Digital Shahid – From Broadcast Media to Citizen Journalism in Palestine

In January 2007, a video a few minutes long sparked stark outrage in Israel. At first it circulated on the Internet and soon after was broadcast by several TV channels around the world. It showed a woman from the Jewish settlement of Tel Rumeida, in the Old City of Hebron, West Bank, cursing a young Palestinian girl. The woman, later identified as Yifat Alkobi, was one of the 500 radical settlers dwelling in the heart of one of the most volatile Palestinian cities, where, despite the presence of almost 2,000 Israeli soldiers, the constant friction between the Jewish and the Arab communities has created a highly explosive situation. The incident was filmed with a handy camera by the sixteen-year-old daughter of the Abu Eishe family from within the metallic grid that protects her house from the frequent attacks of neighboring settlers. The footage captured the woman shouting to the girl's sister the Arabic and Hebrew term for whore, sharmouta. The word become a label for the video and it was referred to as such in the debates that stirred up Israeli public opinion. Because of the ban on traveling to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that footage gave many Israelis their first ever insight into an aspect of Palestinian daily life under occupation. For them, it was a shock. For B'tselem, a Jerusalem-based advocacy organization which relies on a network of activists campaigning for the respect of human rights in the Occupied Territories, and which produced and posted the video online, it was a success. Then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz spoke publicly about the sharmouta video, condemning the behavior of the settler and ordering an investigation. Moreover, a ministerial committee was established to address issues in Hebron, highlighting the so-called 'quiet transfer' of Palestinians from the Old City, which has turned the once vibrant area into a ghost town. Since then, this sort of grassroots reporting, otherwise called citizen journalism and made possible by the penetration of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the emergence of Web 2.0, has enabled and empowered many Palestinians, for the first time, to show their daily plight: to be the makers, and not only the protagonists, of the headlines

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