From Ground Zero: Stories from Gaza: An Appreciation

This extraordinary film, on the 2024 Oscar shortlist for documentaries, consists of 22 episodes stitched together by the noted Palestinian film director, Rashid Masharawi, but without any apparent effort to curate a narrative experience of the Gaza ordeal now in its 15^th month. The power of the film taken as a whole derives from the cumulative impact of the utterly helpless and vulnerable Gaza civilian population seeking to survive despite overwhelming challenges to safety and pervasive loss of loved ones, home, neighborhood, schools, and sacred/historical sites in the overcrowded tiny Gaza Strip [25 miles long, 3.7-7.5 miles wide, population estimate of 2.3 million]. The various episodes both express the distinctiveness of Palestinian lived culture, its rich historical heritage, and the universality of a devastating saga of prolonged victimization.

I read through a series of admiring reviews that stressed these features of Palestinian resilience and creativity in the face of this cruel, undeserved collective fate. None of the episodes delves into the history of Palestinian suffering brought on by the Zionist Project for over a century. Nor is there any explicit linkage of the Gaza ordeal to the pathological geopolitics of the US-led supposed bastions of liberal democracy with its constitutional façade of fidelity to the rule of law and the international protection of human rights. From a cinematic perspective this purifies the message of bravery in the face of suffering, the existential variations of such an experience that has the potential to inspire remarkable acts of memorialization and transcendent behavior, as by making artworks from shards of glass or chunks of rubble.

These silences inevitably raise such questions as ‘Was this foreclosure of response a pragmatic adjustment to market realities, well-grounded fears of ideological suppression if the film had dared to examine even glancingly the underlying political impetus, the genocide of the perpetrators, the context of the October 7 attack, and the systemic disregard of law and morality by leading political actors? As it is, the film is being shown widely in American theaters, received accolades from reviewers, and much deserved attention from film festivals, even honored by nominations for coveted cinema dawards. It seems fair to conjecture that this desirable outcome would not have happened had the Palestinians expressed anger directed at the sources of their misery. What we may never know was whether this set of foreclosure were set forth and monitored by the curator to make the film suitable for Western audiences in North America and Europe or whether this represented his aesthetic judgment to keep a steady universalizing focus on a dire humanitarian tragedy, somewhat mitigated by the courage and inner spirit of its victims. In sum, to consider effects of genocide rather than crime and its perpetrators.

At least in my review of mainstream film critics there was no commentary on this question of boundaries, whether consciously or not imposed on these 22 Gaza filmmakers. I left the theater struck by the failure of any of the characters to mention the words ‘genocide,’ ‘Israel,’ ‘Zionism,’ ‘United States,’ ‘United Nations,’ ‘international law,’ and ‘International Court of Justice.’ It should be mentioned that there was also no mention of ‘Hamas,’ ‘terrorism,’ and ‘hostages.’  This raises the question as to whether the absence of such references represented an effort by to adopt a posture of apolitical neutrality either for aesthetic or pragmatic reasons. We may never know, and would the motives of the curator be important beyond its human interest relevance? At the same time, I find it unacceptable to hide the evil of genocide behind a ‘two sides’ political smokescreen that equates the crimes of the oppressor with the criminal excesses of resistance on the part of the oppressed. The film completely avoids even a hint of some kind of implied parity of responsibility for the suffering inflicted on the people of Gaza.

From Ground Zero also steers clear of evoking our pity in frontal ways by showing hospital scenes of amputation or severe injury, which of course abound in Gaza alongside the daily death toll. From my own previous visits to Gaza where I was exposed to such visible torments, I know the power exerted by direct contact with such victims. I shall never forget the imprint left after many years of seeing a distraught father carrying his bleeding and badly wounded young son in his arms while shouting angrily in Arabic. I didn’t understand the words, but the sentiments he was expressing were transparent, and needed no translation. This conscious or unconscious decision to exclude such material from the film may have lessened its immediate impact, but it deepened the longer term understanding of the underlying humanitarian ordeal being endured by the Palestinian people.

The closest the film comes to making political allusions is put in the mouth of an engaging puppet who voices a damning indictment in one of the latter episodes, “everything is gone and the world just watches.’  There are also brief isolated references to the Nakba and the coerced expulsions from their homeland that at least 700,000 Palestinians experienced in 1948, and have ever since lived as refugees being unlawfully denied by Israel any right to return. These references express the deep roots of Palestinian suffering, but without pointing an accusing finger, and will likely be noticed at all except by those non-Palestinian viewers that have followed Palestinian misery through the decades. While for Palestinians those allusions to the past likely serve as grim reminders of familiar realities.

 On balance I applaud the rendering of the Palestinian experience in this authenticating and original manner. It is itself a triumph of the Palestinian imagination over the daily torments that have become a reality of their lives 24/7.

It is not only the unbearable losses of family and home, but the menacing nightly sound of nearby explosions and the constant noise of drones overhead. The episodes are uniform in exposing the total vulnerability of the Palestinians and the disregard of the limits set by international law and morality made far worse by deliberately imposing a desperate struggle for subsistence arising from the obstructing the delivery of humanitarian aid causing death and disease throughout the wretched tent cities in which Gazans have been forced to live since the destruction of their homes. The daily life of searching for food and drinkable water are only available, if at all, at sub-subsistence levels.

Of course, I hope that From Ground Zero receives an Oscar at the Academy Awards night coming soon.

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