Local churches call it genocide — and say silence is no longer an option | Joyce M. Davis in The Patriot News

Joyce M. Davis, Outreach & Opinion Editor. July 23, 2024. Sean Simmers | 

• Joyce M. Davis | jdavis@pennlive.com

There was a time when mainline Christian churches in the United States were loath to say anything critical of Israel and its actions in the Middle East. That time has passed.

Throughout the United States and right here in Central Pennsylvania, many Christian churches and entire denominations are speaking out against what they say are Israel’s human-rights abuses in Gaza. Many are even accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people.

That’s the word a coalition of faith groups in Central Pennsylvania is using to announce its Harrisburg Free Palestina Film Festival to call attention to Israel’s actions in Gaza. They called it ‘genocide’. It’s the same term used by the United Nations Commission of Inquiry in its report on Israel’s actions in Gaza.

It means the United Nations commission investigated Israel’s bombing and the conduct of its troops in Gaza and concluded that Israel was intentionally trying to wipe out the estimated 2.1 million Palestinian men, women and children living there.

It’s the same word the world used to describe what happened to six million Jews who were tortured, starved to death, shoved into gas chambers or starved to death in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Genocide.

The Christian leaders speaking out against it include representatives of the Quakers, the United Methodists, the Unitarians, the Church of the Brethren and the United Church of Christ. At their press conference on Thursday, they said it’s their moral duty to break the silence and to call attention to the suffering.

These pastors and laity say that what happened to Jews during World War II is happening to Palestinians today. There may not be gas chambers, but they say innocent people are being tortured, executed and starved to death in Gaza.... READ MORE   https://www.pennlive.com/opinion/2026/09/local-churches-call-it-genocide-and-say-silence-is-no-longer-an-option-joyce-m-davis.html?gift=7d3a8e79-fdb9-4bf8-ab6c-ea305c86e25e

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"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

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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

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Rare film footage of Palestine from 1896, captured by the Lumière Brothers – pioneers of cinema. These unique films provide an invaluable glimpse into daily life in the Holy Land under the Ottoman Empire, offering a rare perspective of a time long past. Watch as Palestine appears over 100 years ago, during an era when the world was rapidly changing, and cinema was just beginning to take shape!

 https://youtu.be/f6gnUgxkfLE?si=rMiU1PA833rngj9H

Paddystinian

@Paddystinian

 

Palestine was never empty.  The camera already knew that. 

 

In 1896–97, the Lumière brothers sent Alexandre Promio to film the Holy Land under Ottoman rule. What he captured is among the earliest moving images of Palestine: Jaffa Port, the courtyard of Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, Jerusalem’s railway station, sacred sites, and people in the streets. 

 

Muslims. Christians. Jews. Walking the same gates, the same roads, the same land. 

 

Not a slogan. Not a later map. Actual footage of a living country called Palestine — ports, churches, stations, markets, worshippers — before partition, before occupation, before the claim that this was a vacant stage waiting for someone else. 

 

Watch the people, not the propaganda. Jaffa was a port. Bethlehem was a town. Jerusalem was a city of three faiths under one sky. That is the historical record, not a talking point. 

 

Palestine had a name. Palestine had people. The film is still there.

 

https://x.com/Paddystinian/status/2100978157813744079 

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Nakba: Jewish voices are challenging the stories Israel tells about itself A film director, historian and Holocaust survivor speak to Al Jazeera as opinions shift.

Stephen Kapos and Gillian Mosely at the London screening of Planet Israel [Beardvoyage]

By Indlieb Farazi Saber

Published On 15 May 202615 May 2026

London, United Kingdom – The lights come up slowly inside a cinema in London’s buzzy Soho district, but nobody rushes for the exit.

As the credits roll, one woman lowers her face into her hands. A couple sit motionless. In the row ahead, someone exhales and says “Free Palestine”.

This screening of Planet Israel: A Cautionary Tale took place on the eve of Nakba Day, the annual commemoration of the 1948 forced displacement of more than 750,000 Palestinians and the killing of thousands more during the creation of the Israeli state.

The documentary, set for UK-wide release from 5 June, explores how trauma, nationalism and militarisation have shaped Israeli society after October 7, 2023, and during the war on Gaza. Featuring interviews with historians, academics, former soldiers and everyday Israelis, the film arrives at a moment when old political certainties around Israel are fracturing — increasingly among Jewish and Israeli intellectuals, artists, rabbis and historians themselves.

“The media has not reported this,” the film’s director Gillian Mosely told Al Jazeera from her London home, days before the screening. “British Jews are being treated as a monolith, which I think is fuelling anti-Semitism.”... READ MORE   https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/5/15/nakba-jewish-voices-are-challenging-the-stories-israel-tells-about-itself

Screenshot from Planet Israel, featuring historian Avi Shlaim discussing Israel and shifting public perceptions [Planet Israel] Historian Avi Shlaim, who is featured in Planet Israel, spoke of a rupture between Israel and Jewish communities around the world.

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The short film “Every Day in Gaza” has won the First Prize in the Short Film category at the 71st edition of the David di Donatello Awards, often referred to as the “Italian Oscars.” Produced in 2025, the film tells the story of a barber from Gaza who narrates, in his own voice, the horrors and devastations of war. To date, the film has been screened in over 90 cinemas worldwide.

The Voice of Hind Rajab gets record 23-minute ovation at Venice premiere

Al Jazeera’s Caley Callahan reports:  The Voice of Hind Rajab, recounting the final plea of a six-year-old Gaza girl who was brutally killed by the Israeli forces in Gaza City last year, received a more than 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the iconic Venice Film Festival. At Wednesday’s premiere, the emotional docu-drama focuses on recordings from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which tried for hours to reassure six-year-old Rajab as she lay trapped in a car where her aunt, uncle and three cousins were killed by Israeli fire in early 2024.

‘I must document everything’: the film about the Palestinian photographer killed by missiles in Gaza. Fatma Hassouna used poetry and photography to record the death and devastation she saw daily. Was she targeted by the IDF? ... We speak to the director of Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, a film about the journalist

Fatima will not be forgotten #fatmahassona

 The Guardian - Julian Borger

Wed 6 Aug 2025 11.46 EDT

‘I must document everything’: the film about the Palestinian photographer killed by missiles in Gaza. Fatma Hassouna used poetry and photography to record the death and devastation she saw daily. Was she targeted by the IDF?

Israel has sought to pursue its campaign of annihilation against Gaza and its people behind closed doors. More than 170 Palestinian journalists have been killed so far, and no outside reporters or cameras are allowed in.

The effects of this policy of concealment – which the Guardian managed to pierce this week with a shocking aerial photograph that made the front page – are to ensure that the outside world only catches sight of Gaza’s horrors in small fragments, and to stifle empathy for those trapped inside by hiding them from view, obscuring their humanity. But a new documentary film, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, seeks to open a window to the unfathomable suffering inside Gaza.

It focuses on the life of a single young Palestinian woman named Fatma Hassona, known as Fatem to those close to her. She is 24 years old when we meet her, and has such a broad smile and enthusiasm for life that she compels attention from her first appearance, a few minutes into the film.

We see Hassona’s life through the screen of a mobile phone belonging to the director, Sepideh Farsi, and most of the film is made up of the conversations between these two women as they develop an increasingly strong personal bond over the course of a year.

The director knows all about conflict and oppression. Farsi is Iranian-born and was a teenager at the time of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. When she was 16 she was imprisoned by the Islamic Republic regime, and she left the country for good two years later, settling in France. She was on tour with her film The Siren, a feature-length animation about the Iran-Iraq war, when the Gaza conflict erupted in October 2023. As the civilian death toll mounted, she found herself unable just to sit on the sidelines, watching endless debates that did nothing to stop the slaughter.

“The common denominator was that there was never the Palestinian voice there,” Farsi says. “We had different points of views: the American, the European, the Egyptian, the Israeli, but never the Palestinian. It started really bothering me, and at some point I couldn’t live with it any more.”

In spring last year she flew to Cairo with the idea that she could somehow find a way across the Gaza border to film the war firsthand. That quickly proved a naive and futile mission, so she began filming Gazan refugees in Egypt. One of them suggested to Farsi that if she wanted to talk to someone inside, he could put her in touch with his friend Fatma in the al-Tuffah neighbourhood of Gaza City.

We first see Hassona the way Farsi meets her, on her little phone screen... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/06/fatma-hassouna-sepideh-farsi-put-your-soul-on-your-hand-and-walk-documentary-gaza-palestinian-photographer?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

A wasteland of rubble, dust and graves: how Gaza looks from the sky

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WATCH NOW: 'Gaza: Doctors Under Attack' – The Full Film They Didn't Want You To See

WATCH NOW: 'Gaza: Doctors Under Attack' – The Full Film They Didn't Want You To See  https://zeteo.com/p/watch-now-gaza-doctors-under-attack

ACCEPTANCE SPEECHES: NO OTHER LAND Accepts the Oscar for Documentary Feature Film !!!

ACCEPTANCE SPEECHES The Oscar for Documentary Feature Film goes to NO OTHER LAND! Congratulations to Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham on taking home the Oscar. See more Oscar acceptance speeches and highlights on Oscars.com.

Mo Amer - “Mo," Honoring Palestine & Absurdities of the U.S. Immigration...

Feb 3, 2025: Mo Amer, a writer, stand-up comedian, and co-creator and star of “Mo,” sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss the second season of his Peabody Award-winning Netflix series, inspired by his own refugee experience. They discuss how the series explores the complexities of statelessness and asylum, the absurdities of the immigration process, and how he leaned on Jon for support while figuring out whether to talk about Oct. 7 on his show. #DailyShow #JonStewart #MoAmer

The BBC documentary was rated 5 stars by @guardian before it was pulled... Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone review – these incredible children offer a sliver of hope: This often-distressing BBC documentary follows astonishing kids working as TikTok chefs and hospital porters – and shows their determination to smile in the face of unimaginable horror

All the children in the film share a disorienting matter-of-fact tone’ … Abdullah, who acts as narrator in Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. Photograph: Amjad Al Fayoumi/BBC/Hoyo Films

 Miqdaad Versi

@miqdaad

The BBC documentary was rated 5 stars by @guardian before it was pulled

Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone review – these incredible children offer a sliver of hope

Jack Seale

Mon 17 Feb 2025 17.00 EST

Last modified on Fri 21 Feb 2025 11.37 EST

The children of Gaza will be its future, if they are able to remain there. Starting several months into Israel’s bombardment and continuing right up until the recent ceasefire, London-based directors Jamie Roberts and Yousef Hammash made their documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone by remotely instructing two local cameramen, Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba, as they captured life inside the “safe zone” – an ever-changing, ever-dwindling area in the south-west of Gaza, designated by Israel as the place where displaced Palestinians should reside. That the cameras predominantly follow children has an unexpected double effect: it makes the film’s many deeply distressing moments all the more unbearable, yet it tinges them with some sort of hope.

The kids are led by 13-year-old Abdullah, who acts as narrator as well as appearing on camera. “This area used to be colourful,” he says, briskly touring a scene of apocalyptic destruction in Khan Younis, where he lived in a house that sheltered 40 people before Israeli bombs turned it to dusty rubble. “Now, it’s grey.”

Abdullah maintains a wryly sunny tone as he describes how you live after you’ve lost everything, and his determination to smile while surviving is matched by 10-year-old Renad, whose method of coping with shells landing a terrifyingly short distance away is to laugh and chatter, even as the earth shakes. Renad concentrates instead on her online cooking channel: we see her recording a guide to making a dessert, apologising to viewers for having to use powdered milk. She is a natural presenter, fluent and engagingly upbeat. “They’re from all over the world,” Renad says of her growing TikTok fanbase. “If there is too long between posting videos, they check on me, thinking I got killed.”

Most remarkable is Zakaria, an indefatigable 11-year-old who chooses to spend all his time bustling around al-Aqsa, the only fully functioning hospital still standing in Gaza, having appointed himself to work as a volunteer... READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/feb/17/gaza-how-to-survive-a-warzone-review-these-incredible-children-offer-a-sliver-of-hope

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