Director to discuss Gaza film after free screening Aug. 8

Director Abby Martin will join a virtual Q&A Aug. 8 after a free screening of her 2019 documentary Gaza Fights For Freedom at the Art House, 492 E. 13th Ave. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the film starts at 6:15 p.m. She took questions at a similar event earlier this year:

Abby Martin: Thank you so much, all of you, for watching the film and thank you for putting this screening together. It’s never been more urgent to support documentaries like this and learn the true context and history of what’s happening. The film came together because I was in the occupied West Bank back in 2017 and I tried to get into Gaza. I had been in contact with many journalists there already. And I was banned, from the Israeli government.

[00:00:44] And so I just reached out to my friends in Gaza and we just decided, let’s tell the story in a way that it needs to be told. And so I worked with the Council of International Relations, several journalists on the ground who went, and what’s so amazing about this film is that even though I directed the interviews, they went and depicted what they wanted Western audiences to see from a Palestinian lens.

[00:01:05] This is a very clear-cut case of colonized and colonizer and oppressed and oppressor, and for the Palestinians being able to dictate their own reality through their video cameras, and then me just taking their footage and cutting it down and making the film, I think it’s such an indictment. It’s an incontrovertible proof of Israeli war crimes… And it’s just a heroic ensemble of showing just raw Palestinian resistance and resilience in the face of just sheer brutality and horror.

[00:01:33] And so I’m just really excited that (the film) has had new legs and I’m just really hopeful that, you know, the end of this film, it said the only way that Israel will be held responsible is to be brought before international courts. And so even though there’s this horrific genocidal onslaught going on, and it’s the most devastating thing I’ve ever seen in my life, there is a glimmer of hope that something is going to happen, finally, and that this criminal apartheid state will finally be held accountable for its actions…

[00:02:02] I was already hopeful at the fact that Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, these are traditionally liberal organizations that have been very sidestepping this issue for decades, even though it’s been very clear-cut, and for them to come on board and finally call Israel for what it is, a couple of years ago, already, I think, cemented Israel in stone as an apartheid state. And once you are labeled that from the premier human rights organizations in the world, there’s no turning back on that.

[00:02:31] So now it’s what has to be done to make apartheid fall. So there already was a grievous crime against humanity being committed that was internationally being recognized by human rights organizations.

[00:02:42] We are essentially just being livestreamed the genocide, which is very dystopian, but it also is very helpful in believing our own eyes without having to be dictated by corporate media and Western pundits and politicians telling us, ‘No, don’t believe your lying eyes. This is not what’s happening.’

[00:02:59] So I think what we’re seeing in the world today is unprecedented. It’s monumental. There is no turning back. I am so hopeful right now, which is hard to say, because Gaza is uninhabitable. I think that we can all see that Gaza’s been completely wiped out.

[00:03:16] But I do think that people’s power is the only thing that can change the system. And we are seeing that in droves. I mean, everywhere around the world, millions of people shutting business down as usual. No business as usual, while genocide is happening.

[00:03:30] And so the world has seen Israel for what it is. The mask has been ripped off entirely, and they are seen as the genocidal colonial force that they are. And there’s no more pinkwashing of this. So moving forward, you have to be an unabashed racist if you are going to support this colonial project.

[00:03:45] So my advice is to stay strong and stay true, because you are on the right side of history, and we cannot let these institutions of power silence us. We can’t let them silence our voices, because we are right, and we are just, and the Palestinians need us to speak out loud and proud and unapologetically.

[00:04:08] So my advice, yes, it’s very scary and hard, but we have to stand on the right side and we have to keep speaking truth to power because it’s never going to be popular, right? The institutions never ceded to civil rights until we made them. The police and the political establishment never ceded to any of these movements. We were still supporting (we meaning the U.S. government), still supporting South African apartheid until the world isolated South Africa, so they’re never going to just—the colonial powers are never just going to do the right thing until they are forced to do the right thing. So stay strong. Stay true.

[00:04:41] We look at polling, we look at the sentiment of young people, we’re about to see a huge schism and a collapse of this kind of old guard and old way of thinking. And I think that Gen Z is going to come out on top and change the way that this country operates.

[00:04:55] And I think showing films like this—I have even talked to Israelis who have watched this and they say, ‘My view is completely altered forever.’ …Once you watch this documentary, there’s no question, right, that these people were systematically targeted—children—that Israeli snipers put children in the crosshairs and pulled the trigger over and over and over again. And the myths just do not hold up. And I think that it’s just about seeing that other side that they’ve never been shown.

[00:05:24] And it’s only Americans who are confused about this, because they design their propaganda for us, because they need our aid and our weapons. And so we’re really the last leg who’s maintaining this, and it’s disgusting. So it’s about damn time that we wake up to what’s going on…

[00:05:41] History will judge us all and will ask, what did we all do? And I have to be proud of that when I look back at my life, I have to say I did everything that I could. And I know that we all feel that way. And I really appreciate what you guys are doing.

[00:05:55] John Q: Director Abby Martin. Her 2019 documentary, Gaza Fights for Freedom, will be shown Aug. 8, 6 p.m. free, at the Art House. After the screening, she’ll answer questions. For more, email the Party for Socialism and Liberation: PSLEugeneOR@gmail.com.