"For so long I wondered why I survived while family and friends were killed. Now I know the only difference between life and death may have been an AI algorithm..."

Palestinians search for missing people under the rubble of a destroyed house following Israeli air strikes on Deir Al Balah, 22 February 2024. Photograph: Mohammed Saber/EPA

 NAZA   in The Guardian 

Watching NAZA was like peering through a window – and seeing the machinery of killing in Gaza

Mahmoud Mushtaha

The lights go down, and for a moment I forget I’m watching a screen. It fills with a rooftop in Tel Aviv at night, black and grey. The camera pans down. Through windows, we see people watching screens of their own – couples holding each other close, following the news, eating food. They appear absorbed in their own worlds, and why wouldn’t they be?

That’s the thing I can’t get past as a Palestinian journalist from Gaza, watching this apparent tranquillity: this must be it – this must be what safety actually looks like. Just an evening uninterrupted, with no military aircraft flying overhead or drones buzzing incessantly. Meanwhile, men and women on the rooftop above them calmly talk about how they decided how many Palestinian civilians would die on any given night.

These are the soldiers, mostly intelligence officers, who helped Israel carry out its destruction of Gaza. Their testimonies form the basis of NAZA, a documentary whose title comes from an Israeli military acronym used to indicate how many civilians are likely to die in an airstrike on the territory.

What surprised me in the film wasn’t the massive scale of the killing, or even the coldness of it, but the proficiency of the soldiers who coolly described destroying people’s lives as if they were discussing a routine errand. One described the work simply as a “mission”, while another compared it to a “video game”.

One soldier described knowing exactly what some of the people were doing in the moments before he killed them. He recalled hearing a man talking to his wife in bed. A baby crying. The sound of the TV. Despite taking all that humanity in, he quickly gave permission to drop the bomb...  READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/17/naza-film-documentary-killing-gaza

[AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere]  

The Guardian view on NAZA’s persecuted directors: journalism is not treason. Politicians who threaten filmmakers rather than investigate alleged military crimes expose not strength but a leadership frightened of the evidence

Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham face being stripped of their citizenship for treason. Photograph: Maria Laura Antonelli/AGF/Shutterstock

The Guardian Editorial

NAZA   Fri 18 Sep 2026 

Across Israel, politicians, military leaders and much of the media are trying to discredit a documentary that almost none of them have seen. Produced by the Guardian, NAZA examines the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israel Defense Forces to bombard Gaza after Hamas’s brutal 7 October 2023 attacks. Named after the Israeli military acronym euphemistically used for “collateral damage”, NAZA features interviews with 24 anonymous insiders who reflect on their role in the death-dealing. Israeli leaders have branded the film a “blood libel” and “fiction”. Its Oscar-winning directors, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, face being stripped of their citizenship for treason.

This is absurd. NAZA shows how bureaucratic distance and routine can turn extreme violence into ordinary work. More than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 children, have been killed in the campaign by Israel’s military. A democracy that values life would at least investigate the film’s claims. Instead Israel’s government, which says it is committed to democratic accountability, is attacking journalists.

The allegations in NAZA come from military insiders. For many, it does not appear to be remorse that drives them to speak out. Some are proud of what they have done. One recalls the “insane fun” of planning airstrikes in Gaza... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/18/the-guardian-view-on-nazas-persecuted-directors-journalism-is-not-treason

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine, or at least fair and just laws and policies here, there- and everywhere]

AMERICAN DOCTOR: ‘Can we accept what we have done or not done?’: harrowing film follows doctors in Gaza. American Doctor follows three volunteer doctors as they try to save lives on the frontline and then return to the US to become advocates in congress

"... But the moral weight of American Doctor lies not just in its depiction of Gaza but its unflinching examination of the political and media machinery that enables it." 

Feroze Sidhwa in American Doctor.

Photograph: Watermelon Pictures

When she wanted to confront Americans about the consequences of their actions – or inactions – in Gaza, Poh Si Teng reached for a genre with mass popular appeal: the medical drama.

“Whether it’s The Pitt, Grey’s Anatomy, House, ER, even a comedy like Scrubs, you name it,” the documentary film-maker says via Zoom from her New York apartment. “I thought to myself, there’s something about medical dramas and doctors and human mortality in this space so let’s make The Pitt. The difference is it’s real and it’s set in Gaza and maybe this is the way to bring Palestine back to the United States.”

The result is American Doctor, a 93-minute film directed by Teng and co-produced with Kirstine Barfod and Reem Haddad, which premiered at the Sundance film festival and is out now in US cinemas.

The documentary follows three doctors from different cultural and religious backgrounds – Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian-American emergency doctor; Mark Perlmutter, a Jewish orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina; and Feroze Sidhwa, a Zoroastrian trauma surgeon based in California – as they volunteer on the frontlines of Gaza’s collapsing hospital system.

They return to the US as advocates in the halls of Congress, which continues to send military aid to Israel. The film highlights the unique position of American doctors as witnesses whose professional standing makes their testimony difficult for politicians and even rightwing media to dismiss as propaganda.

The journey of Teng to making the film began in the fall of 2024, a year into the military campaign in Gaza. The Malaysian-American had spent years as a producer, documentary commissioning editor for Al Jazeera English and creative director at ABC/Disney but felt suffocated by the professional and political silence surrounding what she does not hesitate to call a genocide.

 “I was so frustrated and it felt like nothing was changing,” the 41-year-old explains. “In our journalism circles, even though we were seeing so many Gazan journalists being targeted and executed, it felt like in the western part of the world – specifically where I was situated in New York – that people were still whispering about Palestine... READ MORE  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/aug/17/gaza-doctor-documentary

 AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

6 Things to Know About the Palestinian Nakba by the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) - May 12, 2026

Palestine refugees sit inside their tent in the newly formed Ein El Hilweh refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, in this handout picture believed to be taken in 1948. (Cropped) Myrtle Winter Chaumeny (this link opens in a new window), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons {{PD-US}}

 https://imeu.org/resources/the-nakba/6-things-to-know-about-the-palestinian-nakba/469

  [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]   

1. During the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Zionist militias and the new Israeli army ethnically cleansed approximately three quarters of all Palestinians from their homeland. Palestinians call this the Nakba (“catastrophe”).

• About 750,000 indigenous Palestinians were violently forced from their homes and land during the founding of Israel. This mass expulsion of Palestinians was a deliberate, planned act of ethnic cleansing as part of Israel’s establishment as a Jewish-majority state in Palestine.
• Ever since, Israel has prevented Palestinian refugees from returning home because they aren’t Jewish, denying their internationally recognized legal right of return. Today, about two-thirds of all Palestinians, more than 7 million people, are stateless refugees or internally displaced. Most languish in overcrowded, impoverished semi-permanent refugee camps in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, subject to brutal Israeli military rule, or in neighboring countries and elsewhere in the diaspora.

2. Zionist militants and Israeli soldiers committed dozens of massacres of Palestinian civilians during the Nakba.

• Zionist militias and Israeli soldiers carried out several dozen massacres (this link opens in a new window) of Palestinians to terrorize them into fleeing. The most infamous took place in the village of Deir Yassin outside of Jerusalem on April 9, 1948, when more than 100 people, including dozens of children, women, and elderly people, were murdered by members of the Irgun and Stern Gang, which were led by future Israeli prime ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, respectively.
• The massacres that were perpetrated during the Nakba were a continuation of a more than decade-long campaign of terrorism waged by the Irun, Stern Gang, and other Zionist militias in their drive to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

3. Israel was literally built upon the destruction of Palestine.

• After the new Israeli army finished expanding the state’s borders, Israel covered 78% of Palestine. (The Israeli military occupied the remaining 22%, consisting of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, in the June 1967 war.)
• Between 1948 and 1950, Israel systematically destroyed more than 400 (this link opens in a new window) Palestinian cities and towns or repopulated them with Jewish Israelis. Entire communities, including homes, businesses, and houses of worship, were wiped out to prevent the return of their Palestinian owners.
• In many cases, the Israelis who took their land and homes also took the personal possessions of Palestinians who were forced to flee on short notice, including clothing, books, children’s toys, furniture, and household items like dishes, pots and pans.

4. Palestinians who survived the Nakba and remained inside what became Israel in 1948 were governed by brutal military rule for nearly two decades and today live as fourth-class citizens in their own homeland.

• About 150,000 Palestinians survived the Nakba and remained inside the new state of Israel. They were granted Israeli citizenship but between 1949 and 1966 they were governed by repressive military rule (this link opens in a new window), forced into segregated “ghettos (this link opens in a new window),” had most of their land taken from them for the use of Jewish Israelis, and severe restrictions were imposed on their freedom of movement, speech, and ability to earn a living.
• Military rule was lifted in 1966 but today Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up more than 20% of Israel’s population, continue to have their land and homes taken or destroyed by the state and face widespread, systematic discrimination affecting almost every aspect of their lives, including land ownership rights, housing, employment, and family reunification.

5. The Nakba didn’t end in 1948 but has continued ever since. This is known as the Ongoing Nakba.

• Since 1948, Israel has continued to force Palestinian families out of their homes, including in places like Sheikh Jarrah (this link opens in a new window) in East Jerusalem and the Negev (Naqab) (this link opens in a new window) desert in southern Israel. It continues to steal Palestinian homes and land for illegal settlements. Israeli settlers are waging an intensifying (this link opens in a new window) campaign of terrorism backed by the government (this link opens in a new window), driving Palestinians out of their communities in the West Bank. Since 2023, the Israeli military has forcibly displaced nearly the entire population and systematically destroyed almost every home during its genocidal campaign in Gaza.

6. The Nakba and Ongoing Nakba, and the apartheid system Israel has imposed on Palestinians living under its control, are the root cause of all the violence in Palestine/Israel.

• For more than a century, Zionist groups and successive Israeli governments have been dispossessing and oppressing the Palestinian people, denying millions of Palestinians their freedom and the most basic of rights. This is the root cause of the problem between Israelis and Palestinians.
• There is a consensus among human rights organizations and other experts, including Amnesty International (this link opens in a new window), Human Rights Watch (this link opens in a new window), and Israeli rights groups like B’Tselem (this link opens in a new window) and Yesh Din (this link opens in a new window), that the discriminatory legal and political system that Israel has imposed on Palestinians amounts to apartheid.
• As noted (this link opens in a new window) by Amnesty International: “Israel must dismantle the apartheid system and start treating Palestinians as human beings with equal rights and dignity. Until it does, peace and security will remain a distant prospect for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”

Go deeper

• Quick Facts: The Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe)
• Timeline: The Palestinian Nakba & Establishment of Israeli Apartheid
• Explainer: Plan Dalet & The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
• Explainer: The Deir Yassin Massacre
• In Their Own Words: Israeli Leaders on the Expulsion of Palestinians During Israel’s Establishment
• Quick Facts: Palestinian Refugees
• Fact Sheet: Is Israel an Apartheid State?

 

ABOUT The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU)  

 

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) works to increase and enhance the public’s understanding about Palestine, Palestinians, and Palestinian Americans through media. We do this by offering mainstream US media organizations and journalists access to facts, resources, analysis, and experts in order to help them cover key issues with accuracy and depth, and by creating and disseminating original articles, fact sheets, videos, photo essays, and other digital content. 

Know Her Name: Shireen Abu Akleh [a prominent Palestinian-American Journalist] spent 25 years making sure people could not claim they did not know what was happening. Then she was killed by Israeli military fire doing exactly that.

Know Her Name

ordopStnes14 mu5gAt122i61arp0i78c895 M5h6Af29560 7:tlg la100  ·

On the morning of May 11 2022, Shireen Abu Akleh put on her press vest, marked clearly with the word PRESS, and went to cover an Israeli military raid in Jenin. She was shot in the head within minutes of arriving.

She was one of the most recognisable journalists in the Arab world, a face millions trusted for over two decades on Al Jazeera. The bullet that killed her came from Israeli military fire. Multiple investigations, including one by the United States government, confirmed it. Israel called it unintentional. No one was charged.

Abu Akleh had reported from Palestinian territories since 1997, covering the second intifada, the siege of Ramallah and the daily reality of life under occupation when few Western outlets were present. Her death triggered a global outcry. At her funeral in Jerusalem, Israeli police beat mourners carrying her coffin. The images circled the world before her body reached the ground.

She spent 25 years making sure people could not claim they did not know what was happening. Then she was killed doing exactly that.

Follow Know Her Name — a new name every day.

#KnowHerName #WomensHistory #PressFreedom

   [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

"They massacred Arab babies" -1948 headline reporting on the Palestinian village of Dier Yassin where Zionist terrorists armed with bayonets slaughted men, women, and children.

Headlined in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, 1948. 

Monson did not try to downplay Zionist crimes and he humanised the Palestinian victims. 

https://www.newspapers.com/image/973772025/?match=1&terms=They%20massacred%20Arab%20babies&clipping_id=189895560

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

"It’s no accident, Israel murdered her. From Shireen to Amal, the press vest is a target for Israel." Assal Rad

Lebanon 2026: Rescuers trying to help Amal Khalil were reportedly blocked from getting to her by an Israeli sound grenade.

Palestine May 2022, Israeli soldiers shot and killed 51-year-old Palestinian-American Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

Assal Rad

@AssalRad

It’s no accident, Israel murdered her. From Shireen to Amal, the press vest is a target for Israel. 

 

https://x.com/AssalRad/status/2047069049394507994

 

 [AS ALWAYS PLEASE GO TO THE LINK TO READ GOOD ARTICLES (or quotes or watch videos) IN FULL: HELP SHAPE ALGORITHMS (and conversations) THAT EMPOWER DECENCY, DIGNITY, JUSTICE & PEACE... and hopefully Palestine]

May 11, 2022: Palestinian American Arab Christian Journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, was assassinated by Israeli sniper fire while she was documenting and exposing Zionist violence & Israeli crimes

"Remember this was the Israeli military's first response after murdering Shireen Abu Akleh in broad daylight, repeatedly lying about it and then getting away with it. Doing Journalism was [IS] enough to get you killed by Israel." Yousef Munayyer