This is the first, and so far the only, documentary on the war filmed largely in Gaza. It is based on AFP videos. And it is meant to symbolise the press’s tenacity. That, despite all, despite being directly targeted, does not stop. But it is the opposite.
Inside Gaza is the symbol of its failure.
Or rather, of the success of #Israel. Which turned off the lights.
And yet many images have never been shown before. And leave a mark. Especially the opening images, those of October 7th, of the #Hamas attack, and then, of the very first days. Of the counterattack. At the beginning, no one has any idea what’s happening. AFP bureau chief Adel Zaanoun takes a few photos of the rocket trails in the sky, and meanwhile, he keeps drinking his coffee, like a thousand other times. But then he sees armoured jeeps in the streets, and is told that many, many Palestinians are heading to the border, and are crossing the barrier, that the barrier has been torn down. When he gets the images of the #kibbutzim, he realises that everything is spiralling out of control. That it will be a butchery, and nothing more. That there won’t be any victory.
For anyone.
Everyone has a cousin
On TV, Ismail Haniyeh appears. He is speaking from #Doha. He says that it is the beginning of the end, the end of Israel, the reconquest of Palestine, that triumph has never been so close. Then Benjamin #Netanyahu appears. He tells Palestinians to leave. He says Israel will bomb everything and everyone. And immediately afterwards, the screen shifts from the rulers to the ruled, and all that appears are hospitals: the wounded, the dead. The desperation. These are the most powerful images. One after another. The kind of images that later win #journalism awards. But in the newsroom, the AFP team follows the media from all over the world, and there is nothing of those images. There is nothing of Gaza. It is not like the previous wars. This time, international media broadcast only images of Israel and Israelis. The kibbutzim. The funerals. The hostages. And when a photographer takes a picture of the body of a child wrapped in a blanket, pale, with almost white skin, and the photo finally makes the front pages, AFP is accused of photographing a doll.
With a photo of a Western photographer, they say, no one would ever dare.
They are accused of being Hamas. But Gaza is small, they explain, in Gaza everyone has a cousin, a friend, a neighbour who is Hamas. And that certainly does not mean you are Hamas, says Adel Zaanoun, who has been arrested over 20 times. For journalists, he says, Hamas has always been hell: bans, controls, censorship, intimidation of all sorts. And now, he says, we are accused of being Hamas? After years and years challenging Hamas?
This time, international media broadcast only images of Israel and Israelis.
The beginning is so intense that it seems to last a lifetime. And yet, it is still October 13th.
The day the #IDF orders Palestinians to move south.
All the Palestinians in the north. Half the population. All to the south.
Within 24 hours.
And when, reluctantly, the team of Adel Zaanoun obeys, and obeys only because the order comes from Paris, from AFP, because otherwise, he says, we would all remain, and moves to #Rafah, among the displaced, the only one left in #Gaza City# is Wael al-Dahdouh, al-Jazeera chief bureau, with his cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, who will be killed, as will the wife, the children, and the grandchildren of Wael al-Dahdouh: and all changes. Because in Rafah, there is nothing. There is no internet, no electricity. There is no equipment. And above all, the war is elsewhere. And no matter how many times the journalists defy the IDF, and fate, and venture northward anyway, filming a lunar Gaza that’s already in ruins, already gone, it is there that the narrative starts to fray and get lost. And Israel starts to win.
Mirrored reality
From then on, the documentary loses its edge: somehow, perfectly mirroring reality. Little by little, the images become images already seen, and already seen not only a thousand times, but in a thousand wars, because they are images not from the front lines, but from behind the lines, images of #refugees, of hunger, of cold, of queues for a bit of water, a bit of food, barefoot children: they are images that in some way, miss the core of the story. There is no Hamas, no IDF. There is no Gaza under airstrikes. And attention, inevitably, wanes.
And wasn’t this, ultimately, Israel’s goal?
In the final scenes, AFP journalists report from Cairo, from Brussels, from Doha.
They have all left.
Along with their children, fathers, mothers, and brothers.
Probably, never to return.
Watch the full film on Arte.tv
