Death in Gaza

I saw Death in Gaza as a wonderful documentary about the horror of life in and around the Israel border. Too many times we hear of bombings and death in Israel without seeing the other side of the story. This film gives a voice to those who do not have the cameras or television stations to broadcast their side. Because of the extreme poverty of the these people they simply did not have the resources to film what everyday life is like living with the intimidation of a much wealthier country who has the largest world powers as their allies. One has to admire the makers of this documentary for being willing to get this story and for ultimately for paying the highest price and becoming themselves yet another statistic.

Your comments on James Miller's death at the end of filming "Death In Gaza" were extremely distasteful. A dedicated filmmaker was murdered; needlessly shot in the throat by Israeli units. Israeli units with night-vision equipment who were capable of seeing the white flag the film crew were waving. James Miller was killed in cold blood & no one has been held responsible, which is a clear indication of what Israel & the IDF think about Justice. The murder of James Miller was recognised in the UK media but not the countless murders of innocent Palestinians by Israel's brutal occupation. Day after day, after day. When Israel is a nation with no actual right to exist; I am neither Palestinian or Arab, I have never left the UK, but from thousands of miles away I can see the blaring injustice of a nation with the population of London, Armed to the back teeth with the single unified purpose of destroying the original, Muslim, inhabitants. Palestinians are in need of justice, not criticism. Naturally I agree all terrorism is wrong, but that includes state terrorism. The world wouldn't stand for Naziism, or Apertheid; we should not stand for Zionism. Love & Light2d

James Miller was a documentary cameraman who died making his final film – a look at the day-to-day reality of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. He died as part of that conflict when he was shot in the neck. This film charts his final work as he interviews the children who are the next generation of the conflict who have been born into the situation knowing nothing else.

Being from Northern Ireland I will admit that I have grown up with my own complex conflict of terrorists and murders to come to terms with and thus have never made time to find out a great deal of the "truth" about the situation in the Middle East. As a result I have no bias towards one side or the other which I think is a good thing since many of the reviews on this site seem to be more about people's views of the situation rather than being reviews of the actual film. With such an emotive subject perhaps this can be excused but when I watched it I tried to keep an open mind to all sides of the argument and try and review the film as it was made rather than just ranting at people.

Watching it myself I must admit to being a bit surprised by those who say it is biased towards justifying the Palestine actions or that it portrays Israel as a vicious army only attacking children for no real reason. Personally I didn't think it did either of these things and actually shows the opposite regularly. It manages to avoid issues of right/wrong by looking at the children, not the history of the conflict. True it might have been better if he had done this with children on both sides but simply following one side doesn't mean the film is biased towards them – indeed seeing the next generation of Palestinians talking about wanting to be martyred while attacking Israel could hardly be seen as presenting them in a good light. The main thrust of the film is to show how hopeless the situation is – both sides are right and both sides are wrong and whole generations of people seem to just want to fight and die. It is utterly depressing and the film does pretty well in bringing this out by looking how, outside of the political agenda the problem is ongoing. In Northern Ireland the will of the people is mostly for peace and negotiation but here you don't see that.

Overall this is an engagingly depressing documentary. The way it turns at the end to be more about Miller than the conflict undermines it a little bit but it is easy to forgive given what happened and considering that the film does stand as a memorial to the director. Well worth seeing although I can understand why many viewers have found it impossible to get past their politics and just watch the film.

James Miller goes to the Palestine territory to film the children of the Intifada and is killed by Israeli firepower. His murder is a stunning coda to a filmed account of how war corrupts the innocence of children. Miller begins the film acquainting us with the geography of Palestine, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip. We meet, get up close and personal, with the battle hardened "martyrs" of the Hamas jihad. Hidden by masks they seduce the children, so needy for heroes and mentors, with speeches of death and destruction. Blow yourself up and go to paradise. We meet the children, feckless, disingenuous children learning to kill, feeling the heft of a gun, basking in the praise of the masked warriors. There are the girls, praying for the destruction of Israel, eager to emulate their male counterparts. The children seduce us with their wide-eyed appeal, their ability to absorb the most horrible blows as their homes are destroyed. One child points to his uncle's car which has been tossed into the limbs of a tree by an Israeli bulldozer that's just leveled his home. The children watch all this, relate the stories of the martyrs, and seem with their open faces and fetching smiles and flashing dark eyes not to have a clue that they're living in a hell. They express the earnest belief that all will be well once the Israelis are (1) killed and (2)removed from the area between the Mediteranean and the Sea of Galilee. The innocence and naiveté are beguiling, disturbing, sad. At the last Miller meets his brutal, surprising death in the murky dusk, in the rubble of the streets of this hopeless settlement. There seems no way out. Violence begets violence. The righteous shriek their slogans. Human life is disposable. This brilliant film solves nothing. Don't believe me? Read the viewers' comments on the Message Boards. Read the insults, the disparaging remarks, the certitude of bigots and believers. James Miller. R.I.P. All the innocent children of Gaza. R.I.P. (And today I read of the death of journalists from U.S. TV in Iraq. When will it end?)

I caught this about a third of the way through on HBO one night. I used to wonder just what caused some kids to grow up to strap a bomb to themselves and try and take as many innocent Israelis with them as possible. Now I know.

I spent a great deal of time absorbed in the films sheer, gritty horror of the bleak desperation that is the Palestinian world. Sometimes I couldn't believe what I saw and heard; my mouth was literally agape about half the time. It was the most shocking, horrifying, and saddening display of pure, brutal inhumanity ever recorded on camera, in my opinion. It lays plain the reality that evil begets evil and shows that evil is a cycle that will continue to consume innocent lives on both sides unless truth and compassion finally win out, if such a thing is even possible anymore.

Many of you think might think that nothing can justify the evils Palestinian suicide bombers visit on innocent Israelis. You're right. Nothing can justify it. But those young men and women with the bombs strapped on had lives too. And when they're raised in an environment of utter poverty, taught nothing but propaganda in their 'schools' and society, see their friends killed right in front of them by 'the Israeli pigs', forced to attend great, joyous ceremonies around the bodies of 'martyrs' (including young boys who did nothing wrong and got shot for it), and are befriended by young Arab martyrs who grew up exactly the same way, it's no wonder Hamas and Hezbollah has such a large supply of human bombs to throw at Israel.

The supreme irony here is that the two young Palestinian boys who were the focus of a lot of the film decided to become journalists instead of martyrs due to the friendship they felt for the films director, James Miller. He was shot in the neck by an arab-Israeli trooper in an APC at night near the end of the film crews time in Gaza; he died almost instantly. The crew had yelled that they were British journalists to the crew of the APC, but it didn't matter; the shots come anyways.

Had the films director not died, we would have seen the Israeli's side of the story. Unfortunately, the film claimed its title in innocent blood striving for answers to a cycle of never-ending violence in the Middle East.

'Death in Gaza' is about just that: death. The death of innocence, the death of truth, the death of hope for the residents of the Palestinian territories surrounding Israel.

If you wonder why the Middle East is such a mess, see this film. Then you'll know the answer.