Television rating|Bombings, hunger and hopelessness are commonplace in the area. There is a shortage of everything.
Gaza, life in hell. Yle Areena and TV1 3.10. at 22:00.
★★★
Fresh reportage Gaza, life in hell factor Martine Laroche Joubert is a 77-year-old respected veteran of TV journalism.
At the beginning of his program, Joubert says that he has covered Gaza for 30 years. Now he couldn’t get to the place either, because Israel has prevented international journalists from entering the area, which is being bombarded by continuous bombardment.
A Palestinian journalist has filmed in Gaza Shrouq Aila. He has done stories from there for international news media throughout the war.
A couple of weeks ago, Aila received the International Press Freedom Award for her work, which is given by the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization known as the red cross of journalism.
Gaza, life in hell has been filmed in May in various parts of the war zone. The title does not exaggerate. In the pictures, everything seems to be in ruins. According to estimates, 62 percent of all homes have been destroyed. Compared to the prospects, that sounds like a low number.
Other rough numbers are being added. According to Hamas, 14,000 children have been killed and 12,000 wounded in the Israeli attack. Israel has denied the figures, but Unicef considers them credible.
According to Unicef, every ten minutes a child is killed or injured in Gaza.
An estimated 62 percent of Gaza’s homes have been destroyed. Based on the pictures in the documentary, it sounds like a low reading.
Essential is that Gaza, life in hell peeks behind the news curtain pulled by Israel. News coverage has inevitably been insufficient, as independent information has been almost impossible to obtain. Now let’s see what the numbers mean.
There is video footage from both Hamas and the Israeli army. Israel invites journalists to its side of the border to watch the inspections of the aid trucks, but they are not really enough for anything.
There is a shortage of food, water and medicine in Gaza. Only one in three of the hospitals is functioning at least somehow. The rest have been bombed into gravel.
Children’s wounds are not scratches. The program shows children who have lost their limbs, who crawl in poorly functioning hospital equipment.
Children play on the edge of the shack village. According to Unicef, a child is killed or injured in Gaza every ten minutes.
To the area Out of 2.5 million inhabitants, 1.5 million live as refugees in mostly miserable conditions. The program talks about desperate people who have had to flee from Israeli attacks many times already.
Aila, the mother of a small child, is a refugee herself. Her husband, also a journalist, was killed in Israeli bombing at the beginning of the attack in October last year. More than a hundred Palestinian journalists have died in the attack.
Along with Israel, civilians are threatened by Hamas, which controls Gaza. The program says that it behaves like a criminal organization towards its own people. Hardly anyone dares to talk about Hamas.
Tv reparina Gaza, life in hell is not documentary art. But as journalism, it is a very necessary first aid against the attack on the one-sidedness of the news, which has been going on for a year next week.