Tears of Gaza

This is one of the purest films I have ever watched, I recommended highly! First of all it is 100% pure footage of what is it like to be on the ground as a witness of what Israel claims to us all over the world as a military targets. A user of IMDb wrote in a review by moacow" we did not see the other side justification for this type of bombing" What a numb-skull user moacow is…How in the world can you or any one justifies bombing a civilian home or a hospital or a school or even shooting with a sniper rifle babies and more. MOACOW YOU CANNOT! that is why you did not see it in the film. Israel does not explain its U.N. and international courts condiment actions to anyone in the world.

As an English now American and married to a lovely American Jewish woman, I hope one day soon I will witness peace in Israel! We as people with understanding to life, we cannot let Israel continue the mass murders of Palestinians. Bloody hell! Did you notice the Israeli in-discriminant bombing of Palestinians? What kind of Army men with sniper rifles that shoots at babies and civilians? My grand fathers did not fight the criminal Hitler so Israel can take over his criminal role now they act exactly like if not worse than Hitler. My wife is ashamed of Israel and its despicable treatment of people. That is why we all must not allow Israel to enjoy our hard earned money taxes going to support their criminal behavior. We must pressure Israel to sign the 1948 agreement with the Palestinians. If they do sign it all troubles in the East will stop and maybe for once the world will not look down at our policies regarding the world. Please join me and write to your congressman and senator to pressure Israel in to signing the 1948 agreement with Palestine and stop the bloodshed of innocent people. One cannot claim to be a human being and agree with Israeli violence!

Watching this documentary is like watching people who are stuck in bad dream.

And the most terrifying part is: They know they're dreaming but are unable, try as they might, to jolt themselves awake, trapped forever in a permanent nightmare.

What struck me most about this film is the mood and atmosphere. As documentaries go, this one contains very few frills or embellishments. Music is used sparingly, punctuating extended periods of eerie silence. And yet the atmosphere is haunting and surreal, seeming to blur the line between fantasy and reality.

This documentary is shown through the eyes of three children in Gaza whose family members are killed during Israel's 22-day assault from late 2008 to early 2009, known as Operation Cast Lead.

The "operation" killed 1,400 Palestinians, more than three-quarters of them civilians, including 350 children. Some 6,800 homes were completely destroyed and tens of thousands of others damaged by Israeli bombing, which left behind 600,000 tons of rubble.

Gaza is a tiny strip of land, about 25 miles long and five miles wide, and is widely regarded as one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Nearly half of its 1.5 million inhabitants (the total population at the time of Cast Lead) are children.

"Tears of Gaza" is told primarily through the eyes of three of these children, who are mourning the deaths of some of their family members killed by Israeli airstrikes.

The feeling of hopeless and destitution colors almost every second of this film. Even when people seem to be enjoying themselves - watching TV, building sand castles on the beach, dancing and singing and clapping during a nighttime bachelor party - an eerie gloom hangs palpably overhead, permeating every moment of existence.

The use of the term "open-air prison" to describe Gaza is routinely derided by Israeli apologists as hysterical propaganda, but after watching "Tears of Gaza," it begins to seem more like a cruel euphemism.

The activities of daily life are frequently interrupted by drones and helicopters buzzing overhead, the Israeli wardens keeping an ever-watchful eye on their Palestinian prisoners. Israeli boats patrol the seas and fire warning shots to ensure that Palestinian fishermen don't travel more than three miles off shore. Take a moment to imagine what it would be like to gaze out at the horizon of an infinite ocean and yet feeling - knowing - that you are trapped. As scholar Tareq Baconi puts it in his book "Hamas Contained," daily life in Gaza is characterized by "endless motion in stillness."

The film doesn't show it, but a giant "security" fence surrounds every inch of Gaza's perimeter, with Israel studiously controlling what goes in and what goes out, even going so far as to calculate the calories of the food allowed into Gaza at just above starvation-level.

The somber scenes are violently punctuated by the whoosh and crash of an Israeli bomb, followed by extremely graphic close-up footage of the aftermath - mass panic, sirens wailing, throngs of people shouting and converging at the site of a demolished home, the lifeless and bloody bodies of children being pulled from the rubble, rushed into the hospital on stretchers, their tiny bodies writhing during intubation, half-conscious infants gurgling on their own vomit, their mothers and fathers sobbing uncontrollably and cursing their fate.

In one scene, a little girl recounts the deaths of her family members in an Israeli airstrike. "Life is hard," she says. "Really hard." She gives the impression of being mature and hardened beyond her years, but then she suddenly collapses to one knee and buries her head in the crook of of arm, sobbing. Her mother has to help her to her feet. She can barley stand, her head drooping, all the life drained from her body. She is led into the family's tent to lie down.

These are the "Tears of Gaza."

I saw this film at the Toronto Film Festival and was very moved by it. There's nothing happy about it, though, so be warned that it is an exhausting emotional experience that will leave you feeling somewhat angry and helpless.

The likelihood of this film ever seeing a general release in the US is remote to non-existent. It's just too politically charged and will probably be viewed as anti-Israel (which I don't think it is). I'm hoping that at the very least it will be available for download on the internet or, heaven forbid, it will be released on DVD. I think this is a very important film for the general public to see because it looks at the conflict between Jews and Palestinians in very human terms. Yes, it's true that the perspective we see is that of the Palestinians, but what's wrong with that? It's called "Point of View" filmmaking. Not everything has to be a balanced piece of journalism, especially when deeply human stories are involved. Anyway, I hope you get a chance to see it.

You can compare Tears of Gaza with Passion of the Jew by Mel Gibson in South Park. It is only 90 minutes of people getting slaughtered. I understand that the world should see how horrible Palestine got it, but is it really necessary to show it for 90 minutes? This film does nothing but show one perspective of the conflict, that is OK, but we do not get any briefing on why they are being bombed, we don't even see who the bombers are nor hear anything from them at all. I believe that the film would express more sympathy for Palestine if they i confronted Israel with the photos the got; how can this sort of action be defended?

During the film we get three stories from three different children. Yet we also get stories from others during the film, I believe they try to create more sympathy when they hear stories from children. This does not work for me, the stories are also mixed with others and the storyline in this film is... well... a pathetic attempt to get sympathy.

I agree that the world should see how they have to live day by day, but this is not the way.

You can see it made some evil zionists mad and they are lying claiming that by slaughtering children that the zionist colonialists are "just defending themselves and their homeland against attackers, murderers, terrorists". How evil these zionists are to try to justify their war crimes. Justice will be done one day.