This documentary is portraying the incidents in Gaza after several non-stop mass shootings by the Israeli military forces.
When a five day seize-fire was declared, the journalists behind this documentary went to Gaza and specifically to the “Shujaiyeh neighborhood” were most of the fire took place. Arriving there in the right place and in the right time is proactive witnessing. The latter serves the purpose of bearing witness rather than simply witnessing. This means that the video was shot strategically in order to pass a strong message to the targeted audience and the one’s who shot it were at the right place and in the right time. This documentary shows the Palestinian pain in a way that emphasizes how the Israeli forces are killing innocent, often young, civilians that do even know how to resist the shootings.
The video included different testimonies from parents and relatives of victims but they were not just simply telling the people a testimony. The striking difference is that the authors of the video included motion pictures embodying the testimony while the interviewed people were speaking. It was something you can hear and something you can see which indeed creates moral engagement. We now have their suffering imprinted in motion pictures while, before, I’d bet that when I am writing this (even though I just watched the documentary); I would have forgotten what happened. It sure is a way to engage people morally and ethically with what is actually happening rather than what is on the news.
Furthermore, an example on accidental witnessing would be when a volunteer in the International solidarity movement caught on camera the execution of ‘Salem’, an innocent civilian, that was helped by the volunteers to search for the body of his cousin. Salem was killed by a sniper and was left in his place as no one from the movement knew his identity; however, when the video was posted, it went viral and then his parents knew of his death.
I think the major impact of this video is the ability to leave a print in one’s mind of what is actually happening. The way it was shot and designed is so strategic that people cannot just witness what happened but they indeed were bearing witness. It has emphasized how the Israeli forces are killing innocent people without any mercy which is opposite to how some international media outlets show us. Seldom, we hear how Israelis leave those who are innocent alone and only are after resistance forces. Yet, this video stresses how this is not the case at all and reinforces it through the different real-life experiences and testimonies.
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