IDF slams B’Tselem for incitement

The IDF spokesperson is criticizing the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem for publishing a video of an IDF officer guarding outside the Yitzhar settlement in the West Bank, which he says was filmed purely to “manufacture an incident.”

In the video, one of the organization’s Palestinian photographers approaches the officer and his soldiers, who tell the man to stay back. There is then a brief, mostly verbal scuffle between the man and the officer, before the Palestinian leaves the area.

In a Facebook post, IDF Spokesperson and Head of the Manpower Directorate Maj. Gen. Moti Almoz defends the officer’s actions and accuses B’Tselem of “provocation.”

He does not mention the group by name, referring to the group only in the second person, but the description of the video leaves no doubt about the post’s subject.

“There’s a difference between filming an event as it happens and manufacturing an incident by arriving to a place with a camera,” Almoz writes, accusing the group of causing “friction that didn’t exist beforehand,” he says.

“You will continue to make movies ostensibly out of freedom of expression… and we will continue to defend the residents of the State of Israel and ensure the well-being of its citizens, without putting the IDF into political arguments.”

In response, B’Tselem says in a statement: “The Palestinians aren’t ‘arriving to a place with a camera’ but live there, on their land. The use of the military to advance a political agenda — dispossession [of land] and settlement — is what put the army into a political fight. The end of the occupation will end that as well.”

— Judah Ari Gross