Gaza Documentaries That Are A Must-Watch

The situation in the Gaza Strip could not be more dire.

Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel during its 11-month military operation in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities. After 25 years, polio is back in the Strip, and the Israeli military continues to kill aid workers, health workers and journalists. Hunger is so widespread amid Israeli aid restrictions that at a July blood drive at a Gaza Health Ministry site supported by Doctors Without Borders, one in 10 would-be donors “were unfit to donate due to anemia or malnutrition,” the aid group said.

On top of the roughly 1,200 people killed in Israel by Hamas’ armed wing and other Palestinian militants on Oct. 7, 2023, dozens of hostages taken into Gaza by those groups have died, at the hands of either their captors or Israeli soldiers. Of around 250 hostages taken, only eight have been rescued via military mission, while 105 were freed in a prisoner exchange last year.

A cease-fire deal — despite being many hostages’ families’ top priority for months — does not appear likely in the short term, given Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on the “total” destruction of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities before the war ends.

Just recently, Israel also launched the largest military operation in years in the West Bank, the death toll of which is now approaching 700, according to United Nations officials. And Israel’s mass remote detonation of pagers, walkie-talkies and solar equipment in Lebanon this week — which killed several people, including children, and injured thousands more — heightened the risk of a broader regional war.

In less than a month, the conflict will reach its first anniversary. There have been numerous powerful documentaries examining the impact of Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack and the subsequent taking of hostages on Israelis and their families, but Israel’s restrictions on international press entering the Gaza Strip, and its targeting of Palestinian journalists, have made reports from Gaza all the more scarce. Nevertheless, over the past year, journalists in the region have produced some incredible work on the conflict. Here is a small selection:

Oct. 7 turned so many lives upside-down in Israel and the Palestinian territories. One of those was the life of Bisan Owda, a young Palestinian content creator and activist in Gaza who very quickly became one of the 2 million people displaced from their homes by Israel’s bombing and invasion of the Strip. Owda has used her media skills and English fluency to show the world what’s happening in Gaza. Millions of viewers from around the globe have followed Bisan as she sought refuge (and narrowly avoided an Israeli missile) at al-Shifa Hospital, was forced to flee to several other areas in the Strip, dealt with a painful skin infection and toured the destruction of Khan Younis. Other videos deal with issues such as the spread of disease, rising numbers of orphaned Gazans and widespread food and water shortages.

Owda is the recent recipient of a Peabody award, one of journalism’s highest honors, and one of her videos — which, like others, is produced by AJ+, Al Jazeera’s digital publisher — has been nominated for a news Emmy. This, despite the efforts of a pro-Israel group in Hollywood to have her nomination rescinded.

Released in June, this masterful Al Jazeera “Fault Lines” documentary takes viewers inside Gaza for a firsthand look at Israeli military tactics there, and then to Washington, D.C., for an examination of the United States’ crucial diplomatic and military support for Israel. Working with a team of Gazan journalists as well as analysts from Airwars and Forensic Architecture, two groups that specialize in in-depth analysis of military violence, the film looks at several incidents since the start of Israel’s military operation, as well as observable trends in Israeli military tactics, such as bombing areas that Israel had designated “safe zones.” (HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed makes a brief appearance.)

Of particular note is the film’s reconstruction of the final moments of Hind Rajab, the 6-year-old Palestinian girl who, according to all available evidence — including a meticulous audio reconstruction from Forensic Architecture — was killed by Israeli forces while stranded in a car in Gaza, alongside five of Rajab’s family members and two paramedics dispatched to rescue her.

Released last month by Zeteo, former MSNBC anchor Mehdi Hasan’s new media venture, “Israel’s Reel Extremism” looks at the invasion of Gaza through Israelis’ eyes — or, more specifically, their social media accounts. The film zeroes in on dehumanizing material that’s been posted to Israeli soldiers’ social media accounts while in Gaza — footage of everything from soldiers abusing detainees to torching libraries — then zooms out for a broader look at the society that amplifies that material.

“Who wouldn’t feel superior to them?” says one special forces operator, who jokingly advertised his carpentry business on social media using a Palestinian family’s long-evacuated kitchen. He added, referring to Gaza: “I do not think there should be life left in that place.”

The film also includes interviews with far-right settlers, including those trying to enter Gaza to establish Israeli communities there. Reacting to the death toll in Gaza, one such activist says the killing should continue “until there is no Hamas — if you need to kill a million, let it be a million.”

This April documentary, produced by Scripps News and open-source analysis website Bellingcat, uses satellite imagery and on-the-ground reporting to track the destruction of land and infrastructure in Gaza, particularly the widespread demolition of housing. It also includes a similar analysis in the West Bank, where both Israeli military and settler violence has dramatically increased since Oct. 7.

The violence is accompanied by the ever-increasing footprint of far-right settler outposts in the West Bank, which, although illegal under international law, continue to multiply. In the five months since this report’s release, the situation in the West Bank has deteriorated further, primarily due to a large-scale Israeli military operation that began in late August. Hundreds more people have been killed, mostly by the Israeli military, according to United Nations figures.

Though they were not offered a speaking slot on the Democratic National Convention’s main stage last month, the “uncommitted” movement, which is calling for an arms embargo on Israel, wasn’t silent. Instead, it organized its own events, including a press conference featuring health care workers who’d worked in Gaza in the previous month.

It’s not technically a documentary, but the press event, available for viewing online, offered haunting testimony from medical experts who saw the impact of the war firsthand. One after another, six physicians and surgeons described the devastating injuries they saw in their patients in Gaza and the low or nonexistent levels of crucial medical supplies with which they could respond. Over and over, they said, Gazans asked nothing of them other than to tell their stories to the rest of the world.

“The reason we’ve cried here isn’t sadness, anymore. It’s a feeling that we have no ability — despite being from the most powerful country in the world, providing the bombs that dropped on these innocent people — that we have no power to stop the bleeding,” said Dr. Ahmed Yousaf, a pediatrician and internal medicine doctor in Arkansas. He called for an immediate ceasefire and the halting of arms sales to Israel.

Another striking example of a medical worker’s account appeared on CBS Sunday Morning in July. “All of the disasters I’ve seen, combined — 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes, all of that combined — doesn’t equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza,” Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a North Carolina-based orthopedic surgeon, told the outlet. Perlmutter emphasized the horrors experienced by young casualties of Israel’s military operation, including children who were “incinerated” and “shredded” by bombs, crushed by buildings and “definitively” shot by snipers.