According to Guy, an Israeli Ta’ayush activist and documentarian of occupation in the South Hebron Hills area of the West Bank – there has been an increase in incidents over the last month in which Israel Defense Forces soldiers have been preventing him and other Israelis from filming what goes on.
In this 7-minute video, edited together from footage taken just over the last few weeks, between February 23 and March 9, IDF soldiers – as well as high-ranking officers – are seen blocking camera lenses over and over by shoving their own smart phones in front of them. This is not only petty and immature, but also illegal, according to Israeli military law and High Court rulings. Any IDF soldier is permitted to be filmed while on duty and there is no legal restriction on filming whatsoever.
So what does the “most moral army in the world” have to hide? Well for one thing, all this footage is used to build legal cases against the IDF, which systematically abuses the use of “closed military zone” orders in these parts, kicking out Palestinians from their agricultural lands along with Israeli activists, instead of dealing with the belligerent settlers who are the ones initiating the confrontations. But also, because occupation is very ugly, so who would want it getting out?
I guess these soldiers are just trying to implement the “self-censorship” that Culture Minister Limor Livnat urged all Israeli filmmakers to take part in, following Oscar nominations for two films critical of Israeli policies. It is admittedly hard to make Israel look good when it does such bad things.
