One would hope that they are also filming Hamas fighters, shooting off rockets aimed at Israeli villiages, it's a really ambigous situation and both sides have valid points.

We must come to the realization that the two sides have been fighting each other for thousands of years and they are not going to stop.

i hope the whole world could see some truth now.i wish they could have done this way back in 1948:-(

i'm a strong a believer that if we look into all the wars fought through out the history,no one can put a finger who or what started it.each party had their reasons and motives behind it.just imagine an independant source(not our over politicized, one-sided media)capturing all the culprits whose decisions costs millions their lives and make them pay the right price.oh i'm dreaming again..

wishing well to a nation with no country.

you know what,the world should put some hidden cameras throughout the region(palestinian and isreali territory),only then may be world can come out of their ignorance and see cruelties done by isrealies towards human life(read palestinian's lives)

ISREAL IS BIGGEST HUMAN RIGHT VOILATOR OF MODERN WORLD

please somebody tell our politicians and policy makers to stop buying isreal's parasitic friendship(from our billions of dollars every year)which is taking us nowhere.

Keri you are right these folks wil not ever stop fighting-its a pipe dream.

Keri Ann comments " both sides have valid point...have been fighing each other for thousdands of yers." Kerri Ann presents a slippery slope to the reader.  "Both sides" implies some sort of parity which is far from true.  Well armed Israeli soldiers killing chldren armed with stones.  Thousands
of years?  No.  Religious mythology. European "Jews"
first came to Palestine in the late 19th Century.
Israel's brutal occupation of Palestine began in the 1940s and that was when the resistance started.

Thank you for reporting this. This is the result of all occupations, as like photos from Abu Ghraib and reports from Guantanamo demonstrate. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the taking of land belonging to Palestinians for the purpose of settling parts of Israel's civilian population in the occupied territory, illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention to which Israel is a signatory, has been going on for over 30 years. Every U.S. administration, except the current one, has stated that this policy is not in conformity with international law. The facts are set out in the Mitchell Report (Sharm El-Sheikh Fact Finding Committee Report) in footnote 25 and the text preceding it.
To quote the report:
" As the then-Secretary of State, James A. Baker, III, commented on May 22, 1991:

Every time I have gone to Israel in connection with the peace process, on each of my four trips, I have been met with the announcement of new settlement activity. This does violate United States policy. It's the first thing that Arabs -- Arab Governments, the first thing that the Palestinians in the territories -- whose situation is really quite desperate - the first thing they raise when we talk to them. I don't think there is any bigger obstacle to peace than the settlement activity that continues not only unabated but at an enhanced pace.24

The policy described by Secretary Baker, on behalf of the Administration of President George H. W. Bush, has been, in essence, the policy of every American administration over the past quarter century.25"

Yet this land-grab continues unabated and has even been partially sanctioned by this Administration. Israel has settled about 500,000 of its civilian population in territory occupied in 1967. As Baker said, it is hard to conceive on any bigger obstacle to peace. One can only imagine what the reaction in the U.S. would be if Mexico claimed a right to 10% of the "lower 48 states" of the U.S. and to settle its civilian population on it -- i.e., all of California and Arizona. Yet that is what the Government of Israel claims it has a right to do in the West Bank.
And it is not being done without daily violation of the human rights of Palestinians.

The view that "they are not going to stop" fighting, does injustice to both the human spirit and human will.  We are not ANIMALS but HUMANS who MUST learn to share the planet with respect for it and one another.  Otherwise we are ALL lost!

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, finally something about what the Palestinians suffer and have suffered.  This is truly journalism at it's best!  Thank you!!

Thank you for carrying the news item about the Israeli human rights group giving 100 video cameras to Palestinians to document their lives.  Americans and Israelis need to know the truth about Palestinian life.

Ms Myers, I beg to differ with you. The fighting bewtween Palestinians and Israelis has only come to the forefront since the rise of Zionism. Prior to that both Palestinians and Israelis co-existed.

“We must come to the realization that the two sides have been fighting each other for thousands of years and they are not going to stop.”

While this is certainly a commonly held belief by many, it is also not exactly true.  Palestinians and Jews lived side by side for almost two thousand years without conflict after the Jewish Diaspora….which was carried out by Romans.  Granted, there were only a small number of Jews living in the area compared to the number of Palestinians, but never-the-less; there was not the conflict most Americans today believe existed.   The Palestinians themselves are the only true descendents of the original inhabitants of the land…..the Canaanites.

The root of today’s problem seems to lie in the Zionist movement which began in Europe during the mid 1800’s and which led to Jewish colonist beginning the migration to Palestine in 1882 and the eventual British invasion of Palestine under the Balfour Declaration.  This declaration promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine and after the occupation by British forces, the migration of Jews to the area began to increase significantly.   Migrating Jews also acquired land on which Palestinians had lived on for centuries under the Ottoman Land Code of 1858.  This code essentially ignored the rights of the Palestinians and allowed a privileged few to sell land to migrant Jews without the Palestinian’s knowledge or compensation.  It was the beginning of the removal of Palestinians from the land they called Palestine.  Theodore Herzl,  leader of the first  World Zionist Conference in 1897 is recorded as stating : “We shall try to spirit the penniless [Arab] population across the border by procuring employment for it in transit countries, while denying it employment in our own country... Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly”.  

While the persecution of Jews and the Holocaust is a shameful period that should not be forgotten, two wrongs still do not make a right.  Palestinians have been denied their land and all reasonable means of recourse.  Is it any wonder that they have resorted to the use of any means possible to make a stand?  Would any of us do less in similar circumstances?   I doubt it…..

This is a wonderful program by btselem.  Too bad it wasn't instituted 40 years ago (of course technology wasn't available) or even 10 - we have only reports by human rights reporters of Israeli soldiers methodologically beating large numbers of prisoners or Israeli snipers firing at girls walking down the street.  Or 60 years ago, when Israeli soldiers were conducting mass executions of Palestinians - of course, in cases where they murdered large numbers in a villagers they probably would have killed the camera people as well.  

Thanks to MSNBC for reporting on this

Re: Keri Ann's message.  You are right on one point, it is an ambiguous situation and both sides have valid points. But have you been there?  Once you have you will realize that the situation is very disproportionate. Israeli response is 10 times whatever was the provocation, and there are 10 times more Palestinians dead and injured for every Israeli.

Also it is not true that they have been fighting for thousands of years and are not going to stop.  Jews and Palestinians lived in peace together for hundreds of years before 1948, and again for a good period in the 1980s before the first intifada.  When I was there  (2003) I found that most people in the region (Palestinians and Israeli Jews) want and hope for peace.

When it comes to human rights the perpetrator is the Israeli government 100%.  There is no way the Palestinians can violate Jewish human rights, as they are the suppressed and the Israeli government is in control.  Don't forget that it is an ISRAELI human rights organization that gave the cameras to the Palestinians.  They are supporting more human rights too, and they are Israeli.

Please read more history than just the Bible. There has been a lot going on in the area now known as Israel/Palestine over the last two *thousand* years (think of what has happened in Europe and North America in just the last five hundred!). The current conflict is only a little over a hundred years old and began when nationalism took hold among both Palestinian Arabs and European Jews.  

The significance of this story is that middle class Israelis have long had the means to utilize technology like camcorders to show what Hamas has been doing in places like Sderot, while impoverished Palestinians have not had the means to show what the IDF and Jewish settles have been doing to them in their homes. And as we are all too aware, he who shoots the camera, writes the story.

I commend B'Tselem -- a prominent *Israeli* human rights organization -- for what is a clever way of providing Palestinians with the means of showing the world the non-violent protesting they have been doing in places like Bil'in for years now, as well as a means of non-violent protest in and of itself.

THANK YOU, MSNBC!  Of course both sides have valid points, but the daily violence of settlers and IDF against Palestinians on their own farms and in their own villages seldom makes the news.  And no, Keri, "the two sides" have NOT "been fighting each other for thousands of years.  This is all very recent and because of very specific political and military decisions in the most recent generations.

Thanks for an excellent story. Neither side is entirely without fault, but Israelis have consistently had  both the power and positive exposure. There is great need for hearing the other side.

RE: Keri Ann Myers comment - Btselem, which provided the cameras, does document human rights violations by Palestinians as well. But I beg to differ that "the two sides have been fighting each other for thousands of years and they are not going to stop." In fact for hundreds of years Jews and Arabs lived side by side in peace. The conflict today is primarily over homeland and is of 20th century origin, primarily since 1948, with many Jews gaining new homes and land and many Palestinians losing theirs.

I want to thank the leadership at MSNBC for thought provoking and powerful journalism...  In my observation, for the most part, you report truths, and I for one believe in the black and white of truths.  

Thanks for airing "Palestinians Shoot Back" with video cameras.  B'tSelem the Israeli human rights group deserves enormous credit for handing out the cameras to Palestinians and are the Jewish Israelis we can all admire.

The almost immediate result of damaging footage of Israeli treatment of Palestinians puts the mainstream press to shame.  How come all the major media have news correspondents based in Israel often to cover the whole Middle east and we Americans and probably Israelis as well are still shielded from the unpleasant going ons of a brutal occupation that has lasted forty years.  They meekly succumb to repeating the official Israeli version of events and find it a hassle to go into the occupied territories.

I expect very little from American media and generally avoid television news. I have traveled throughout Palestine and saw how multi dimensional the problem is.  This is excellent.  Without unbiased reporting there is no understanding or hope for peace.  

The cameras were provided by an Israeli human rights organization, B'tselem.  The rocket attacks are reprehensible, but very well documented, as are the utterly disproportionate retribution attacks by the Israeli F-16's.

An eye for an eye is not an appropriate response.  Why cannot both sides live in peace?  

Unfortunately your understanding of the conflict is flawed. The two sides ( I assume you mean Palestinians and Israelis ) have not been fighting for thousands of years, rather the conflict only goes back to the Zionist movements incursion into the land of Palestine then under a British mandate. Palestine prior to British control was under the Ottoman Empire (Muslim Turkey) for about 700 years and before that the fighting was between Muslims and Christian crusaders not Arabs and Jews. 92% of the land of Palestine in 1948 (the year Israel was founded) was owned by Arab Palestinians (Mulsims, Druze, Christians and Jews) 7 % by Jews of European decent. The conflict is over land and it's confiscation by European immigrants in the 1930's and 40's - the modern state of Israel is/was the result of that land grab. So the conflict is rather young but the issues run very deep and serious and I agree there is much ambigouity. I have been in both the West Bank and Israel and I feel I understand somewhat the struggles of both peoples and their narratives.

KeriAnn,

It is not a symmetrical situation. There really are not two sides to the stories. There are no two sides to the story that Hamas are unjustly and immorally targeting civilians. The same goes for Israel's cold blooded, cold hearted plan to settle on Palestinian land. There is no other way to look at this other than occupation and Apartheid. Israel is occupaying Palestine in contravention of many UN resolutions. Isn't it clear that hundreds of times the only countries suppporting Israel in the UN are Israel and the US? Is the rest of the world blind and cannot see the two sides? Or is it a cynical play of the US to support Israel as its 51st state in the middle east and to protect her interests no matter what?

The incidents pictured here are just the tip of the iceberg.  Abuses and beatings have been going on for years with only 10% of all complaints followed up by Israel.  Americans have not been hearing about the abuse because news stories are filtered through Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, and anything that puts Israel in a bad light is not let through.  If it weren't for the Internet, we wouldn't be hearing about it even now.

The two sides have NOT been fighting for thousands of years.  Jews and Arabs used to live peacefully together.

When the Palestinians have a viable, contiguous state and the wall is on the Green line, the violence will stop.

"Two sides" have not "been fighting each other for thousands of years."  The Palestinians have been under pressure from Zionists for about the last 120 years and catastrophically so for the past 60.  Superimposing one's religious prejudices upon this conflict only serves to obscure and complicate a relatively simple situation.  The Palestinians have been victimized in their native land by foreigners claiming to be who the Palestinians actually are: the indigenous people of Palestine.  In that sense, the Palestinians have been invaded and colonized for "thousands of years."  The Zionists are just the latest and the most pernicious.

Thousands of years??? Lady, you need to read a history book. Israel was only founded 60 years ago. There was no conflict before that. And frankly, it's American Christians who make judgments about the Middle East without really knowing who are doing more harm than good.

No, they have not been fighting each other for thousands of years.  The Christians, Muslims, and Jews have been living in relative harmony for much longer than in conflict.  It's not helpful to perpetuate this myth.

This last round of conflict was triggered by the illegal taking of land in 1948 and the backlash thereafter.  It's continued because of the millions of dollars US tax payers send to prop up the Israeli economy and government.

With the rule of law and the removal of US money, you can bet the political leaders in the Middle East would come to solutions much faster.

I'm glad to see these cameras being used to shed light on acts of violence carried out by Israelis.  
It's true that the situation is very complex and crimes have been committed by both Palestinians and Israelis.  However, here in the United States we hear a lot more about the evil acts of the Palestinians, while crimes against the Palestinians often go unreported.  It's good to see a story telling the other side of a very difficult situation.

Keri Ann Myers reflects the abysmal lack of information most Americans have regarding the Middle East.  In 1897, the Zionists determined to found a Zionist state in Palestine by forcibly removing its Palestinian Arab population, then 90 per cent of Palestinian residents.  They removed over 700,000 in 1947-48 and refused these refugees the right of return guaranteed under international law despite agreeing to do so to get into the UN.  They cleansed more between 1948 and 1954, 300,000 in 1967, and by destroying 20,000 Palestinian Arab homes, land confiscations, killings, and constant repression and harassment, have sought to drive the remaining Arabs out of the 22 per cent of Palestine left the Arab majority in 1948, now reduced to about 10-12 per cent. THAT is the root of the conflict Israel, Washington, US media, and US Israel defenders steadfastly refuse to mention, much less reckon with. In fact, Palestinian Arabs and Jews lived peacefully until the British opened the way for massive Jewish immigration after WWI, which began displacing Arabs, while favoring Jewish institutions and allowing the Jewish immigrants to arm and not recognizing Arab institutions in Palestine or letting them keep arms.  .

This is a wonderful project, and thanks to MSNBC for reporting on it.  Of course, 100 small video cameras is nothing against the thousands of daily abuses, and like so often before, the Israel military will confiscate cameras, film or memory cards as it has from human rights workers before.  We'll still see only a small sample of what is being done to Palestinians.

Thank you MSNBC. It is good that the human rights violations are being documented and wonderful that CNN is reporting on such documentation.  Sadly such violations of human rights and international law have been going on for years and in most cases go unreported.  So far this year 72 Palestinian children under the age of 18 have been killed in the Occupied territories as against 4 Israelis.  How many of these killings were covered in the press?
Moreover, most of these deaths are not at the hands of  fanatical settlers but by the Israeli defense forces that support and protect them them.

Thank you for carrying this important story. The only story we seem to see in the US is the violence against Israelis -- which PALES in comparison to the physical, economic, social and political violence inflicted on Palestinians. The situation is far from ambiguous -- Israel has the power and they have abused it mightily for decades. High time the other 80% of the story is told!

This is a powerful and important piece of reportng. Pieces like this only increase admiration for NBC. Mazel tov!

Can a Palestinian Blair Witch Project be far behind?

The 2 sides have not been fighting each other "for thousands of years."  There are many instances of Arab?Jewish cooperation prior to 1948.  Also, Israel was harassing and assassinating Palestinians years before Hamas made its appearance.  I was there.

The myth that "the two sides have been fighting each other for thousands of years and they are not going to stop" must be exposed and eradicated, less Americans continue to rely on that as an excuse to continue to sit on our hands while our government continues to support Israel's occupation to the tune of ten million dollars per day.

The truth of the matter is that the conflict began in the late nineteenth century.  For centuries Jews and Muslims co-existed peacefully in Palestine.

Let's not afford ourselves the luxury of believing that the two sides cannot and will never share the land and learn to live in peace.

Keri, I agree that both sides have valid points.  I would encourage you to to read Zachary Karabell's book "Peace Be upon You" about relations between Arabs, Christians, and Jews since anchient times.  In a book that begins with the birth of Islam to present day, he tells forgotten stories of coexistence and cooperation.  He reminds us that periods of dialogus and friendship have always been interspersed between times of war and discord. Remembering the legacy of coexistence is a vital ingredient to a more stable and secure world.  This war is being fought by extremists on both sides.  Even now in Israel there are groups of Muslims, Christians and Jews working together to find common ground.  We could be supporting those groups.  

The violence committed by individual Israelis against individual Palestinians must be perceived as belonging to a different category from that of the organized rocket attacks perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli villages. The person-to-person violence could be greatly reduced if only the Jewish settlers, the IDF soldiers, the police officers were more closely supervised and justly disciplined. Instead, there are serious human rights abuses because the laws and regulations are being selectively enforced.

The fighting is very lopsided with the billions of dollars weapons given by U.S.to fellow occupier Israel. No more fighting, no more occupation, no more home demolitions, no more walls, no more stealing water, no more dispossession.  Thank you, MSNBC.  Elizabeth Smith

The Hamas attacks are terrible and wrong. They are also regularly covered in the US news. The wrongs against the Palestians have barely made the US news. I'm so thankful for this news report.

I feel deeply disappointed at the fatalistic comment by Keri Ann Myers, "We must come to the realization that the two sides have been fighting each other for thousands of years and they are not going to stop."

At the end of World War II, after the Holocaust, the United Nations basically divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab portions( http://www.jewfaq.org/israel.htm ). There were Arabs that had to leave their homes. Palestinians have a right to exist as well as Israelis.  Crimes have been committed for thousands of years... but ...

It's not acceptable for people to subjected to violence. Check out these videos:

Demonstration against Israel land grab of farm land.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91b3-X-wgJU

Bil'in Palestine - Journalist shot in head at point blank.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=17Hv6C4rziU

We need to fight for the rights of people. I have Jewish friends. I have Palestinian friends. They both deserve to live in peace. It's not one or the other.
Please visit this website that shares this view:
http://files.tikkun.org/current/index.php?topic=israel
http://www.tikkun.org/core_vision

Ms. Myers' comment represents a common misperception, that "the two sides have been fighting each other for thousands of years."  This is simply factually untrue; the violence basically started around the time of the establishment of the state of Israel in Palestine, after World War II.  
I am a Jewish American who believes that Israel should exist as a Jewish state, but it can only exist securely behind accepted borders -- more or less the UN Green Line of 1949.
The viewpoint of Israelis victimized by Hamas rockets and other terrorist acts has been widely seen in the mainstream media.  Kudos to MSNBC for showing how it looks from the Palestinian perspective.

Thousands of years? Please! This trouble started when the diaspora Jews began to covet, in a material sense,  the land of the Palestinians. Napoleon tried to seize Palestine via Egypt to create a venue where he could send the Jews of France. That was around 1790. The serious process began in 1898 - and THEN is when the trouble started. Ambiguous? Two simple questions: Whose Ottoman-deeded land is being stolen? Who are the thieves?

Keri- I see that you are basing your views strictly on a Biblical Foundation, recent history though may prove your points to be true, is it me?, or does it seem like the Jewish people make concessions and then there is a brief respite, only to end in a tragic way, due to attacks on the Jewish citizentry (by Hamas and other radical fighters) and thus follows a hard-fisted act of retallation against Palastine, by the Jewish Nation.

In closing, how would one expect Israel to act? When you have groups dedicated to totally and completly destroying a Jewish Nation-they have a inherent right to self-preservation.

Keri Ann I agree this vicious cyle will never end, but please make note of the actual physicial history of this conflict.

well if american(western)media doesn't put the voilent crimes against palestinians in the spot light,then that doesn't mean "muslim world" is not aware.where do you think all this hatered is coming from?from all the injustices,western policies against all those culprits.

believe me,if we could just solve this isreal-palestine problem with justice,then we have solved 50%problems and their chain reaction in this world.

the world is just looking for some justice for these poor people with no country

Thanks for covering this!

Thank you so much for covering this.  More stories like this need to be heard, especially by us in North America.  Please keep up the good work.

Thank you for sharing this video.  Too often Palestinians only make the headlines when something violent happens, but the daily violence of Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against their neighbors and the strong nonviolent civil society movement in the West Bank and Gaza are rarely seen. We need more news reports like this

history 101: no. they have not been fighting for 1000s of years. they have been fighting for around 50 years. some fun facts: during WWII, jews found refuge in muslim households in north africa and the middle east; during the abbasid caliphate, muslims and christians and jews worked together to translate ancient greek treatises on geometry and philosphy; the persian emperor cyrus not only liberated the jews from babylon, he gave them money to rebuild their temple in jerusalem; and in the nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, jews owned, lived on, and cultivated land in what is considered greater israel.

they have certainly NOT been fighting for 1000s of years. they have been fighting since--guess when? 1948.

Wow! Thank you for the courage to do this piece and inform the American public of the other side of this conflict; the much ignored but daily violence which Palestinians suffer as a result of the cemented Israeli Occupation, land grab and settler violence. This is by no means an isolated incident. If one takes time and does some fair minded research, there is mainstream documentation of persisting Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and settler violence and Human Rights abuses against the Occupied Palestinian population. This information is easily accessible through Amnesty, HRW, B'etselem, Oxfam, Red Cross and UN documentation.

It is time that us Americans wake up and realize the lopsided and filtered information and pro-Israel excuses being shoved down our throats. Fallacies such as "they've been fighting for thousands of years," etc., only signify a lack of conversance with the history of the region. It is historically undeniable that the Jewish population enjoyed a peaceful existence under Muslim rule and in fact experienced an intellectual burgeoning during Muslim rule in Spain.

We need to speak up and demand a balanced approach to this issue. Something which has been sorely lacking in our Foreign Policy; The Israel Lobby by Mearsheimer and Walt elucidate this phenomena with great erudition. We Americans need to see similar coverage in our media. The same coverage that the rest of the world and even those inside Israel have seen plenty of.

THanks to MSNBC and B'tSelem for the excellent portrayal of the Settlers against the Palestinians.  I have seen this first-hand on my many trips to the West Bank.  To see it on national T.V. is heartening!B't Selem is one of many Jewish groups that are trying to inform the public of the true situation.  May they have many more opportunities like this one by the American press!

Message (please, no HTML tags. Web addresses will be hyperlinked):