, a soldier getting out of one of them and the other remaining inside it. They fired approximately 12 bullets at Rami and killed him. Then they approached Thaer and fired 4 bullets at him.
Mansour Al-Aboushi, the uncle of the martyr Rami, says, “The two martyrs did not pose the slightest threat to the occupation, and they were far from the area of the event. Rami was even hit by a bullet from a distance and fell to the ground, then they finished him off.”
The importance of documentation
Al-Aboushi had lost his brother, the child Muhammad, in a similar incident, but it was not documented, in 1989, after an Israeli soldier sniped him in one of the camp’s alleys and killed him. He added to Tel Aviv Tribune Net, “The video achieved great spread, and exceeded 20 million views on Telegram, and this is enough to expose the occupation, and despite his claim to open a military investigation into Soldiers will not be convicted or held accountable.”
In addition to documenting and exposing the brutality of the occupation and its cold-blooded execution of the two martyrs, the photography will be tangible evidence of their families’ legal procedures to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Karim Gibran, a researcher at the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, believes that such documentation is important, especially if it is visual, because it reflects “the brutality of soldiers and their illegal practices, refutes their claims, and most importantly, convinces others of the Palestinian narrative.”
Gibran says – to Tel Aviv Tribune Net – that as a human rights institution that documents the occupation’s violations, they rely on photography, and they also supported a project to document photography with cameras before smartphones. Even if the occupation does not hold its soldiers accountable, these clips are enough to expose their brutality to Israeli society.
The researcher believes it is necessary to spread photography through institutions and not individuals, “so that it can escape its limitations and become more professional, powerful, and globally widespread, and reach the international media.”
Ihsan Adel, head of the Law for Palestine Organization, agrees with Gibran about the importance of photography from a media and advocacy standpoint, exposing Israel’s violations and refuting its army’s “moral claims,” which achieves global solidarity and influence, especially on decision-makers.
Effective contribution
On the legal and legal level, human rights organizations can rely on these documents, and investigative committees and international courts can also adopt them, which is known – according to Adel – as “open sources of information” that international investigators use through the “Berkeley Protocol” on open source digital investigations. .
He told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that much of the material submitted and submitted to the International Criminal Court by human rights organizations relies partly on open sources, and that “citizens’ videos contributed to showing the fact that the targeting of the martyr journalist Sherine Abu Aqla was through the occupation soldiers, and not in terms of the presence of the Palestinians as it was.” Israel claimed the beginning.
Adel called for investing in these videos by delivering them to the competent authorities and human rights organizations in Palestine, and for submitting them to the International Criminal Court through its official website. He stressed the importance of filming in high quality, saving the filming material in backup copies, and documenting it in a safe and internationally accepted way.
He pointed out the importance of recording the name of the photographer, who appears in the video, and the time and place. It is preferable to show an enlarged picture showing all his features, such as a school or a public square, which makes it easier to easily identify him, so as not to raise doubts about his credibility.