Youtube removes video about Bil'in village resistance


October 16, 2012
Sarah Benton

Five Broken Cameras removed from Youtube

From JfJfP postings

Last week we posted a story about the documentary, Five Broken Cameras, which documents the non-violent resistance of a farmer in  the West Bank village Bil’in to the siting of the Wall.  This solid barrier separates him, and the other villagers,  from their farmland, from what is theirs and from their livelihood. Those trying to farm their land are treated with violence by Israeli armed forces.

We put in a link to where the documentary could be watched. Here’s one of very many laudatory reviews:

5 Broken Cameras

by Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi 
Guy DVD Films, Burnat Films Palestine, Alegría Productions
| 2011 | color / black and white | video | 90’ & 52’ |

Palestinian farm laborer Emad has five video cameras, and each of them tells a different part of the story of his village’s resistance to Israeli oppression. Emad lives in Bil’in, just west of the city of Ramallah in the West Bank. Using the first camera, he recorded how the bulldozers came to rip the olive trees out of the ground in 2005. Here, a wall was built directly through his fellow villagers’ land to separate the advancing Jewish settlements from the Palestinians.

In the first days of resistance to the Jewish colonists and the ever-present Israeli soldiers, Emad’s son Gibreel was born. Scenes shift from the infant growing into a precocious preschooler to the many peaceful acts of protest, and the steady progress of the construction of the dividing wall. Sympathizers from all over the world, including from Israel, provide help as resistance develops, but when the situation intensifies, people are arrested and villagers are killed.

Emad keeps on filming despite pleas from his wife, who fears reprisals. It makes for an intensely powerful personal document about one village’s struggle against violence and oppression.

Since then we have been informed by readers that when they clicked the link they found this:

This video has been removed because its content violated YouTube’s Terms of Service.
Sorry about that.

Youtube is a subsidiary of Google and uses the same folksy language. Here’s their address for contacting them/complaining about problems.

Here are their guidelines:

Respect the YouTube Community
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Here are some common-sense rules that will help you steer clear of trouble:

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Okay, this one is more about us than you. YouTube staff review flagged videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to determine whether they violate our Community Guidelines. When they do, we remove them. Sometimes a video doesn’t violate our Community Guidelines, but may not be appropriate for everyone. These videos may be age-restricted. Accounts are penalised for Community Guidelines violations and serious or repeated violations can lead to account termination. If your account is terminated, you won’t be allowed to create any new accounts. For more information about how the Community Guidelines are enforced and the consequences of violating them, please visit the Help Centre.

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That’s it! Thanks for reading!

— The YouTube Team

You can no longer see the whole video on Youtube although trailers are still on site.  It seems that when the truth shows a harsh reality Youtube will find a cute way of saying it’s quite unacceptable.

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