Born in Gaza, directed by Hernan Zin is a heartfelt documentary filmed during the Israeli offensive against Gaza in 2014. However, considering the media’s power in shaping beliefs and swaying opinions, the fact that Born in Gaza is streaming on Netflix, a platform infamous for promoting Israeli propaganda whether explicitly or implicitly, should be highly considered.
The film focuses on the strife of ten children directly after the offensive and the implications it has had on their families and education such as quitting school and experiencing loss in the family. The children-centered approach to the storytelling emphasizes their viewpoint and eludes adult opinion and input as a result.
The harrowing experiences these children have undergone in the documentary are not sugar-coated. Zin borrows from real television media coverage to relay live footage of the ambulance strikes and does not turn the camera away from the children’s physical wounds. The format of the documentary is made to supply the viewer with statistics such as: “About 17000 acres were affected during the conflict,” after relaying Mahmud’s story which emphasizes the fact that the viewer is being exposed to one story out of tens of thousands.
However, what the film does shy away from is a direct discourse of the root cause of these repercussions. This is particularly dangerous as it is made to be the case that a viewer is expected to have particular previous background knowledge on the topic. With a pro-Israeli propaganda being rampant on the same streaming service offering this film, it becomes questionable how the child-focused angle might lead some to mitigate the anti-Israeli remarks discussed by the children to an echo chamber phenomenon that could be sympathized with at most. Additionally, the word Zionism is near absent from the film except for when Mahmud referred to Zionists coming to bomb them even though they grow vegetables and do not mean harm. Notably, the English translation for the Arabic word for Zionists was diminished to ‘they’.
Although Zin tackled in an interview with Frontline Club the unsafety he felt filming due to Israeli drones and the fact that he would “like people to see this before the next time they feel tempted to throw rockets at Gaza again,” the director discussed the fact that “sometimes the Palestinians blame first their leaders and then the Israelis.”
Vis-a-vis the neutral and innocent archetype that comes in tandem with the word “child”, shying away from being a fully edged story against the apartheid that leaves these children exposed to such conditions can come off as ambiguous in the heat of a discussion that should not even be up for debate.