Death in Gaza (2004)


The filmmaker and those who edited and finished the film later tried pretty hard to be unbiased. What you get seems to be, as close as it can be, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as Palestinian kids see it—many of them have lost relatives to Israeli soldier fire; all Palestinians killed are made into martyrs, the body carried through the streets and kissed by everyone while a man yells stuff through a loudspeaker; kids are recruited as scouts for militant groups (and if they happen to be killed, there’s thousands more to replace them); all Israelis are Jewish pigs; they spend their spare time throwing rocks at Israeli tanks, because they’re everywhere. I can't quite imagine what it would be like to grow up with tanks driving through the streets. It’s particularly interesting that the Palestinian kids think that all the soldiers are Jews, since the Israeli soldiers who killed the filmmaker were most likely Bedouin Arabs. But it’s what they’re taught by parents and teachers and everyone else.

I don’t know that the movie gives any hope for reconciliation between Israel and Palestine, but it’s a way to better understand one side. Definitely worth watching.


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