International media coverage dictated how the world saw that Gazan War. That coverage was flawed. "Eyeless in Gaza" sets out to discover how skewed coverage of the conflict informed international public opinion, and why the media failed to tell both sides of the story.
Australian journalist, Dan Goldberg reviewed the film: "The film shares the title of the 1936 Aldous Huxley novel in which
Samson is captured by the Philistines, has his eyes burned out and is
taken to Gaza. . . .
Hamas was crushed militarily by the IDF, but was not defeated and it seemed only a matter of time before the next showdown in Hamastan. Directed by Martin Himel, an award-winning filmmaker whose credits include "Jenin: Massacring Truth," the documentary is a mélange of archival footage from the war, IDF and Hamas propaganda clips and talking heads, including Hamas and Israeli representatives as well as several reporters who covered the war. They are assembled together in a largely successful bid to prove that Hamas pulls the puppet strings of the media so that its narrative focuses on Israel’s aggression rather than Hamas’s nihilism.
Matti Friedman, a former reporter for the Associated Press, who is among Magid’s main proponents in the documentary, reveals that staff in the AP’s Gaza bureau never reported a rocket they witnessed being launched outside their office for fear of retribution.
Moreover, he claims armed Hamas terrorists burst into the AP’s office to threaten them over a photo an AP photographer had taken; this too went unreported. “Not only does Hamas know that it can successfully intimidate reporters into reporting the picture that Hamas wants,” he says. “It knows that reporters will not report their own intimidation.”
Further, he notes that most of the media work in Gaza is done by local Palestinian stringers who “quite understandably won’t cross Hamas” because they know they’ll probably pay with their lives if they do. The net result, he says, is that the public fails to understand the extent to which Hamas is filtering the news. Mr. Harry Fear, a reporter for RTV, says he was expelled from Gaza for tweeting that Hamas was firing rockets from a civilian area. (Reprinted with permission from https://www.plus61j.net.au/ ). View the trailer:
"They're calling it a massacre." "Children and civilians comprised
the vast majority of the 200 killed." “Israel is targeting...hospitals.”
These quotes come directly from international media reports on the Gaza
War of 2014. All of the are INCORRECT, yet they were used to create the
narrative that the world, to a great extent, accepted. A narrative that
saw Israel as the aggressor. Interviewing Israeli and Palestinian
combatants, adminstrators and civilians - along with analysts,
journalists and aid agency officials on the ground, "Eyeless in Gaza"
sets out to find out how this narrative arose . . . and arrives at a
very troubling conclusion.
Interview with producer, Robert Magid" "I made this movie because the war in Gaza is a stage for dramatic media presentation. The media is not immune to what takes place in front of them and while seeing objectivity as a standard they invariably get sucked in and become participants rather than reporters.
Director, Martin Himel, is intimately familiar with the international Middle East press corps. Initially, he was the Jerusalem producer for ABC News, covering PM Menachem Begin, the Lebanon war, and the various peace processes.
For the next 25 years, Mr. Himel was the Middle East Bureau chief and correspondent for three major television networks CTV Canada. Global Television Canada, and Fox Television USA, covering among other events the Oslo Peace process, Gulf War 1 and 2, the Second Intifadah, the collapse of
communism in Eastern Europe and much more.
For more, see Eyeless in Gaza Movie.com
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