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Meet The Featured Human Rights Defenders
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Jessica Montell
| Jessica Montell (Israel) Taking a Neighborly Interest
Many in Israel would simply prefer not to know about human rights abuses occurring in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
So when an Israeli organization demands an investigation into the fatal shootings of suspects in the West Bank or a halt to the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields by Israeli soldiers, the accusations of betrayal sometimes fly.
"We have been called traitors, Arab-lovers, and much worse," says Jessica Montell, executive director of Jerusalem-based human rights group B'Tselem. "But despite the pervasive mentality in Israel that anything is justified in the name of security, polls still show around a quarter of the population supports our goals."
Documenting abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is crucial not only to bringing rights violations to light but also in terms of the propaganda war for the hearts and minds of Israeli and foreign audiences confronted with the spiral of violence in the Middle East.
Around 30 people work at B'Tselem, either in its main office or in the field, to collect and verify information on issues including torture of Palestinian detainees, the fallout from unlawful restrictions on freedom of movement, and the debilitating effects that the separation wall in the West Bank has on local communities. B'Tselem also directly lobbies policy-makers in the Knesset to build a stronger agenda for rights protection.
"We focus on casualties and recording the testimony of eyewitnesses to abuse," says Ms. Montell. The organization doesn't take the task lightly. "We have to be supercareful about accuracy," because one of the goals of information gathering is to pursue those who may be responsible for rights violations, she says.
After the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) completes an operation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, it normally issues a standard press-release version of events, shedding little light on the details of what actually occurred, says Ms. Montell. B'Tselem seeks to challenge the official sanitized portrayal of incidents and create a more accurate and detailed record through gathering first-hand evidence.
Such efforts are seen as important to exposing the true situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, a process that may one day help form a base for better understanding and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.
"Groups like B'Tselem do a magnificent job in terms of documenting abuses and recording the human rights problems in the Occupied Palestinian Territory," says Dr. Saliba Sarsar, a professor of political science at Monmouth University specializing in the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is a certain numbness when it comes to the litany of tragedies involved, but there are also people on both sides who are deeply affected when there is a suicide bomb or a fighter strike that kills innocent people, he says.
B'Tselem not only seeks to document abuses but also to affect situations on the ground to mitigate suffering. A key IDF tactic is to restrict the movement of Palestinians needing medical attention during periods of crisis – a strategy that has reportedly resulted in the deaths of people in need of lifesaving medicine or crucial regular treatment such as kidney dialysis.
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Palestinians crowd at a gap in the border wall as they cross between the Rafah Refugee Camp, in the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt, Sept. 14, 2005. (AP Photo/Adel Hana) |
But when the Islamist group Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip in June, this tactic was countered as local rights groups such as B'Tsalem and Physicians for Human Rights demanded the border be opened for the sick and wounded to go to hospitals for treatment. "The very high profile of that case and the fact that everyone was under a magnifying glass helped us achieve our aim," says Ms. Montell.
Indeed, groups like B'Tselem can influence the dynamics of the conflict itself. "Israel won't engage in policies it can't get away with," she says.
Ms. Montell grew up in northern California in a Jewish family that was politically active on such issues as the environment and human rights. "I never saw a contradiction between my Zionist perspective and my respect for human rights," she says. "I came to Israel for the first time when I was 16 and only then realized that some of Israel's policies didn't mesh with my basic beliefs."
Her faith also provides something of a moral reference point in Ms. Montell's work, although she considers her Jewish heritage to be more of a cultural influence than an overtly religious one. "A lot of Jewish law is quite supportive of basic human rights. For example, the Torah has a prohibition on collective punishment and states that the son ought not to be killed for the sins of the father," she says.
B'Tselem applies this maxim in condemning punitive house demolitions, a practice employed by Israel to deter potential attacks. A report by B'Tselem on such house demolitions showed that 3,983 Palestinians had been left homeless due to the policy since the beginning of the Second Intifada in 2000. The report also found that the IDF deliberately destroyed adjacent houses in 295 cases, upending the lives of people far removed from suspected potential radicals.
"Israel's policy not only infringes the right to housing, it also breaches one of the most fundamental principles of justice: the prohibition on punishing a person for acts committed by another," says the November 2004 report.
Still, Ms. Montell says she is an optimist. Continued foreign involvement in monitoring the Arab-Israeli conflict is needed to make sure that Israel can't violate basic international law and codes of conduct, she says. But such monitoring should only be considered a stopgap to a more permanent solution. "Over the long term, the occupation has to end and some situation established whereby everyone in the region enjoys the same basic rights," she says.
Part of the reason that groups such as B'Tselem struggle to find a wider sympathetic audience in Israel is because many in the nation are stuck in a psychology of encirclement and have shut their eyes to what is happening to Palestinians, says Dr. Sarsar. This is combined with the mentality that what is occurring in Gaza is the Palestinians' own fault and the idea that terrible measures are justified in the name of national security.
This is a point with which B'Tselem fully concurs. Allowing terrorists to dictate the agenda means that they have won, says Ms. Montell. "I firmly believe that when security interests alone are pursued above all else, it actually works against the state," she says.
Updated August 2007
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