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B'Tselem (Template:Lang-he, "in the image of", as in Genesis 1:27) is an Israeli non-governmental organization (NGO). It calls itself "The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories". The group was founded on February 3, 1989 by a group of prominent Israeli public figures, including lawyers, academics, journalists, and members of the Knesset.

B'Tselem's stated goals are "to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel". In December 1989 the organization received the Carter-Menil Human Rights Prize. Its executive director is Jessica Montell.

History

B'Tselem was founded on February 3, 1989 by a group of prominent Israeli public figures, including lawyers, academics, journalists, and members of the Knesset. B'Tselem's stated goals are "to document and educate the Israeli public and policymakers about human rights violations in the Occupied Territories, combat the phenomenon of denial prevalent among the Israeli public, and help create a human rights culture in Israel" with the primary objective being "to change Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories and ensure that its government, which rules the Occupied Territories, protects the human rights of residents there and complies with its obligations under international law."

The NGO's key founders were:

• Dr Daphna Golan-Agnon (academic and founding director of feminist peace group Bat Shalom)
• David Zucker (Knesset member for the Ratz party, one of the founders of Peace Now movement)
• Haim Oron (Knesset member for the Mapam party, one of the founders of Peace Now movement)
• Zehava Gal-On (Ratz party activist and future Knesset member for the Meretz party formed through the merger of Ratz and Mapam)
• Avigdor Feldman (civil liberties lawyer)
• Dr Edy Kaufman (academic and civil liberties activist)

Main activities

The focus on documentation reflects B'Tselem's objective of providing as much information as possible to the Israeli public, since information is indispensable to taking action and making choices.

Activity in the Knesset

B'Tselem regularly provides Knesset members with information on alleged human rights violations in the West Bank, and alleged injustices caused by Israeli authorities. Several Knesset members, from various factions, assist B'Tselem in placing human rights matters on the public agenda and in safeguarding human rights.

Public action

B'Tselem has hundreds of supporters and volunteers who work to improve the human rights situation in the West Bank. These activities include, in part, setting up information stands, distributing printed material, addressing problems and requests to decision-makers, and participating in protests in the West Bank.

Reports

B'Tselem publishes reports on various issues such as torture, fatal shootings by security forces, restrictions on movement, expropriation of land and discrimination in planning and building in East Jerusalem, administrative detention, house demolitions, and violence by Israeli settlers. Over one hundred reports have been published so far. The organization serves as a source of information for journalists, researchers and the diplomatic community at the national and international level. B'Tselem's activities receive extensive media coverage.

B'Tselem also campaigns against the death penalty and the human rights record of the Palestinian Authority. On 17 February 2005, the organization called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to commute the sentences of Palestinians condemned to death and abolish the death penalty. Abbas had shortly before ratified the death sentences of a number of Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel or of other criminal charges.

Video

B'Tselem has expanded its operations in recent years to increasingly include video-based footage. The expansion of its video project began in August 2007 with the launching of MySpace, Facebook and YouTube sites which are to act as an alternative area for the showcasing of the organisation's films - aimed at expanding the group's presence amongst a younger age category and attracting people to its main website. Other video sharing websites were following.

Main research areas

B'Tselem investigates in a number of aspects related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. In particular the following:

• The accountability of police and military forces in the territories.
• The use of administrative punishment.
• The continued use of torture during interrogations, particularly by the GSS (General Security Services of Israel).
• The illegal policy of house demolition, as a form of collective punishment, which is often justified for alleged military purposes.
• Inequalities in the planning and building procedures which discriminate against Palestinians Israeli-Arabs.
• The legal status of residents of East Jerusalem.
• The path and effects of the Israeli West Bank barrier and its legal status.
• Problems related to family unification and child registration.
• Neglect of infrastructure and services.
• Illegal Israeli settlements and the extreme closures placed upon the Palestinian population of Hebron.
• Breaches of international human rights law.
• The water crisis in Palestinian areas.
• Family separation.
• Restrictions on movement, such as checkpoints roads, curfew and the effect these have on the economy and medical treatment.
• Israeli settlement land expropriation, settler violence and attacks on Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants.
• Gaza Strip - The scope of Israeli control, economic and social decline, sonic booms, access restrictions, the firing of Qassam rockets.
• Use of force - beating and abuse, use of firearms and human shields.
• Violations by Palestinians - attacks on civilians, harm to suspected collaborators, death penalty in the Palestinian Authority.
• Rights of workers from the territories.

Report on rockets from Gaza

A B'Tselem report devoted to Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians gave no information about Israeli attacks on Gaza but reported that from June 2004 to 17 January 2009, 19 civilians and 2 soldiers were killed in Israel by rockets and mortar fire by Palestinians. Four of them were minors.

According to the UN, cited by B'Tselem the number of rockets fired at Israel was as follows:

• 2005: 1194 Qassam rockets (an average of 100 a month)
• 2006: 1786 rockets
• 2007: 1331
• 2008: 2048 rockets and more than 1672 mortar shells.

Board members

B'Tselem board members are:

• Co-chairs:
  • David Kretzmer, Professor of Law, Faculty of Law and School of Public Policy, Hebrew University.
  • Gila Svirsky, Co-founder of Coalition of Women for a Just Peace.

• Neta Amar: Lawyer, Legal Advisor for IHL Project, Diakonia and Staff Attorney for Rabbis for Human Rights.
• Anat Biletzki: Professor of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University.
• Orna Ben-Naftaly: Head of the Law and Culture Division and the International Law Division, the Law School, the College of Management Academic Studies.
• Menachem Fisch: Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science, Tel-Aviv University and Senior Fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute.
• Tamar Hermann: Dean of Academic Studies, the Open University of Israel, and Senior Research Fellow, the Israel Democracy Institute.
• Amnon Kapeliouk: Journalist, Le Monde Diplomatique (Haaretz named A.Kapeliouk as one of the founders of B'Tselem).
• Peretz Kidron: Journalist and Translator.
• Menachem Klein: Lecturer in Political Science, Bar Ilan University.
• Victor Lederfarb: Financial Administrator, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
• David Neuhaus: Jesuit Priest, Reverend, Lecturer in Religious Studies at Bethlehem University and Seminary of the Holy Land in Beit Jala.
• Danny Rubinstein: Journalist, Ha'aretz Newspaper.
• Alla Shainskaya: Senior Staff Scientist, Weizmann Institute of Science.
• Ronny Talmor: Author and editor.
• Oren Yiftachel: professor of political geography and urban planning, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
• Rayef Zreik: Co-founder of Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Lecturer at the Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University.

Board members have changed over the past 10 years. Four board members from 1998 remain on the board in 2008.

Staff

The group's executive director is Jessica Montell. In 2011 the group staff has 38 employees in a Research Department, a Data Coordination department, a communications department, and an administration department.

Attacks on staff

B'Tselem staff members have been both verbally and physically attacked by both Israeli settlers and military/police, including the assault of two of its fieldworker staff. According to B'Tselem, in one such incident, captured on film on 19 January 2008, a fieldworker was beaten by Israeli soldiers, then arrested for attacking them. In another, on 20 June 2008, according to the organization, a worker was beaten and had his film confiscated after filming IDF troops ignoring violent crimes by Israeli settlers. Following B’Tselem’s complaint, Israeli military police opened an investigation. The group also claims to have been the victim of other kinds of harassment, such as the slashing of tires on the organisation's jeep.

Funding

B'Tselem is independent and is funded by contributions from foundations in Europe, Israel and North America that support human rights activity, by private individuals in Israel and abroad, and by the governments of some EU countries and the European Commission.

According to B'Tselem, their donors include:

• British Foreign and Commonwealth Office
• Christian Aid (UK)
• Commission of the European Communities - 99,717 € per year (2007)
• DanChurchAid (Denmark)
• Diakonia (Sweden)
• Development Corporation Ireland
• EED (Church Development Service, Germany)
• Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland
• Ford Foundation (USA)
• Foundation for Middle East Peace
• ICCO (Interchurch Organisation for Development Co-operation, Netherlands)
• International Commission of Jurists, Swedish Section
• Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation
• New Israel Fund (Israel)
• Norwegian Foreign Ministry
• Shefa Fund
• SIVMO (Netherlands)
• Stichting Het Solidariteitsfonds (Netherlands)
• Trócaire (Ireland)

Critical commentary and response

The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a pro-Israel media watchdog group, has voiced concern that B'Tselem classifies casualties into military versus civilian rather than combatant versus non-combatant. Tamar Sternthal, director of CAMERA's Israel office, and Yehonatan Dachuch-Halevi, a former Israeli Military Intelligence officer, argued that B'Tselem wrongly classifies Palestinian militants as civilians. CAMERA also alleged that B'Tselem defined as "civilian" Palestinians those killed while engaged in attacks on Israelis.

B'Tselem replied by stating that initial media reports or statements from the IDF were inaccurate:

B'Tselem's methodology is completely transparent; indeed much of CAMERA's "ammunition" was taken from our own website. Palestinians employing potentially lethal force (guns, rockets, explosives, Molotov cocktails) are listed as having participated in hostilities at the time they were killed. The fact that a person carried a weapon but did not actually take it out and use it does not make that person a combatant. Likewise with regard to stonethrowing; in most situations, stonethrowing does not constitute lethal force. This does not relieve the stonethrower of criminal liability, and his crime is plainly noted in our statistics. However, a 14 year-old boy throwing stones at an armoured jeep from a distance of over 50 feet – as was the case when soldiers shot Jamil al-Jabji – is not participating in an armed conflict, and the military does not need to respond with live ammunition (the fact that the military has initiated an investigation into this case would indicate that they retroactively agree). The devil is in the details. In those cases, where stonethrowing does indeed endanger lives (dropping cinder blocks from a roof, for example) this is classified as participation in hostilities.

The group also said it no longer classifies Palestinians into civilians and security forces in a position which has also been articulated by Israel's High Court of Justice.

NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel non-governmental organization which aims to stop humanitarian NGOs from promoting agendas which it perceives as anti-Israel, has accused B'Tselem of having a political agenda and falsifying and distorting data. NGO Monitor further writes that B'Tselem employs "abusive and demonizing rhetoric designed to elicit political support for Palestinians". The group states it "stands behind the accuracy of its data" which is "based on independent fieldwork by its own well-trained staff" and that its methodology is "completely transparent".

In May 2007, B'Tselem and Hamoked released a report detailing testimonies of Palestinian prisoners that said they were subjected to "beatings, painful binding, swearing, humiliation and denial of basic needs" by IDF soldiers and Shin Bet agents. Caroline B. Glick, deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post and former advisor to Benjamin Netanyahu, asserted in an editorial that B'Tselem and the Israeli human rights group Hamoked are "radical leftist organizations with a documented history of falsifying and distorting data". The findings of the report were publicized in Israeli and foreign media. The World Bank published a similar report the next week which used information provided by B'Tselem, Hamoked, and other Israeli human rights groups.

In July 2010, indicting two Israeli soldiers for alleged manslaughter, Israeli Military Advocate General Avichai Mendelblit thanked the organisation for "testimonies its activists passed on to the IDF and for assisting in coordinating the questioning of Palestinian eyewitnesses at the Erez crossing".

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz also refers to B'Tselem as a left-wing rights group.

Representative publications

• The Gaza Strip: One Big Prison (2007)
• Medical Personnel Harmed: The Delay, Abuse and Humiliation of Medical Personnel by Israeli Security Forces (2003)
• Thirsty for a Solution: The Water Shortage in the Occupied Territories and its Solution in the Final Status Agreement (2000)
• Land Grab: Israel's Settlement Policy in the West Bank (2002)

See also

• Human rights in Israel
• Hamoked
• Alternative information center
• Bimkom
• Bustan
• Meretz

References

1. ^ "About B'Tselem". B'Tselem. Retrieved 2 February 2010.
2. ^ Staff, B'Tselem.
3. A Special Prize of the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation
4. Carter-Menil Rights Award For Israeli and Arab Groups, The New York Times, 16 November 1989.
5. B'Tselem (Contributor) (2007-01-11). Sharmouta ("whore" in Arabic). Event occurs at 01:03 minutes. Retrieved 2007-12-30.
6. B'Tselem at YouTube
   B'Tselem at MySpace
   B'Tselem at Facebook
   B'Tselem at Dailymotion
   B'Tselem at Sevenload
   B'Tselem-Videos at Yahoo! Video
7. Ha'aretz 14 August 2008 B'tselem: IDF only launched 4 probes into 189 Palestinian deaths By Yuval Azoulay
8. Board members, B'Tselem.
9. Journalist, B'Tselem founder Amnon Kapeliouk dies aged 78, By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz Correspondent, 28/06/2009
10. B'Tselem Quarterly for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, December 1998
11. List of Btselem board members, 2008
12. B'Tselem: Soldiers assault and arrest B'Tselem worker in Hebron
13. B'Tselem: Soldier assaults B'Tselem worker filming settler violence, takes the cassette
14. ^ "List of donors to B'Tselem". B'Tselem. Retrieved 2 February 2010.
15. EC.External cooperation programmes
16. B'Tselem, Los Angeles Times Redefine "Civilian", CAMERA Media Analyses, 7 July 2003.
17. Sternthal, Tamar (2008-09-24). "Bending the truth". Ynetnews. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
18. Researcher Slams B'Tselem as Inflating Arab Civilian Casualties, by Gil Ronen, Published: 10/26/08
19. B'tselem projects a tendentious and unsubstantiated image of Israel, By David Z. Bernstein, June 10, 2007
20. B'Tselem's Annual Casualty Figures Questioned, CAMERA Media Analyses, January 3, 2007.
21. ^ B'Tselem Official written response to the CAMERA Organisation, Fax & Press Release, 22nd August 2007
22. Betselem: Report Uses Outdated Sources and the Rhetoric of Demonization, NGO Monitor Analysis (Vol. 2 No. 12), 15 August 2004.
23. B'Tselem: The Torture and Ill-Treatment of Palestinian Detainees
24. ^ Column one: What is Israel's problem? , , The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2007.
25. IslamOnline: 14 Ways to Torture Palestinian Detainees
26. World Bank: Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and Efficiency in the Palestinian Economy
27. Pfeffer, Anshel (7 July 2010). "IDF soldier charged with killing women during Gaza op". Haaretz.
28. Left-wing rights group B'Tselem to establish U.S. representation, By Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondent, 01/01/2008
29. Sharp rise in number of reports of soldiers harming Palestinian civilians By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent, 01/04/2009
30. B'Tselem: IDF may have executed unarmed Palestinian militants, By Haaretz Service, 26/12/2009

External links

• B'Tselem official homepage

• 1989 establishments
• Human rights organizations
• Human rights organizations based in Israel
• Non-governmental organizations involved in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Hebrew words and phrases