Three years ago the Israeli civil rights groups, B'Tselem, launched a new project. It gave video cameras to around 160 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Their remit was to record the human rights violations they experienced at the hands of Israeli settlers and soldiers. Now they no longer retaliate with a barrage of stones - they start filming. Vida Adamoli investigates

Project ‘Shooting Back’ is the brainchild of Oren Yakobovich, a B'Tselem activist and filmmaker, who served with the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank. He was appalled by what he saw. ‘I realised something was wrong with the narrative I knew,’ he says. ‘For Israelis there is a conspiracy of silence. Nobody wants to know what is happening there.’

The resulting videos have sparked intense debate within Israel, particularly a widely seen clip of an Israeli settler calling a Palestinian teenager a ‘whore’ directly into the camera. Among the many others is a Hebron settler shooting and wounding three Palestinians at close range and an attack on a woman grazing her goat too close to a settlement. ‘For the Israeli public it was the first time they really managed to feel what it means to be Palestinian,’ says Yakobovich. ‘For the first time Israelis are identifying with the Palestinians.’

Filming in the high-risk West Bank and Gaza is very dangerous. B'Tselem gives instruction to the Palestinian cameramen on when to film and how to protect themselves. They also run educational courses in human rights, video skills and finding a creative voice. As a result not all the videos are shaky scenes of violence: one man has made a short documentary about a family with ten children living in a cave.

The initial aim of ‘Shooting Back’ was to raise international awareness of settler and army violence. Three years on, however,  a wider vision has emerged. With the  development of the project B'Tselem found a community was being created. Through using the cameras children and women are finding their voices. The camera has proved to be a non-violent tool for empowerment.

See videos.

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