B’Tselem alleges police ignoring threats to Palestinian who filmed Hebron shooting

The B’Tselem human rights organization claims the Israel Police are turning a blind eye to complaints made by one of their Palestinian volunteers who filmed an IDF soldier shooting a disarmed Palestinian assailant in Hebron in March.

The leftist NGO says Imad Abu Shamsiyeh received “a number of threatening and disturbing messages on Facebook, including death threats,” relating to his filming of the incident in which Sgt. Elor Azaria shot dead the supine and wounded attacker.

Azaria is currently on trial for manslaughter.

Abu Shamsiyeh says he attempted to file a complaint on three separate occasions, but was rebuffed each time.

According to B’Tselem, police told Abu Shamsiyeh on Sunday that they were too busy with arrests. The next day, he was told the officer in charge of the case was out of the office. And on Tuesday, another police officer listened to Abu Shamsiyeh’s complaint, but then “ordered him to leave and even threatened to arrest him if he did not.”

Police decline to address all of the group’s allegations, but say that “every complaint that we received on the issue will be addressed by the Israel Police’s West Bank Division.”

The Judea and Samaria Division, as it is also known after the biblical name for the West Bank, has long been dogged by allegations that they fail to address crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinians.

From 2005 to 2014, for instance, the Yesh Din human rights organization tracked 1,045 Palestinian complaints against Jewish settlers and found that only 7.4 percent resulted in indictments. From 2013 to 2014, of over 150 complaints filed by Palestinians, only two indictments were made by the Judea and Samaria Police Division.

— Judah Ari Gross