Jessica Montell is Executive Director of B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. She is the author of B’Tselem’s comprehensive report Prisoners of Peace: Administrative Detention in the Oslo Process and numerous articles on human rights, international humanitarian law and counter-terror policies. Prior to joining B’Tselem, Ms. Montell worked at HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual, another Israeli human rights organization. Ms. Montell has also served as a consultant to the U.S.-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First), and is a council member of the International Council for Human Rights Policy.

Ms. Montell has a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, and is a native of California, USA. She lives in Jerusalem with her husband and three children.

B’Tselem has earned recognition in Israel and abroad as the leading Israeli organization monitoring, documenting, and advocating the advancement of human rights in the Occupied Territories. B'Tselem was founded in 1989 by a group of Israeli public figures. In its nineteen years of activity, B'Tselem has published over one hundred reports on a wide variety of human rights issues. The organization conducts advocacy with government and military authorities, conducts mass public education and mobilizes the public to take action on behalf of human rights. B'Tselem's activities receive extensive media coverage (hundreds of newspaper articles in the last year alone), generate public debate, and encourage changes in official policy.

The name of the organization is derived from the biblical Book of Genesis and means “in the image." According to the creation story, "God created human beings. In the image of god (b’tselem elohim) he created them." In Hebrew, b’tselem is used to mean human dignity, echoing Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “All human beings were born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

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