{"id":111227,"date":"2018-05-14T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T11:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=111227"},"modified":"2018-05-14T11:47:12","modified_gmt":"2018-05-14T10:47:12","slug":"killing-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/05\/killing-gaza\/","title":{"rendered":"Killing Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mr. Fish \/ Truthdig<\/p><\/div>\n

\n

Starting Tuesday, May 15, \u201cKilling Gaza\u201d can be seen at Vimeo On Demand<\/a>.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

13 May 2018 – <\/em>Israel\u2019s blockade of Gaza\u2014where trapped Palestinians for the past seven weeks have held nonviolent protests along the border fence<\/a> with Israel, resulting in more than 50 killed and 700 wounded by Israeli troops\u2014is one of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian disasters. Yet the horror that is Gaza, where 2 million people live under an Israeli siege without adequate food, housing, work, water and electricity, where the Israeli military routinely uses indiscriminate and disproportionate violence to wound and murder, and where almost no one can escape, is rarely documented. Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen\u2019s powerful new film, \u201cKilling Gaza,\u201d offers an unflinching and moving portrait of a people largely abandoned by the outside world, struggling to endure.<\/p>\n

\u201cKilling Gaza\u201d will be released Tuesday, to coincide with what Palestinians call Nakba Day\u2014\u201cnakba<\/em>\u201d means catastrophe in Arabic\u2014commemorating the 70th anniversary of the forced removal of some 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by the Haganah, Jewish paramilitary forces, from their homes in modern-day Israel. The release of the documentary also coincides with the Trump administration\u2019s opening of the new U.S. Embassy<\/a> in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Because of Nakba Day and the anger over the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem, this week is expected to be one of the bloodiest of the seven-week-long protest that Palestinians call the \u201cGreat Return March.\u201d \u201cKilling Gaza\u201d illustrates why Palestinians, with little left to lose, are rising up by the thousands and risking their lives to return to their ancestral homes\u201470 percent of those in Gaza are refugees or the descendants of refugees\u2014and be treated like human beings.<\/p>\n

Cohen and Blumenthal, who is the author of the book \u201cGoliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,<\/a>\u201d one of the best accounts of modern Israel, began filming the documentary Aug. 15, 2014. Palestinian militias, armed with little more than light weapons, had just faced Israeli tanks, artillery, fighter jets, infantry units and missiles in a 51-day Israeli assault that left 2,314 Palestinians dead<\/a> and 17,125 injured. Some 500,000 Palestinians were displaced and about 100,000 homes were destroyed.\u00a0The 2014 assault, perhaps better described as a massacre, was one of eight massacres that Israel has carried out since 2004 against the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, over half of whom are children. Israel, which refers to these periodic military assaults as \u201cmowing the lawn<\/a>,\u201d seeks to make existence in Gaza so difficult that mere survival consumes most of the average Palestinian\u2019s time, resources and energy.<\/p>\n

The film begins in the Shuja\u2019iyya neighborhood, reduced to mounds of rubble by the Israelis. The wanton destruction of whole neighborhoods was, as documented by the film, accompanied by the shooting of unarmed civilians by Israeli snipers and other soldiers of that nation.<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of the destruction took place in the course of a few hours on July 23,\u201d Blumenthal, who narrates the film, says as destroyed buildings appear on the screen, block after block. \u201cThe invading Israeli forces found themselves under ferocious fire from local resistance forces, enduring unexpectedly high casualties. As the Israeli infantry fled in full retreat, they called in an artillery and air assault, killing at least 120 Palestinian civilians and obliterated thousands of homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film includes a brief clip of young Israelis in Tel Aviv celebrating the assault on Gaza, a reminder that toxic racism and militarism infect Israeli society.<\/p>\n

\u201cDie! Die! Bye!\u201d laughing teenage girls shout at the celebration in Tel Aviv. \u201cBye, Palestine!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFucking Arabs! Fuck Muhammad!\u201d a young man yells.<\/p>\n

\u201cGaza is a graveyard! Gaza is a graveyard! Ole, ole, ole, ole,\u201d the crowd in Tel Aviv sings as it dances in jubilation. \u201cThere is no school tomorrow! There are no children left in Gaza!\u201d<\/p>\n

Terrified Palestinian families huddled inside their homes during the relentless shelling. Those who tried to escape in the face of the advancing Israelis often were gunned down with their hands in the air, and the bodies were left to rot in the scorching heat for days.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was inside when they started bulldozing my house,\u201d Nasser Shamaly, a Shuja\u2019iyya resident, says in the film. \u201cThey took down the wall and started shooting into the house. So I put my hands on my head and surrendered myself to the officer. This wasn\u2019t just any soldier. He was the officer of the group! He didn\u2019t say a word. He just shot me. I fell down and started crawling to get away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shamaly, who hid wounded in his house for four days, was fortunate. His 23-year-old cousin, Salem Shamaly, who led a group of volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement<\/a> to dig bodies out of the ruins in Shuja\u2019iyya, was not.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the offensive\u2019s 14th day, July 20th, 2014, four other activists and I went to the Shuja\u2019iyya neighborhood, which Israel had bombed for days, to accompany rescue teams in the rubble during the two-hour cease-fire,\u201d Joe Catron, one of the members of the International Solidarity Movement rescue team, says in the film. \u201cA young Palestinian, whose name we later learned was Salem Shamaly, asked us to go with him to his house, where he hoped to find his family. It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time we thought the cease-fire would make it safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAs we crossed an alley with a clear line of sight to Israeli positions by the separation barrier, a gunshot from their direction struck the ground between us. We scattered into two groups, sheltered behind buildings on either side. After a pause, Salem stepped into the alley, hoping to lead his group to our side, but was struck by another bullet. He fell to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film shows\u00a0Shamaly wounded on the ground, barely able to move and crying out in pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs he lay on his back, two more rounds hit him,\u201d Catron continued. \u201cHe stopped moving. The gunfire kept us from reaching him. The Israeli artillery began flying overhead and striking the buildings behind us. We were forced to retreat, leaving him. We only learned his name two days later, when his mother, father, sister and cousin recognized him in a video I had tweeted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t retrieve his body for seven days,\u201d Um Salem, the mother, says in the film. \u201cHis body was in the sun for seven days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waseem Shamaly, Salem\u2019s brother, who appears to be about 8 years old, is shown with his eyes swollen from crying. \u201cHe would take care of us, like our father,\u201d the boy says. \u201cEven at night, he would get us whatever we wanted. He used to buy us everything. Whatever we wished for, he would buy it. There was nothing he wouldn\u2019t buy for us. He used to take us to hang out. He\u2019d take us out with him just to kill our boredom a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waseem wipes his eyes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow he is gone,\u201d he continues weakly. \u201cThere is nobody to take us out and buy us treats.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis boy hasn\u2019t been able to handle losing his brother,\u201d says the father, Khalil Shamaly. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t handle the news, seeing the way his brother died. He is in shock. It gets to the point where he goes lifeless. He collapses. When I pick him up he tells me his dying wishes. His dying wishes! As if he is leaving us. He is so young. But he gives us his dying wishes. If it weren\u2019t for God\u2019s mercy, I would have lost him too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDestroyed cities and shattered homes can be rebuilt if the resources are there,\u201d Blumenthal says. \u201cBut what about the survivors? How can they heal the scars imposed on their psyches? The youth of Gaza has grown up through three wars, each more devastating than the last. At least 90 percent of adolescents in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. With mental health services pushed to the brink, these unseen scars may never heal.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film turns to the town of Khuza\u2019a, a farming community with 20,000 people, which was systematically blown up by Israel after three Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting with the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas government in Gaza. The film shows a video from inside an Israeli tank as soldiers wait for explosives to bring down buildings in the town, including the mosque. When the explosions occur, the Israeli soldiers cheer and shout, \u201cLong live the state of Israel!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were shocked to see so many bodies in the streets,\u201d Ahmed Awwad, a volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent<\/a>, says in the film about Khuza\u2019a. \u201cMany were decomposing. We wanted to deal with it, but we didn\u2019t know how. Once, when the Israelis let us in with our ambulance, we found about 10 corpses from different areas, scattered. As you approached a body, of course there is the odor, and there are worms. Hold it like this, and flesh comes off. Lift an arm and it pulls right off. We didn\u2019t know what to do. There was nothing we could do. We had to stop. It would have been easier just to bury them. But we figured families would want the bodies. Bulldozers eventually loaded the bodies in trucks. We couldn\u2019t pick up these bodies on our own. Most were executions, like an old lady at her front door. There was a young man, another man, and a little kid. The scenes, to be honest, were very ugly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rjeila family, including 16-year-old Ghadeer, who was physically disabled, attempts to escape the shelling. As a brother frantically pushes Ghadeer in her wheelchair (the scene, like several others in the film, is reconstructed through animation), the Israelis open fire. The brother is wounded. Ghadeer is killed.<\/p>\n

The camera pans slowly through demolished houses containing blackened human remains. Walls and floors are smeared with blood.<\/p>\n

Ahmed Awwad, a Palestinian Red Crescent volunteer, describes what happened after he and other volunteers finally receive permission from Israeli forces to retrieve bodies from Khuza\u2019a. They find a man tied to a tree and shot in both legs. One of the volunteers, Mohammed al-Abadla, gets out of a vehicle and approaches the tree. When he switches on his flashlight, which the Israelis had instructed him to do, he is shot in heart and killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 51 days, Israel bombarded Gaza with the full might of its artillery,\u201d Blumenthal says. \u201cAccording to the Israeli military\u2019s estimates, 23,410 artillery shells and 2.9 million bullets were fired into Gaza during the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s one and a half bullets for every man, woman and child in the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n

There is footage of Israeli soldiers in an artillery unit writing messages, including \u201cHappy Birthday to Me,\u201d on shells being lobbed into Gaza. The soldiers laugh and eat sushi as they pound Palestinian neighborhoods with explosives.<\/p>\n

Rafah is a city in Gaza on the border of Egypt. The film makes it clear that Egypt, through its sealing of Gaza\u2019s southern border, is complicit in the blockade. Rafah was one of the first cities targeted by the Israelis. When Israeli troops took over buildings, they also kidnapped Palestinians and used them as human shields there and elsewhere, forcing them to stand at windows as the soldiers fired from behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey blindfolded and handcuffed me and took me inside,\u201d Mahmoud Abu Said says in the film. \u201cThey told me to come with them and put a M16 to my back. There were maybe six of them. They dropped their equipment and began searching. They started hitting me against the wall. And then sicced their dogs on me while I was handcuffed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey put me here,\u201d he says, standing in front of a window, \u201cand stood behind me. Israeli soldiers placed me here while they stood behind me shooting. They took me to that window and that window too. Then they hit me against the wall and pushed me down. They put a mattress here,\u201d he says, showing holes punched through the wall at floor level, \u201cand sat down to shoot through these holes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see that car?\u201d asks Suleiman Zghreibv, referring to a hunk of twisted metal that lies next to the ruins of his house. \u201cHe drove it,\u201d he says of his 22-year-old son, who was executed by the Israelis. \u201cThis is the car we used to make our living. It wasn\u2019t for personal use. It was a taxi. I can\u2019t describe the suffering. What can I say? Words can\u2019t express the pain. We have suffered and resisted for so long. We\u2019ve been suffering our whole lives. We\u2019ve suffered for the past 60 years because of Israel. War after war after war. Bombing after bombing after bombing. You build a house. They destroy it. You raise a child. They kill him. Whatever they do\u2014the United States, Israel, the whole world, we\u2019ll keep resisting until the last one of us dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel intentionally targeted power plants, schools, medical clinics, apartment complexes, whole villages. Robert Piper, the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities, said in 2017 that Gaza had \u201ca long time ago\u201d passed the \u201cunlivability threshold<\/a>.\u201d Youth unemployment is at 60 percent. Suicide is epidemic. Traditional social structures and mores are fracturing, with divorce rising from 2 percent to 40 percent and girls and women increasingly being prostituted, something once seen only rarely in Gaza. Seventy percent of the 2 million Gazans survive on humanitarian aid packages of sugar, rice, milk and cooking oil. The U.N. estimates that 97 percent of Gaza\u2019s water is contaminated. Israel\u2019s destruction of Gaza\u2019s sewage treatment plant means raw sewage is pumped into the sea, contaminating the beach, one of the very few respites for a trapped population. The Israelis did not even spare Gaza\u2019s little zoo, slaughtering some 45 animals in the 2014 assault.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked the monkeys best,\u201d says a forlorn Ali Qasem, who worked at the zoo. \u201cWe laughed with them the most. We would laugh and play with them. They would take food right from your hand. They\u2019d respond the most. There is a heavy feeling of sorrow. I used to spend 18 hours a day here. I was here all the time. I\u2019d go home for five or six hours, then come back. I worked here as a volunteer. A few volunteers built this place little by little. We were excited to finish and invite visitors for free. To me, it was like humans were killed. It\u2019s not OK because they were animals. It\u2019s as if they were human beings, people we know. We used to bring them food from our homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film shows Palestinians, who have received little reconstruction aid despite pledges by international donors, camping out amid the ruins of homes, gathered around small fires for heat and light. Moeen Abu Kheysi, 54, gives a tour of the smashed house he had spent his life constructing for his family. He stops when he comes upon his 3-month-old grandson, Wadie. His face lights up in delight.<\/p>\n

\u201cMonths passed and the cold rains of winter gave way to baking heat of spring,\u201d Blumenthal says. \u201cIn Shuja\u2019iyya, the Abu Kheysi family was still living in remnants of their home, but without their newest member. Born during the war, little Wadie did not make it through the harsh winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was born during the war and he died during the war, well after the war,\u201d a female member of the family explains. \u201cHe lived in a room without a wall. We covered the wall with tin sheets. We moved, but then we got kicked out. We couldn\u2019t make rent. [We] had to come back, cover the wall and live here. Then the baby froze to death. It was very cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day it suddenly became very cold,\u201d Wadie\u2019s mother says. \u201cWadie woke up at 9 in the morning. I started playing with him, gave him a bottle. Suddenly, he was shivering from the cold. I tried to warm him up but it wasn\u2019t working.\u201d<\/p>\n

She begins to weep.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere wasn\u2019t even time to get to the hospital,\u201d she says. \u201cHe stopped breathing before they left the house. His heart stopped beating instantly. His father started running in the street with him. He fainted when they yelled, \u201cThe baby is dead!\u201d The baby\u2019s uncle took over and carried him. He looked everywhere for a taxi but couldn\u2019t find one. We couldn\u2019t give him first aid ourselves. They finally found a car. They did all they could at the hospital, but he never woke up. He was dead. What can I say? We remember him all the time. I can\u2019t get him off my mind. It\u2019s as if I lost a piece of my heart. His sisters want to sleep in his cradle and wear his clothes. This one always asks to wear her brother\u2019s clothes. We can\u2019t forget him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGrandpa!\u201d Wadie\u2019s small sister cries out. \u201cMama is crying again.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for <\/em>The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and<\/em> The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at <\/em>The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper\u2019s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the <\/em>Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The <\/em>Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges\u2019 original columns in <\/em>Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009 and again in 2011. The LAPC also granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his <\/em>Truthdig essay \u201cOne Day We\u2019ll All Be Terrorists<\/a>.\u201d Hedges is a senior fellow at <\/em>The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 truthdig.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cKilling Gaza\u201d will be released Tuesday 15 May, to coincide with what Palestinians call Nakba Day\u2014\u201cnakba\u201d means catastrophe in Arabic\u2014commemorating the 70th anniversary of the forced removal of some 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by the Haganah, Jewish paramilitary forces, from their homes in modern-day Israel. The release of the documentary also coincides with the Trump administration\u2019s opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":111228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111227"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111227\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}