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Monday 8 December 2008

Advice to btselem



Footage filmed by Jamal Abu-Sa'ifan, a Palestinian resident of Hebron, documenting a settler shooting two members of his family. The event occures following the eviction of the new settlment in Hebron. Settlers attacked the nearby house of the Abu-Se'ifan family, and during ensuing clashes, a settler fired his handgun at Hosni Abu-Se'ifan (40), who was hit in the chest and is in stable condition, and his father, 'Abd al-Hai Abu-Sa'ifan (65) who was moderately wounded in his arm. the two were taken to a Hebron hospital. The video shows other members of the family manage to overcome the shooter, then a security guard from the nearby settlement Kiryat Arba arrives and the scene, and fires his weapon in the air.
The Israeli organisation Btselem has done a good thing in distributing 100 small video cameras, bringing the reality of the occupation's effects on Palestinians to Israeli TV screens amongst other things.

But if you visit their site, the video page uses a terribly old hat and clumsy method (though you can download them) and - most importantly - doesn't connect with the sort of viral tools that have become de rigueur with other campaigners such as Amnesty as well as, obviously, clued-up politicians.

Btselem have a YouTube channel but they don't promote it. Once I saw this video, I had to hunt for it to bring it to you (and thereby increasing the viewership for Btselem) because - of course - papers like The Guardian and others insist on turning it into 'their own' copy and it's unebeddable.

They should just embed the YouTube copies on their website as well as adding download links to them and also include the YouTube logo linking to the channel, promoting subscriptions.

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