Original subtitles

HE SIGHS

Start whenever you want.

Raise questions.

CLAMOUR OF VOICES

Where are we here?

EXPLOSION

This war is like nothing Gaza has experienced before.

It's hell on Earth.

EXPLOSION

Looking back on my footage for the first time,

I don't know how we survived this.

These are my friends, my neighbours, my relatives,

and people that I live with them for 30 years.

CAR HORN BLARES

This is Gaza.

If you were describing everyday life in Gaza,

where would you start?

I would start to being born in Jabalia camp,

as a refugee camp for a refugee family -

and take it from there.

When people hear the word "camp",

the imagination they had is a camp or tents -

no, it's a city within a city.

Well, here I am, Yousef Hammash.

Never left Gaza, so I'm very Gazan.

So, let me give you a tour.

Jabalia is not a geographic place.

It's more of symbolic thing, it's...

..an identity. It became an identity.

We have a connection that you will never find somewhere else.

DRUMS AND SINGING

And if you have a wedding, all the camp will be in that wedding.

It's like a feast of food, and people celebrating,

and you feel the love around,

because we are thirsty to enjoy and have joy

whenever we had anything to celebrate,

we go really extreme with it.

So, I'm married now since seven, eight years.

I have two children now,

I have Eliaa, six years old,

and Ahmed, three years old,

and I could say I made it, to have a decent job

in an international organisation with a decent salary.

One month before everything happened and this madness started,

I bought my new house by the sea.

That's the best thing you will ever have in Gaza,

to have that view of the sea.

And then, suddenly, 32 years of building and finding a path

to succeed and establish a life just disappeared.

At 6:30 in the morning, my wife woke me up

that something is happening, there is huge bombs,

and I was like, "Oh, maybe it's a storm.

"I read in the news that there is a change of the weather."

That's the first thing came to my head -

or at least what I wanted to convince myself with,

because I didn't want war.

I ran into the window and I saw that Audi white car,

with a yellow plate.

This is an Israeli car

that I see in front of my house,

and I remember seeing two people were pulled out of the car.

Two people I don't know in a really bad situation

being pulled out - and they came, they ran with them into my building.

So I went directly to my phone, checked the news,

and this is the first thing I saw.

SHOUTING

MAN SHOUTS

Not even my bad nightmares, man, that I imagined this will happen.

Not even in a nightmare, man.

GUNSHOTS

Allahu Akbar!

Allahu Akbar!

At that moment, I felt that this is going to be bad,

for us and for them.

We all know that it's going to be bad...

..but not THAT bad.

It's an entire nation that is responsible,

and we will fight until we break their backbone.

The only thing I was thinking about...

..is that I have to move from here.

I have to run for my life.

So, I took my wife and my children,

and we went to Jabalia camp,

to my grandparents' house.

What do you think would have happened to you

if you hadn't made that decision to leave immediately?

I wouldn't be here.

Where I live, after I fled, was tank shelling -

like, continuous tank shelling.

They bombed the first two floors above my apartment,

but then, after that, they destroyed the entire building.

When Hamas did that suicide mission...

..they forgot they're responsible for two million people.

If you want to go and commit a suicide mission like that one,

why you take me with you?

We were thrown in front of a beast.

A really aggressive beast.

And we were like small cats.

Like, what we can do?

We have some cameras.

EXPLOSION

It's thin.

Send the footage out.

If they will see the reality, I will save my family.

This is Gaza City, the centre of Gaza City,

where people used to consider safe.

There is no place safe in Gaza.

You see?

Destruction is everywhere.

Where the people can go?

EXPLOSION

Banning international journalists entering Gaza

gave us more responsibility, because it's only us.

EXPLOSION

I don't mind taking the risk, because it's my people.

This was the biggest catastrophe I saw up to that day.

Here we are at the centre of Jabalia camp.

An Israeli air strike killing more than 50 Palestinians

in one of the largest camps in Gaza City.

This is my place.

This is where you live.

This is where I live. This is - this is my place.

The situation is unimaginable.

You have to be here to understand what's going on.

CAR HORN BLARES

Just look, look - a child removed under the rubble.

He wasn't even crying.

She doesn't even believe that he's alive.

I was shocked when they pulled him out

under all this - it's a six floor building.

85 people were killed in that attack.

These are my friends, my neighbours, my relatives,

and people that I live with them for 30 years.

They just... They've been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

That dead body, I kept filming him...

..because I know him.

I know this guy personally.

This man used to be full of life.

From the Israeli perspective,

they want to kill one person,

and the collateral damage is a hundred.

They don't even put it as an equation.

They just do it.

It's the father who was injured...

..and his child was killed.

So he brought him to the morgue behind the hospital

just to say goodbye for his child.

HE SOBS

That was the first scene,

I see a father with his child, which completely affected me -

but I kept seeing that on a daily basis until I became numb somehow.

Oof.

That night, after releasing the first report,

I understood that everything changed.

I was really glad that I could reach that amount of people -

but on the other side, it turns my life upside down.

I think it pissed some people off.

Among them, Israeli civilians were calling me all the night

and insulting me with really bad Arabic words

about me, my wife, my sisters,

"We'll will kill you, we'll kill your children,"

and I was all the night next to my wife and my two children

just, like, every five, ten minutes, I receive another call,

receive another call.

Even if the Israelis killed me, targeted me, whatever,

what's going to be the consequences for that?

Simply nothing.

It's not the first time that Palestinians were abandoned

in such a horrible situation.

2004...

..2008, 2009, 2012,

2014, 2018, 2019, 2021.

The history didn't start on October 7th.

We have a long experience dealing with the Israeli army.

That announcement just made our life as two million people...

..extremely impossible.

Our water is from the Israelis.

Our fuel for the electricity is from the Israelis.

The fuel itself is through Israel.

All our goods is through Israel.

It's clear that everything will be consumed in one or two days.

I love Gaza.

The entire neighbourhood we were living in...

..all what you see is destruction.

It's really exhausting that people are under bombardment

all the night and the early morning.

They are digging, trying to rescue people.

So, everyone's trying to help...

..because you don't know, you might be next,

and you will need people to help you.

This family has been displaced from Beit Hanoun one day before.

They... They displaced this family

to their relatives in Jabalia,

and the next day they were dead.

And you are talking about seven years old, five years old -

less than ten years old, all of them.

You can see...

..her head on the pillow.

She's sleeping.

She was just sleeping.

All of them sleeping peacefully.

That's... That's...

I kept walking with him for a really long time.

I just...

See, this is - this is the difference.

At the beginning, people were, honestly,

"Show the world what's going on.

"Let them see."

Now...

It's like we lost the faith.

You are exposed to this scene...

..not on a daily basis,

on a minute basis, man.

Lost the faith in what?

Humanity.

HE SOBS

Everything changed...

..when we've been asked to flee from the north to the south.

That's a new, different era.

Nothing is more humiliating than displacement,

and no-one wanted to do it at the beginning.

Why should they?

It's basically giving you a flashback for 1948, directly,

when you see the scene.

It's the new Nakba.

I used to listen to these stories from my grandfather

about how they had been exiled.

It's just stories that we were hearing

for years and years and years...

..and now we are the stories itself.

We're talking about two million people are under evacuation orders,

constant evacuation orders on a daily basis...

..without any solution on the horizon.

EXPLOSIONS

This is the curse of being born as a Palestinian.

You are just in a constant move.

That's exactly who we are.

Hi!

When I left Jabalia, I saw how many people are fleeing.

That was really hard on me.

I didn't want to leave anyone behind,

and if we died, we die together.

If we survived, we survive together.

We have been ordered to flee to the south

following a specific route.

The only road we can use is Salah al-Din Street.

So, I drove fast to be in front of a car.

Just after passing it...

..they bomb it.

It was so hard for me even to comprehend what's going on.

HORN BEEPS

This is when we arrive to my relatives.

First meal as a family.

This is my whole - all my family.

THEY CHATTER

There is other people in the other room.

For me, that's a precious moment,

and I don't think it will happen again in years,

but I will keep pushing for that. That's my family.

You were responsible for all of these people throughout the war?

Yes. Until now.

You had to keep all of these people safe, sheltered, fed.

HE SIGHS

It was a huge responsibility.

When a city, a small city or a town...

..used to have 150,000, 200,000 citizen,

300,000 maximum,

and one day they have a million...

..the infrastructure of Khan Yunis couldn't be with this.

I was in a different shape.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish I had a barber at that time!

THEY CHUCKLE

It's just, basically, we have been sent back a thousand years.

It's like we go back to the stone ages.

Imagine when we have only two farmers planting aubergine,

and another one planting tomato -

and you have 1.5 million are waiting for these three people.

These four green pepper, now,

will cost you $400 just to have that -

and for a Gazan, you cannot eat without that.

THEY CHATTER

No-one is looking for Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza

as human beings.

When you look for the basic human rights

that anyone have on this planet,

and how we have been deprived from that,

in a way that we are looking for it as an achievement...

CALL TO PRAYER IN DISTANCE

That's a mosque in London.

This is the first time I listened to the calling for prayers

since October 7th, because they just bombed every mosque we had.

WOMAN SCREAMS

I am Muslim, but I always had really, really good connections

with the Christian community in Gaza, and I think

people doesn't know that there is Christians in Gaza.

Father Yusuf, I really like this guy.

I really miss him.

These are my friends, man.

I know all of these people.

This church, Porphyrius,

the Orthodox Arab community in Gaza.

THEY SOB

These stones are in the church is older than Europe.

These are thousands of years old.

We have Christians and Muslims seeking shelter.

Yalla, yalla, yalla, yalla...!

The amount of tank shelling for the area and around it,

and even inside the place itself was shocking.

EXPLOSION

I can remember when they bombed this massive building near...

..next to the Orthodox building,

and they hit a flat, an apartment.

Imagining there is a million child in Gaza

who are exposed to all of this horror on a daily basis.

They had to build a new tent outside the hospital yard

just for dead bodies.

In the north, especially,

as a response, retaliation for October 7th,

they just wiped out families.

He's showing his brother's picture on the phone

and he's asking if someone saw his dead body.

We're not prepared to lose all of our loved ones.

These small legs explain for you a lot.

These are four children.

Two girls, two boys. One family.

Just children, man.

If you are a human being sitting anywhere outside of Gaza,

and you saw children suffering

and going through all these circumstances and don't feel it,

then you are not a human,

and I'm not proud if they even watch my footage.

I don't want them to see.

Because this is inhuman.

DISTANT EXPLOSIONS

THEY CHATTER

Nights in Gaza during this war is longer.

You have to just listen all the night

for this bombing around, and the shake of the house.

Just trying to check, where is that bombing?

This is the night for us.

And the best coping mechanism with these nights

is to have people around.

Ahmed is not in the age to understand.

All the time I was out filming,

whenever I come back, he's like, "Take me out."

But Eliaa understood.

She surprised me when she understand the difference

between a drone rocket and a tank shelling.

I don't think any child on this planet

should be aware of this.

I wish I didn't decide to be born and raised in Gaza,

but I decided for them.

For many times, I am honest, I regret.

This is in Khan Yunis.

I was waiting in a queue for bread.

I had to go every morning, because if you went late,

you might not catch the queue, it takes you hours,

so you have to go really early.

They bombed this clinic.

Always where I go, I found children.

People are digging here trying to pull them out.

And then they found that there was...

Then they take us out, all of us,

because they heard a girl, she's alive.

And this is the girl.

Marah.

When the building collapsed on them,

her uncle was covering her, so she was under his body.

He saved her.

Nine years old.

Her father passed away a few years,

now her mother and her aunt and her uncle

and her two younger brothers.

So now she's part of...

..the people, the children, who have no-one.

What next for her?

NEWSREADER: A ceasefire between Hamas and Israel

is due to come into effect right now.

CHEERING AND CHANTING

When we had the news about a truce...

..then I was like, "At least I can sleep."

Under the truce, a total of 50 Hamas hostages will be released

in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners.

We believed that this will lead... for an end,

but, unfortunately, everyone failed us.

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY: Israel resumes the bombing of Gaza

and tells the two million Palestinians

there to move again to an even smaller, supposedly safe area.

There's no other options.

Either to move for a tent

or stay under this bombing in Khan Yunis.

So, I had to make a decision and go to Rafah.

Over a million people moved there.

CHILDREN CHATTER

HE SIGHS

Rafah was kind of the final step inside Gaza.

It's like, there is no more.

After that, you have the Egyptian border.

The reality was, yeah, we are going to live in tents.

It's different. There's no...

There's no doors any more.

There is no windows. There is...

There's no privacy.

CHILDREN CHATTER

I really love this girl.

UNTRANSLATED

People's access to their basic needs became less and less and less.

You start to see the consequences and the impact

on people's mental health.

We are talking about a population who has 50% of it,

before the war, was relying on humanitarian aid, 50%.

And then this war started.

They destroy every hospital, every school, every education place.

THEY CHATTER

The starvation was the most effective weapon have been used,

that pushed everyone onto the verge of madness.

DAVID CAMERON: The Israelis, they can do more.

They must do more to let aid in.

People who are desperate and in need would do anything -

and if I was in their situation, I would do the same.

People were fighting for nothing.

Every time I had to go to the bakery,

I had to witness two or three fights between people.

Serious fights.

I witnessed people getting killed in a queue for water.

GUNSHOT, SCREAMS

GUNSHOT

GUNSHOT

NEWSREADER: It was the IDF that was responsible

for safely delivering these vital supplies,

but we found they opened fire on unarmed, starving Palestinians

at close range as the aid arrived.

It was a famine.

People couldn't find anything.

They were competing with animals to share their food.

My family really start to have serious conversations

about leaving Gaza a few weeks after we went to Rafah,

because the amount of violence that took place in that place

pushed us into a point that there is no coming back.

You destroyed everything.

It became my responsibility for my...my children and my family,

otherwise, I would never leave that place.

That place, it represents me,

it represents Yousef.

Gaza, the Gazan Yousef.

I'm nobody outside of Gaza.

32 years of my life have been deleted.

I don't have it any more.

And even as memories, I cannot enjoy it any more.

If I ever talk about my life there, it ends up at October 7th.

I talk about my job there and the films I did before,

or my work, or my relations, or my friends or my relatives, anything,

it will lead you to October 7th.

There is another video that was circulated in social media.

I'm in London,

in the West, in the "civilisation",

the civilised world.

And I don't get it, how they allow all of this to happen.

HE SHOUTS

For me, I have a duty towards what's going on in Gaza,

and my duty is to keep the story told.

"Our children were killed,

"our children turned into pieces."

After he says, "We are begging"...

Yes. ..he says, "I have only one child."

Yes, he said, only one.

"I had one child.

"I had one child, I didn't... I didn't live, I didn't...

Agh. He says that you feel that it's too much for me to have a child.

"He was three years and a half."

MAN ON VIDEO

"They killed him."

God, poor man.

It's not easy being here...

..when my team and my friends and relatives are there.

Now look for Jabalia.

There is no Jabalia any more.

SIREN WAILS

MAN SCREAMS

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY: After weeks of Israel's offensive on northern Gaza,

there's been an intensification of the assault

on the Jabalia refugee camp,

rooting out, say, Israeli Defence Forces, Hamas fighters.

PARAIC O'BRIEN: ..and as that was happening,

not far away in southern Israel, settlers held a two day event.

When the Jewish nation comes to resettle the land,

we have to clean it out.

So, right now, we're taking out the infection.

That scene, for people being pushed out of Jabalia

and massive destruction,

was on the top of these things that break me as a human being.

Most of the footage that I was dealing with is for people I know.

I was seeing my relatives around,

among the crowds.

BABY CRIES

I have, every day, news about someone who was killed.

PHONE RINGS

WOMAN ON LINE

I was receiving news about my cousin.

Such a nice person.

Have a sense of humour, always, whenever we meet.

HE GROANS

SHE SOBS

What's next for you?

Huh.

What next for me?

I don't think I have the right to think about the future

and what's next for me

before I understand what's going to be happen

to my people, and my place.

CHILDREN CHATTER

There's a million child who'd been witnessing

that continuous killing on a daily basis for 14 months.

But still the West is supplying weapon...

..for the Israeli government.

What kept us just adapting and finding solutions

is a sense of hope.

We had just a glimmer of hope that one day

someone will be rational and realistic and say, "That's wrong."

It's for the West itself to look with the eyes of humanity

for us as Palestinians.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media