By Mike Joseph
‘No bombs, no bodies’, wrote a viewer about my film, GAZA A Story of Love and War, ‘and yet so powerful and moving’. Lacking the expected screenplay of horror that fills television and online news daily since October 2023, this film may at first seem little more than two journalists talking about Gaza. But what a picture is painted. Sami Abu Salem narrates one family’s experience of 76 years of oppression, from British Mandate Palestine in 1948 to sewage-covered Rafah in 2024. It is a picture heard rather than seen. We, who are probably living in safety in Europe, hear what it means to endure violence, starvation, thirst and fear, day by day, year after year; and remarkably, how to endure with hope, humanity and even humour.
Before the film’s August 2024 release, a Guardian reviewer noted it was ‘made on an infinitesimal budget but with compassion, empathy and consideration’. Now at post-film discussions across the UK, from west to east, from rural Wales to inner London, audiences are confirming The Guardian’s early verdict.
In discussion, one viewer, clearly moved, asked how I cope with the horrors being narrated. But this is really a question for Sami who, from the production of the film, and still today, relates his unbearable struggle to survive, feed and protect his family. He reminds us that it is not only bombs that kill. He fears that his children no longer see him as a Superman. They believed he could solve any problem. But no longer. Now he sees them losing respect for a father who cannot feed, shelter, or protect them. He pleads for an end to bloodshed, and he begs for us to rescue his children. Yet he continues to report. And what can we possibly do? It has to begin with listening.
Cardiff, October: ‘Feel very moved and very powerful.’
Finchley, September: ‘I felt incredibly moved and heartbroken by yours and Sami’s film. I can’t get him and his family out of my mind and wonder how they are?’
Cardigan, September: ‘A wonderful film … It’s a human story of family connection, there’s a dialogue that helps show something like truth and reconciliation from South Africa … you couldn’t meet face to face and then the war meant everything was destroyed. You follow up with Sami, and your question and answer session was so generous … People wanted to engage and ask questions and it was great Ben Lake [MP] was there.’
Cardiff, October: ‘Mike, I just came back from watching in horror your documentary. I have similar background to you in a way, my Mum her sister and her parents came as refugees from Austria in 1938 … I am bereft after listening to you. I must do something to help. I go on demonstrations but that is not enough. Thank you for making the documentary.’
Builth Wells, September: ‘A huge thank you for the film … a very engaging format which really made you listen to the words of both Sami and Mike rather than being bombarded with images. It was so thought provoking and as with every conflict it baffles me beyond belief the actions of humans.’
Finchley, September: ‘I was deeply moved watching your movie in East Finchley two days ago. As you will know this is a strongly Jewish neighbourhood and I was very encouraged by the fact that many of the viewers were indeed Jewish.’
Cardigan, September: ‘Thank you so much for being willing to enable me to watch your powerful and moving film. I love Sami as one so easily likes and falls in love with many a Palestinian. They are such dignified warm-hearted well-informed resilient and generous people. … may this unspeakable genocide and war cease.’
Finchley, September: ‘It was a deeply moving occasion and revealed with horrific
clarity the inhuman living conditions of the Palestinians inescapably caught in this tragic conflict … The director’s humanity and Sami’s revelations of life in Gaza made this an unforgettable experience. Many hitherto unknown and unreported facts being revealed.’
West Norwood, October: ‘Sami’s account of his life in Gaza – and his mother’s … was very simply and movingly expressed … I am horrified by what has happened to him and his family and disgusted by the way our government has supported and participated in the destruction of Gaza and now the Lebanon … thank you for making this film which expressed so directly and without hatred the horror of what is going on … and thanks to Sami too for explaining so poignantly what is going on in Gaza – a tragedy which we will not recover from for a very long time. The Palestinians who have lost everything, the Israeli soldiers who have been brutalised and us who consider ourselves to be models of democracy and civilisation and yet have been deeply complicit.’
Brighton, October: ‘Israel’s immoral and illegal conduct is a matter of bitter shame and horror to many Jews I know. I watched a powerful documentary at the Komedia yesterday: Gaza, a Story of Love and War, made by a Jewish journalist, Mike Joseph, himself the descendant of Holocaust victims, in conversation with Sami Abu Salem, a Palestinian journalist. At the end, in the face of paralysing hopelessness, it tried to address the question, what can we do? And Mike Joseph, who was present at the screening, suggested small steps. Write to your MP – they are supposed to represent you, he said. So I have, and look forward to actions, not words, from the party I helped elect into power.’ [to the writer’s MP, Peter Kyle]
Of course there has been opposition to the film, an expected result of our conscious choice to release the film to general cinema audiences, not just to groups of the already-committed. Only on one occasion has barracking by dedicated Hasbara ranters actually brought discussion to an end. Otherwise we have listened to the occasional fierce pro-Israeli narrative, then continued to share our responses, which are overwhelmingly moved by the humanity of Sami’s narrative, amidst the unconstrained violence on Gaza which seems to defeat any reasoned response.
In recent weeks, post-film discussion has at times seemed paralysed by the spectacular impotence of western leaders’ calls for Israeli restraint, invariably answered by further Israeli escalation. Yesterday, Gaza and the West Bank; today Lebanon and Iran; tomorrow? Meanwhile Israel bans United Nations relief agency UNRWA as a ‘terror group’, and British spy planes fly continually over Gaza, collecting high-quality data which it shares with its allies. Will it also share it with the ICJ and ICC?
I have found the answer to despair in Sami’s own words. He embodies resilience and clarity in his calls: for return – ‘If I have my opportunity to go back to the home of my grandfather, to the orchards of lemon and almond and wheat, I will go back and live peacefully And I will prevent any Palestinian to make anything [i.e. trouble]. Halas [Enough]’; for life – ‘I am as a human. I’m looking for a human life, period. I don’t want Paradise. I just want to live normally’; for democracy – ‘If they would like to be democratical, they should be democratical everywhere, in Tel Aviv and Ramallah and Gaza, because humanity could not be divided, and democracy is the same. They are calling for democracy and justice. I am with them. Do it with us also.’
How can any western liberal, or socialist, or humanitarian, find in Sami’s wishes anything to fear? Yet Israelis have been successfully educated to fear all Palestinians as alien animals, fit only for destruction, not dialogue.
Through this film, Sami is winning support and admiration across the UK, and teaching us that when we truly listen to the other, he may turn out to be as we imagine ourselves.
Mike Joseph is producer and director of the film GAZA: a Story of Love and War, which is being shown at cinemas throughout the UK; and producer and narrator/writer of the podcast KEYS: a Troubled Inheritance, Mike’s tracing of his Jewish family’s journey from Hitler’s Germany to Mandate and Zionist Palestine. The podcast is available on our website, and so is a detailed guide to his Gaza feature film.