I have not yet watched NAZA, though I have seen some of the footage and excerpts published online.
I’m struggling to understand what this film is going to add to what I have already witnessed in Gaza and personally survived.
I have written hundreds of times about relatives of mine and my wife, as well as thousands of other families, who were killed in their sleep, in their homes, in tents, and in school shelters. I have relatives whose remains are still trapped beneath the rubble of their homes.
I have posted countless times about Israel’s bombing of residential buildings, including entire towers. Just two days ago, I wrote about the recovery of the remains of 101 people who had been trapped beneath the rubble since October 25, 2023. And whatever the hell does “recovery” even mean in this context?
Survivors have spoken. They have written. They have documented the massacres day and night.
The essays are there. The social media posts are there. The videos are there. The photographs are there. The testimonies are there.
And Israelis, officials, soldiers, and even some artists have publicly expressed views calling for more killing, for the killing of Palestinians more broadly. Remember the April 2024 poll in which 34% of Israeli adults said their military had “not gone far enough.”
[Note: between October 2023 and April 2024, Israel slaughtered over 34,000 Palestinians. Still not enough!]
Just yesterday, we watched a video of a 17-year-old saying that even babies in Gaza must be killed.
It’s all there.
So what will this film add?
How will it move anyone to action to stop these war crimes when the people living through them have been documenting them in real time, over and over again?
I just cannot imagine a Holocaust victim or survivor somehow managing to write and simultaneously publish their testimony from inside a concentration camp or gas chamber in Germany, Poland, or Italy, while also filming the killing and deaths of the people around them, whether from gassing, starvation, or other forms of extermination, and publishing that footage online.
And then, years later, a group of Nazi officers, after being strictly anonymized, comes forward to declare that they orders to carry out atrocities. They come forward to describe what the victims had already documented and shared with the world in real time.
I mean, come on!
How the hell is that more shocking than the actual footage of babies being killed? Of entire families being wiped out? Of people digging through the rubble for the remains of their loved ones?
I mean, yes, NAZA could be important for racist people who refuse to trust Palestinians when we speak but are willing to trust the Israeli narrative. I mean here editors in the NYT, CNN, Reuters, AP, and others to present the Israeli justification for a crime before anything else in the headline. (example below)
But HELL with that.
If you cannot trust our voices, after we have documented our own suffering in real time, then we definitely do not trust your humanity or your fake feelings.
History shall hold you accountable for your complicity.