B’Tselem Director Hagai El-Ad has appealed to the Israeli army and the police to demand protection for Imad Abu Shamsiya, the Palestinian who filmed the March 24 shooting death of assailant Abdel Fatah al-Sharif by an Israeli soldier in Hebron. Since the video became public, and especially since the soldier’s arrest, Jewish settlers in Hebron have been threatening Abu Shamsiya’s life and throwing stones at his home in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood. They even uploaded his photo onto right-wing websites with a call to execute him. Abu Shamsiya has lodged a complaint with the police, but so far no suspects have been arrested. He said neither the Israel Police nor the Israel Defense Forces are in any rush to act against the violent Hebron settlers.

In a conversation with Al-Monitor, Abu Shamsiya talked about life in the shadow of fear since the video went public, and about his work as a cameraman for Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which tries to make public the complex life of Palestinians under threat by Hebron’s most radical Jewish settlers. Six settler families live in Tel Rumeida, one of which is the family of radical right-wing activist Baruch Marzel. 

“The first threats were made by phone,” he said. “I got a call on my cellphone from an unidentified number. The caller asked me, ‘Are you Imad Abu Shamsiya?’ When I said I was, he told me, ‘We will kill you; we will burn you and your family if you don’t leave Tel Rumeida.’”

Attempts to kick Abu Shamsiya out of the tense neighborhood did not start with the recent video. About a year ago, a firebomb was thrown at his house, burning part of the building. Several weeks later he observed a settler pouring something into the water tanks on the roof of his house. When the police arrived, it turned out the settler had poisoned the water. The police ordered Abu Shamsiya to move the water supply tanks from the open roof to a sheltered area that the settlers cannot access. “Harassments became a daily occurrence,” he said. “The day after publication of the execution video and the arrest of the soldier, another, larger group of settlers came and attacked my home with stones and threatened to burn it down. Afterward, on their websites, they put up my picture with the English caption, ‘Wanted.’ In Hebrew it said, ‘This is the dog Imad Abu Shamsiya who filmed the Israeli soldier. He needs to be eliminated.’”