Broadcast by UK Channel4, a documentary made by Basement Films.
Yonav Gallant, Israeli Defence Minister: "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no water, no fuel."
This is a brilliant first-hand fly-on-the-wall eyewitness documentary by journalists in Gaza. Without pulling any punches, or needing to, this hour long account shows the decimation of the enclave and the daily and nightly suffering inflicted upon a civilian population, a persistent, continuous truly Kafkaesque nightmare from which they cannot escape.
There are many victims from the elderly, the maimed, and the mortally wounded right down to the children that their stories cannot all be recounted. We witness orphaned children, severely injured who will be alone and physically crippled for their entire lifetimes. Children, in ever greater numbers, are medically assessed as malnourished (a slow form of death), skinny little things with distended burgeoning bellies - the classic telltale symptom.
One such victim, almost a pathetic, but very sweet girl, Jewan Al Ashram, is just 5 years old. Yet she speaks of her family's deaths and her serious injuries philosophically with maturity far beyond her years - while bombs rain down.
We see the infrastructure as well as thousands of homes flattened beyond repair, hearing explosions without warning, with no-one certain whether they will be next. The civilians are trapped. The injured are rushed, if they can be removed by hand from underneath burning rubble, to any still partially remaining hospital - if roads remain intact. Often ambulances cannot pass because road surfaces are ripped to shreds by huge blades on Israeli military vehicles. Roads are impassable many people die without medical treatment.
The Israeli's dropped leaflets by air ordering civilians to depart where they live at less than an hour's notice, or instantly. Such leaflets use QR codes needing the internet to display complicated maps of 'safe zones'. However, the Israeli's also switch-off the internet and phone networks periodically leaving civilians fearing for their lives perplexed as to where they must go. 90% of the Palestinian population in Gaza is displaced.
Raw sewage runs through bombed streets, and when it rains seeps into refugee tents. Israeli's have destroyed the water supply. And UN medical teams, and MSF assessed that one-third of Gazan's now have transmissible diseases. Pregnant women entering childbirth, people in urgent need of life-saving surgery face operations without anaesthesia. Critically ill patients cannot be put on dialysis machines without power, or in blown up facilities.
By November almost 9,000 people had been killed. We subsequently know that number has risen to 37,000 deaths, of whom 15,000 are children. A further 80,000+ people have been maimed, and still this devastation relentlessly goes on, day after day.
According to the Geneva Convention under international law it is illegal to attack / bomb hospitals, yet almost all are destroyed; some 190 medical workers including volunteers from the UN, the Palestine Red Crescent, and MSF killed. 67% of all Gaza fatalities are women and children, killed by 12,000 Israeli air strikes in the first 3 weeks alone. No schools are intact. Journalists in Gaza are not merely reporting the obliteration for the outside world - they are living it, and at least 147 of them have been indiscriminately killed.
We hear and see many Palestinians baffled, bewildered, grieving, in shock and clearly resigned to exist without food, water, medicine or any other essential form of life-saving comfort that makes us human. The reach of the devastation goes beyond urban areas, into the countryside, where olive trees were extensively demolished by bulldozers. Why? "In case Hamas is hiding in them", Israeli soldiers replied.
Babies covered in blood are brought out from underneath the rubble and concrete slabs by people digging with their bare hands. Ambulances are shot at; many have shattered glass and bullet holes. Paramedics are seen to cry. The whole population of Gaza is traumatised. Yet none express bitterness, and remain dignified.
Unmarked civilian graves are found where Israeli soldiers buried, burned, shot at or ran over victims. In Gaza clean water has become the most precious commodity. A water butt convoy led by donkeys is bombed. People on the beach running toward humanitarian aid trucks are mown down and killed. Snipers wait outside hospitals indiscriminately shooting dead anyone, including doctors, going inside or out, or happen to be beside a window. Grenades are thrown inside too. WCNSF is a new acronym for 'wounded child, no surviving family'. Many are severely burned, over 50% of their bodies, and there is little medication for them. Life in the entire enclave is hideous, the very definition of living hell.
Peaceable non-combatant entire families are blown to smithereens, becoming unidentifiable or human fragments. Comparatively few are rescued from the aftermath of airstrikes. But airstrikes are in such preponderance that the number of casualties is disproportionately high. In remaining medical centres injured people lay alongside one another on the floors drenched in blood.
En masse people are ordered to depart from northern and central Gaza, heading to the south, around Rafah, designated by Israeli's as a 'safe area'. We know since that Rafah has frequently been bombed too, even burning refugees to death as they slept inside makeshift tents. This was dubbed by PM Netanyahu to be, "a tragic mistake". Even so, no apology was forthcoming. Displaced people following evacuation orders were blown up en route regardless, cars and ambulances destroyed, bodies strewn literally everywhere.
People attempting to rush the dying to hospitals are blocked at Israeli checkpoints, where they die untreated. An official Israeli response later denied this. The UN stated that Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. One young named child featured was severely injured in three separate airstrikes and now has no legs, or parents. Does any of this make sense to Israeli people? Does this resonate with President Biden?
For the poor souls still alive the most pressing quest is to find any food, and water. More than two million people face this dilemma daily. Humanitarian aid is limited, often refused entry into Gaza by Israeli soldiers (by reason of incorrectly filled-in or incomplete paperwork). And now the world knows that humanitarian aid lorries are attacked by illegal West Bank settlers. Aid is pulled off lorries and destroyed; foreign volunteer drivers badly beaten, and their lorries burned.
The unproven claim that Al-Shifa Hospital was the centre of Hamas activity went unsupported. International journalists at the White House asked for evidence. None was forthcoming. The Israeli's did later produce a small cache of firearms and what looked like a small dugout, but no tunnel complex was found supporting their destruction of the hospital. Was the hospital destroyed for no reason other than vengeance? It must be asked. The film leaves the viewer to ponder the question.
Since the horrors of WW2 Israel has deservedly had the world's sympathy lasting for decades. On watching this, an 84-year-old lady asked something I cannot answer. "Why are the Israeli's behaving like Nazi's? I see no difference," she said.
That special decades-long sympathy for the Israel has - by the evidence of all the protests around the world on every continent in at least 40 countries - evaporated. That sympathy has gone because of what the Israeli's are doing to the Palestine population. The whole world has seen this. It cannot be denied or smoothed over by government propaganda on Israel's news networks. People in Israel maybe taken in by that but this perpetual savagery is happening in their name. That is what outside world in every continent sees and knows. And revulsion of this horror is why that enduring sympathy that made Israel a special case is gone.
Gaza is now a sea of destruction horizon-to-horizon. Precious little remains intact. Carpet bombing has seen to that. The Israeli war on Gaza has changed the land from the initial devastation to obliteration. Nothing remains to support its population without massive international intervention. Not even fishing, as Israel's navy shoots and sinks fishing boats, however tiny. Streets are no longer identifiable. Places that Israel's IDF declares as humanitarian areas are bombed regardless.
It is important to know this documentary depicts the futility or war, and is not glorified in any way. This documentary is filmed with honesty, meriting every media award that can be bestowed upon it.
The film also, importantly, acknowledges the Israeli victims on 7th October 2023; that Israeli soldiers have also died, that 252 hostages were taken, with around 100 still held captive, and cites IDF statements in their entirety. IDF statements are thoughtfully and carefully composed, accepting no guilt, or remorse, brushing aside blame, claiming the thousands of air strikes are based on intelligence, and that in every instance of war crimes by its military are unproven. However they also claim to facilitate the passage of essential humanitarian aid which is all but denied entry into Gaza. So in practice if you are an Israeli, chances are you'd believe that, and if you are from anywhere else in the world, having seen months of news footage, and this documentary you won't.
My personal message to President Biden... Please, watch this documentary.
Though well meaning it's futile building multi-million dollar piers beaches if that humanitarian aid cannot be distributed because of impassable roads, lack of fuel and Israeli soldiers blockading distribution.
Ultimately, it is pointless to simultaneously give Palestinian people bread on one hand.... and 2,000 lb bombs to Israeli's on the other.
Thank you for reading. Documentary rating: 10.
Yonav Gallant, Israeli Defence Minister: "We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no water, no fuel."
This is a brilliant first-hand fly-on-the-wall eyewitness documentary by journalists in Gaza. Without pulling any punches, or needing to, this hour long account shows the decimation of the enclave and the daily and nightly suffering inflicted upon a civilian population, a persistent, continuous truly Kafkaesque nightmare from which they cannot escape.
There are many victims from the elderly, the maimed, and the mortally wounded right down to the children that their stories cannot all be recounted. We witness orphaned children, severely injured who will be alone and physically crippled for their entire lifetimes. Children, in ever greater numbers, are medically assessed as malnourished (a slow form of death), skinny little things with distended burgeoning bellies - the classic telltale symptom.
One such victim, almost a pathetic, but very sweet girl, Jewan Al Ashram, is just 5 years old. Yet she speaks of her family's deaths and her serious injuries philosophically with maturity far beyond her years - while bombs rain down.
We see the infrastructure as well as thousands of homes flattened beyond repair, hearing explosions without warning, with no-one certain whether they will be next. The civilians are trapped. The injured are rushed, if they can be removed by hand from underneath burning rubble, to any still partially remaining hospital - if roads remain intact. Often ambulances cannot pass because road surfaces are ripped to shreds by huge blades on Israeli military vehicles. Roads are impassable many people die without medical treatment.
The Israeli's dropped leaflets by air ordering civilians to depart where they live at less than an hour's notice, or instantly. Such leaflets use QR codes needing the internet to display complicated maps of 'safe zones'. However, the Israeli's also switch-off the internet and phone networks periodically leaving civilians fearing for their lives perplexed as to where they must go. 90% of the Palestinian population in Gaza is displaced.
Raw sewage runs through bombed streets, and when it rains seeps into refugee tents. Israeli's have destroyed the water supply. And UN medical teams, and MSF assessed that one-third of Gazan's now have transmissible diseases. Pregnant women entering childbirth, people in urgent need of life-saving surgery face operations without anaesthesia. Critically ill patients cannot be put on dialysis machines without power, or in blown up facilities.
By November almost 9,000 people had been killed. We subsequently know that number has risen to 37,000 deaths, of whom 15,000 are children. A further 80,000+ people have been maimed, and still this devastation relentlessly goes on, day after day.
According to the Geneva Convention under international law it is illegal to attack / bomb hospitals, yet almost all are destroyed; some 190 medical workers including volunteers from the UN, the Palestine Red Crescent, and MSF killed. 67% of all Gaza fatalities are women and children, killed by 12,000 Israeli air strikes in the first 3 weeks alone. No schools are intact. Journalists in Gaza are not merely reporting the obliteration for the outside world - they are living it, and at least 147 of them have been indiscriminately killed.
We hear and see many Palestinians baffled, bewildered, grieving, in shock and clearly resigned to exist without food, water, medicine or any other essential form of life-saving comfort that makes us human. The reach of the devastation goes beyond urban areas, into the countryside, where olive trees were extensively demolished by bulldozers. Why? "In case Hamas is hiding in them", Israeli soldiers replied.
Babies covered in blood are brought out from underneath the rubble and concrete slabs by people digging with their bare hands. Ambulances are shot at; many have shattered glass and bullet holes. Paramedics are seen to cry. The whole population of Gaza is traumatised. Yet none express bitterness, and remain dignified.
Unmarked civilian graves are found where Israeli soldiers buried, burned, shot at or ran over victims. In Gaza clean water has become the most precious commodity. A water butt convoy led by donkeys is bombed. People on the beach running toward humanitarian aid trucks are mown down and killed. Snipers wait outside hospitals indiscriminately shooting dead anyone, including doctors, going inside or out, or happen to be beside a window. Grenades are thrown inside too. WCNSF is a new acronym for 'wounded child, no surviving family'. Many are severely burned, over 50% of their bodies, and there is little medication for them. Life in the entire enclave is hideous, the very definition of living hell.
Peaceable non-combatant entire families are blown to smithereens, becoming unidentifiable or human fragments. Comparatively few are rescued from the aftermath of airstrikes. But airstrikes are in such preponderance that the number of casualties is disproportionately high. In remaining medical centres injured people lay alongside one another on the floors drenched in blood.
En masse people are ordered to depart from northern and central Gaza, heading to the south, around Rafah, designated by Israeli's as a 'safe area'. We know since that Rafah has frequently been bombed too, even burning refugees to death as they slept inside makeshift tents. This was dubbed by PM Netanyahu to be, "a tragic mistake". Even so, no apology was forthcoming. Displaced people following evacuation orders were blown up en route regardless, cars and ambulances destroyed, bodies strewn literally everywhere.
People attempting to rush the dying to hospitals are blocked at Israeli checkpoints, where they die untreated. An official Israeli response later denied this. The UN stated that Gaza is becoming a graveyard for children. One young named child featured was severely injured in three separate airstrikes and now has no legs, or parents. Does any of this make sense to Israeli people? Does this resonate with President Biden?
For the poor souls still alive the most pressing quest is to find any food, and water. More than two million people face this dilemma daily. Humanitarian aid is limited, often refused entry into Gaza by Israeli soldiers (by reason of incorrectly filled-in or incomplete paperwork). And now the world knows that humanitarian aid lorries are attacked by illegal West Bank settlers. Aid is pulled off lorries and destroyed; foreign volunteer drivers badly beaten, and their lorries burned.
The unproven claim that Al-Shifa Hospital was the centre of Hamas activity went unsupported. International journalists at the White House asked for evidence. None was forthcoming. The Israeli's did later produce a small cache of firearms and what looked like a small dugout, but no tunnel complex was found supporting their destruction of the hospital. Was the hospital destroyed for no reason other than vengeance? It must be asked. The film leaves the viewer to ponder the question.
Since the horrors of WW2 Israel has deservedly had the world's sympathy lasting for decades. On watching this, an 84-year-old lady asked something I cannot answer. "Why are the Israeli's behaving like Nazi's? I see no difference," she said.
That special decades-long sympathy for the Israel has - by the evidence of all the protests around the world on every continent in at least 40 countries - evaporated. That sympathy has gone because of what the Israeli's are doing to the Palestine population. The whole world has seen this. It cannot be denied or smoothed over by government propaganda on Israel's news networks. People in Israel maybe taken in by that but this perpetual savagery is happening in their name. That is what outside world in every continent sees and knows. And revulsion of this horror is why that enduring sympathy that made Israel a special case is gone.
Gaza is now a sea of destruction horizon-to-horizon. Precious little remains intact. Carpet bombing has seen to that. The Israeli war on Gaza has changed the land from the initial devastation to obliteration. Nothing remains to support its population without massive international intervention. Not even fishing, as Israel's navy shoots and sinks fishing boats, however tiny. Streets are no longer identifiable. Places that Israel's IDF declares as humanitarian areas are bombed regardless.
It is important to know this documentary depicts the futility or war, and is not glorified in any way. This documentary is filmed with honesty, meriting every media award that can be bestowed upon it.
The film also, importantly, acknowledges the Israeli victims on 7th October 2023; that Israeli soldiers have also died, that 252 hostages were taken, with around 100 still held captive, and cites IDF statements in their entirety. IDF statements are thoughtfully and carefully composed, accepting no guilt, or remorse, brushing aside blame, claiming the thousands of air strikes are based on intelligence, and that in every instance of war crimes by its military are unproven. However they also claim to facilitate the passage of essential humanitarian aid which is all but denied entry into Gaza. So in practice if you are an Israeli, chances are you'd believe that, and if you are from anywhere else in the world, having seen months of news footage, and this documentary you won't.
My personal message to President Biden... Please, watch this documentary.
Though well meaning it's futile building multi-million dollar piers beaches if that humanitarian aid cannot be distributed because of impassable roads, lack of fuel and Israeli soldiers blockading distribution.
Ultimately, it is pointless to simultaneously give Palestinian people bread on one hand.... and 2,000 lb bombs to Israeli's on the other.
Thank you for reading. Documentary rating: 10.
