By David Swanson, Progressive Hub

Our society doesn’t always stand out for its values, but damn well does for its production values. There may be nothing more powerful in the world than a film — or even a commercial — with high production values. So I’m deeply appreciative when a well-made movie actually says something that needed saying, when you can watch the closing credits feeling wiser, rather than dirtier, more aware of what’s worst in the world and yet inspired to change it, rather than outraged at the normalization of violence or stupidity.

A good place to go for such rarities is Brave New Films, where the latest release is Gaza Journalists Under Fire. The page at that link lists public screenings and let’s you download the film to screen it for a small or large gathering. It also provides fact sheets and action ideas to further enrich your post-screening discussion. One idea is to share the film on social media where paid ads for it (on Facebook and Instagram) have been censored.

I’ve seen an awful lot of movies, not to mention news reports and social media posts, about Palestine. It’s a topic that can easily lead to weeping and withdrawing. It’s also a simple story (the Israeli government is slaughtering people) that can easily be complicated in unhelpful ways. This new 41-minute film avoids those dangers by being a stand-out work of journalism not simply about Gaza but about journalism about Gaza, and specifically the killing of journalists.

At 178 at the time of publication — and now higher — the count of journalists and media workers killed by the Israeli military was already higher than the count of journalists killed on all sides of the U.S. Civil War, the two world wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the war on Afghanistan combined — not to mention 93 journalists wounded, 84 journalists arrested and locked up, and 70 media facilities turned to rubble in Gaza — all while people in western corporate media are deemed brave simply for announcing that they’ve noticed there’s a genocide happening.

The record number of killings is not because Gaza is being flooded with the world’s journalists. On the contrary, they’ve been shut out by Israel, along with human rights organizations. It’s not because the local people are disproportionately journalists. Perhaps they are if you consider their use of social media, but these statistics refer to professional journalists. It’s not because Israel has killed so many people that this many journalists are simply a portion of that larger massacre. No, it’s because the Israeli military has been specifically targeting journalists for assassination, including tracking them with drones, often just following a particularly powerful report produced by one of them. Journalists are dying disproportionately, and this means that they can be a danger rather than a protection to those they are near. Their PRESS jackets and vests are treated as targets. Their families have been killed with them when they have been targeted.

One of the journalists particularly featured in the film trained many young people to use social media — an invaluable service as it has turned out. She was killed along with her five-year-old daughter. But many of the journalists we see in this film are responsible for much of what we know about Gaza. It’s disturbing to imagine what horrors we would not have learned of without them, and what we have in fact not learned because of this killing spree targeting journalists. Even more disturbing is how many journalists we see reporting on the attacks on journalists prior to themselves being killed — as well as some we see reporting just as a missile hits nearby.

I do not, and this film does not, suggest that killing a journalist is worse than killing anyone else. I, in fact, diverge from popular opinion in maintaining that killing a civilian or a child or any human being is no worse and no better than killing any other human being. The significance of this unprecedented slaughter of journalists is that it helps to hide the war and facilitate lies about the war. The film includes a few choice lies as spoken by Israeli and U.S. officials, and provides the context for the film’s particular focus, including the context of the provision of much of the weaponry to the Israeli government by the U.S. government.

The Israeli government has, of course, held not one person accountable for the killings of journalists that voice after voice in this film — and not only in this film — calls a “war crime.” Over and over: “war crime,” “war crime,” “war crime.” Forgive me please if I quibble. The entire war is a crime. It is the crime of war in violation of the UN Charter. It is the crime of genocide in violation of the Convention on Genocide — “plausibly” in the pre-ruling ruling of the International Court of Justice, but obviously to anyone not living under a rock or within a pro-genocide media bubble. The Nazis were prosecuted for their various actions based on the argument that their war was illegal under Kellogg-Briand and therefore every bit of it illegal. To say never again to genocide and war, we have to say yes again to war being a crime in its totality.

Part of that totality is now the targeted murders of journalists. And just as we must continue asking “Where is the solidarity of the world’s people?” we must also ask “Where is the solidarity of the world’s journalists?”