Twenty-two real-life stories
fraught with suffering and a pervading sense of utter hopelessness: The film, From Ground Zero: Stories from
Gaza (2024), is a documentary in want of a solution that did not come
not only in 2024, but also in 2025. That Rashid Masharawi, the film’s director,
survived even the release of the film is remarkable. Israel clearly did not
want true stories from Gaza reaching the rest of the world even though it was not
as if the rest of us could miss the photos of the mass devastation throughout
Gaza and the resulting tent camps in 2025. It precisely because
societal-level figures, such as 65,000 or 75,000 civilians murdered and over a
million left starving and homeless, can be easily separated from the plights of
individuals and families on the ground that Masharawi’s film is so valuable. Juxtaposed
with the Gaza-wide statistics befitting the genocide and perhaps holocaust, the
22 stories in the film give the world a sense of what experiencing a holocaustic
genocide is really like.
In the first story alone, a
woman has a sense that her life is already over. With her father having been
killed by the Israelis in 2014 and news that her sister’s house has just been
bombed, the refugee mourns the loss of her sister’s entire family (including
her sister). Meanwhile, a million residents of Gaza are at the border with
Egypt and diseases are spreading. The second story is more graphic, as it
includes digging people out of a bombed building. In the third story, Istrubi,
a film maker whose film has won an award at a film festival abroad, cannot
leave Gaza. “Time has become my enemy,” he says. Without any humanitarian aid
and the loss of his brother in a random bombing, Istrubi faces utter
hopelessness.
In the fourth story, a young
woman in Gaza keeps a bag packed in case she has to leave her house quickly,
for any house could be bombed at any time. Referring to the constancy of Israeli
drones in the air, she says, “My mind stops because of the drones.” She is in shock. In the fifth story, the statement,
“God will protect us” rings hollow. In the sixth story, 600 people are dead in
an hour from bombs. This image is in contrast to that of the seventh story, in
which kids are busy with arts and crafts in a tent. The apparent normalcy is
belied by the knowledge of the children that their respective parents have
written the kids’ names on their legs so they could be identified in rubble
after a bombing. The kids want their names erased, but they cannot; the chance
of being bombed is too high. In the eighth story, kids make a music video. This
is in juxtaposition to the teacher in the ninth story. He drops off his phone
to be charged on the ground, but there not an open outlet. He waits in line for
water, but it runs out shortly before it is his turn. There is no more food. That
the Israeli government has intended this state of affairs can be inferred, but
the documentary lacks any clips of government officials saying as much.
In the tenth story, a boy
seems to go to school, but his teacher has been killed so the boy sits in a
field amid collapsed cement buildings. The hardness and sheer hopelessness are
palpable on the screen. In the eleventh story, a resident of Gaza heading north
with three suitcases says, “I am very surprised that we survived.” In the twelfth
story, a man sleeps in a body bag without even a blanket. Although he feels
lucky to be alive, he is literally sleeping in a body bag. “Nothing remains of
this city except the sea,” he remarks. Interestingly, he does not include even
himself. He has packed himself for death as if there is nothing left to do but
wait.
In the thirteenth story, a man
is in the collapsed rubble of a house, with his friend’s dead body nearby, also
in the rubble. It takes 1.5 hours to dig him out. Many of his family are
already dead. He could even feel his parents’ bodies near him, also in the
rubble. And amid all this, he says, “It’s God’s will.” Is it? In actuality, it
was Netanyahu’s will—far indeed from that of any deity. Perhaps utter
hopelessness breeds futility.
In the fourteenth story, a young
man grieves the loss of his girlfriend, whose body is in the rubble along with
her family. In the next story, a mother bathes her young daughter in a jug. In
the sixteenth story, the driver of a mule-powered taxi-cart sees fighter jets
overhead. No one is safe. In the next story, a displaced writer remarks of the
Israelis, “No recognition of human beings.” Indeed, public statements made the
press by senior government officials liken the residents of Gaza to being less
than human—a sentiment that was not unheard of in Nazi Germany. In the eighteenth
story, a filmmaker in Gaza wants a story of hope and music rather than despair:
Say no to violence that violates human rights. Such a magnitude of destruction
is a challenge for people who want to overcome despair. But is that no like
pulling a rabbit out of an empty hat?
In the nineteenth story, a
cousin is buried; the person loses someone each night when the bombs fall. A
young woman is trapped in the rubble for six hours. Her parents, grandmother,
and aunt all died. “Martyrs,” a child says. But amid wanton killing, do any of
the victims even have a cause to die for? Senseless death is so unfathomable
that the human mind manufactures martyrdom. It makes sense, therefore, that in
the very next story, charcoal drawings that resemble survivors of the Nazi
concentration camps are shown. The twenty-first story returns somewhat to
normalcy in that news that a university was bombed just a week before reminds
viewers of civilization even if in the past tense. “There is no longer a
possibility of peace,” someone says. That line is followed by another. “It’s
strange that hope is still here.” Was it? The puppet show in the last story seems
surreal, as hope was absent from all of the stories.
What can viewers make of these
stories that are so beyond ordinary experience? The thesis that the genocidal
holocaust has gone far beyond anything that could be justified ethically and
even politically even given Israel’s loss of less than 1,500 Israelis (including
the hostages) is so self-evident that audio-visual support is hardly needed. Of
all of the visuals, that of a man being dug out of the rubble of a house while
his parents’ dead bodies are near him may be the most striking in terms of just
how cruel government officials can be regarding people who are not constituents.
Were Netanyahu there in person watching the man being dug out within eyesight
of the man’s dead parents, would the hardened heart relent? With distance—whether
that of approving military tactics that are to be used on people at a distance
or of safely reading news reports abroad of atrocities in Gaza—can easily come
complacency. It is this that Masharawi seems to have been challenging, but to
no avail as no coalition of the willing arose from mass movements around the
world to shove Israel out of Gaza (and the West Bank) in 2025. It is difficult
to conclude that the documentary was successful. Rather than being an
indictment of the filmmaker, it pertains to our species, which beyond street
protests has stood by and let the Israeli government act with impunity. Unfortunately,
impunity has not only been enjoyed by Israel internationally; our crime of
indifference, which has forestalled action on behalf of the hopeless, may be
inherently mired in impunity.
