By Alison Weir

I’ve recently had conversations with a number of people who, it turned out, were completely unaware that before the October 7th attack on Israel, Gazans had tried huge non-violent demonstrations for almost two years.

Every week, thousands of unarmed men, women and children in Gaza’s open air prison had gathered in a nonviolent, Gandhian march to end the Israeli blockade that was strangling them and to return to their stolen homes and villages.

And every week Israeli snipers had shot dozens of them, killing and maiming unarmed people of all ages – men, women, children, medics, journalists. On the first day alone, atleast fifteen people were killed and 750 others were shot. (See detailed reports here. and videos below.)

Yet, US news reports mentioned these so infrequently, if at all, that many Americans have no idea that these massive weekly demonstrations even took place.

One of the most blatant and egregious examples is PBS.

PBS’s Frontline program had actually co-produced a documentary with the BBC about the Great March. While this still contained considerable pro-Israel spin, It showed a level of Israeli violence that most Americans never see.

At the last minute, PBS suddenly canceled the broadcast.

The reason given was that it was simply postponed because of a more important breaking news story.

However, the allegedly timely news story that preempted the Gaza documentary consisted of a minimal, widely known update to a news story that had been on the website for 2 months. PBS told callers the film would be broadcast at some unnamed time in the future.

The next story from PBS was that the film was supposedly not a PBS documentary, even though it had been announced as such in numerous places. Moreover, this fraudulent excuse had not even been mentioned when the film was preempted. The upshot was that PBS now announced it would never show it.

Had this film not been blocked, quite likely vastly more Americans would have seen Palestinians’ courageous attempt to use nonviolence, would have seen Israeli soldiers shooting unarmed demonstraters in cold blood, and more Americans would have demanded that their government stop supporting Israel… And then, perhaps, the desperate October 7th breakout would not have occurred. 

But PBS chose not to broadcast it.

Following are the two reports I published on this at the time:

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View the Frontline Documentary on Gaza that PBS pulled

PBS stations around the U.S. were scheduled to show a riveting new Frontline documentary, “One Day in Gaza,” but at the last minute PBS pulled it.

The film is missing important context about the issue, but it includes footage that Americans, as Israel’s top funders, should see – including a young, unarmed teen being shot in her head.

While most Americans may think that PBS is a public institution, given its name – Public Broadcasting Service” – it is not. It is, in its own words, “a private, nonprofit media enterprise.” One that is, however, largely funded by American taxpayers…

BBC, the coproducer of the film, broadcast it to British viewers. We are posting it below so that Americans can also view it.

By Alison Weir, May 22, 2019

Recently, hundreds of PBS stations around the United States were scheduled to broadcast a powerful new Frontline documentary: One Day in Gaza. But viewers tuning in found that it had been replaced by a slightly updated Frontline report on Robert Mueller that had been broadcast two months before and had been streaming online ever since.

PBS no longer has the Gaza film listed on its schedule.

The documentary was to be aired on the one-year anniversary of events that took place on May 14, 2018, when tens of thousands of men, women, and children in Gaza gathered with the intention of deploying the tactics Gandhi had used in freeing India from British control.

The demonstration that day was the 8th march in what Gazans named the Great March of Return.

Palestinians months earlier had announced their plan for a mass, peaceful demonstration in which Gazans would march for an end to Israel’s crippling 12-year blockade and, especially, for  their right to return to homes stolen by Israel in order to create a Jewish state. Palestinians’ right to return to their homes and ancestral land is well established in international law. This fundamental right, affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israel had responded by immediately deploying a hundred snipers.

In the first seven weekly marches, Israeli forces killed about 50 of the marchers and injured over 7,000.

During the 8th march on May 14, the day depicted in the film, Israeli forces killed 60 more and shot 1,000 – an average of one person every 30 seconds.

While this was going on, a glittering Israeli celebration was taking place as a new, transplanted U.S. Embassy opened in Jerusalem, a city that Israel illegally annexed following the Six-Day War that Israel launched in 1967.

Who were the protesters?

Over 70 percent of Gazans are from families that Israel forced out in its founding war to establish “the Jewish state.” Israel confiscated their homes and land and has prevented them from returning ever since. This violates international law.

For 12 years Israel has perpetrated a strangling blockade of Gaza, causing 52 percent unemployment, hunger, the kind of malnutrition that causes growth stunting in children, and increasing hopelessness.

And this blockade is just the most recent one.

On April 15, 2002 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported “The total blockade has paralysed the Palestinian economy… it is now in a deep recession, with millions of people severely impoverished and extremely food insecure.”

For many years it has been tremendously difficult, sometimes impossible, for Gazans to leave Gaza, and for others to enter it. As a result, many people describe Gaza as the largest open-air prison on earth.

While U.S. news coverage in general, and the Frontline documentary in particular, emphasize the rockets fired by Gaza’s diverse resistance groups, the fact is that Israeli violence preceded the rockets and has greatly exceeded their impact.

In the past year alone, Israeli forces have killed at least 293 Gazans, while Gazans have killed 6 Israelis. Palestinian rockets from Gaza, which are largely homemade, have killed a total of about 40 Israelis in the whole time they’ve been being shot, while during the same time period Israeli forces have killed over 6,000 Gazans. (See this Timeline of deaths and this Israeli source for more info.)

The film says that Israel “fought three major conflicts with Hamas,” but doesn’t mention that during these, Israeli forces killed about 3,600 Gazans (many of them women and children), while Gazan fighters killed approximately 80 Israelis, the large majority of them soldiers.

Powerful but flawed

The Frontline documentary One Day in Gaza is an extremely powerful, if flawed, record of the events of May 14, 2018.

It provides Israeli views, Palestinian views, and riveting, often tragic footage of the day’s events. However, perhaps because of its striving to be “balanced,” or due to constraints imposed by Israel’s powerful lobbies in England and the U.S., the film often leans toward the Israeli narrative and obscures some important points.

The Israeli interviewees in the film are calm, articulate, and seem well-trained in presenting their talking points. Perhaps this is not surprising given that one is an army spokesman, a second is a high-ranking officer, and two are Americans who immigrated to Israel (although this fact is not revealed in the film).

Not interviewed in the film are any of the members of the Israeli group, Breaking the Silence, composed of former Israeli soldiers who describe widespread military practices of gratuitous violence and cruelty.

Below is some background on two of the Israelis featured in the film:

Col. Kobi Heller

Perhaps because of time constraints, Col. Heller’s, background and political persuasion are left out of the film.

While Heller comes across as reasonable, professional, and reluctant to commit the murders we see from his troops, his resumé suggests that there is more to his story.

Heller is a member of Israel’s Religious Zionist movement, a group that has become known for its zealotry and sometimes extremist views of Jewish supremacy. He is called a “kippa shruga,” a term for the type of Jewish fundamentalist known for believing that Arabs should be expelled from Israel and for opposition to any Palestinian state, no matter how small.

It turns out that he has a previous connection to Gaza. Heller is a settler who studied at a religious Zionist yeshiva in a Gaza settlement that combined religious studies with military training. In 2005 the yeshiva was moved to Israel when the Israeli government forcibly expelled the settlers. This caused fierce objections in the settler movement. Many in the army were outraged at this action.

Heller is from Israel’s notorious Golani brigade, increasingly a bastion of the Israeli far right. An Israeli professor states:  “The officer corps of the elite Golani Brigade is now heavily populated by religious right-wing graduates of the preparatory academies.” The New York Times reports that many Israelis are concerned at this development, particularly since a booklet was handed out to soldiers during Israel’s 2009 assault on Gaza that contained a rabbinical edict against showing the enemy mercy .

The Times reports: “The rabbinate brought in a lot of booklets and articles and their message was very clear: We are the Jewish people, we came to this land by a miracle, God brought us back to this land and now we need to fight to expel the non-Jews who are interfering with our conquest of this holy land.”

Adele Raemer

An Israeli woman featured in the film is Adele Raemer. She is described as an “Israeli grandmother” who lives two kilometers from the Gaza fence.

In the film she describes her fear of Gazans who wish to return to their homes in Israel. The film does not mention that Raemer is originally an American from the Bronx.

In 1975 she immigrated to Israel and took up residency in the Nirim kibbutz on the border with Gaza. Since the area had originally possessed no history of Jewish habitation, the Zionist movement had established it in 1946 to create a Jewish presence in the Negev in order to claim it as part of a future Jewish state.

Raemer has written that her life in the kibbutz is “95 percent heaven.” Despite being located in a desert, it has green grass and a swimming pool. A little over a mile away, Gazans are enduring a water crisis that has caused Gazan children to suffer from diarrhea, kidney disease, and impaired IQ.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders

The film shows the the flaws and sometimes fatal logistical failures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders during the Great March and says that Hamas has “refused to recognize Israel.”

However, the film doesn’t include the fact that Hamas has offered Israel a decade-long truce, that it is Israel that breaks the truces, and that Hamas has said it was willing to accept a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

In reporting these leaders’ flaws and mistakes, the film fails to mention the extreme difficulties Gaza’s leaders face, including the fact that by assuming this role they face very possible assassination by Israel. Many resistance members have been blown to pieces by Israeli drones.

Those who survive are trying to run a resistance movement, deploy efficient logistical support, and make wise decisions during chaotic conditions in one of the world’s most isolated and longest-besieged enclaves.

Most important, the Palestinian journalist and peace activist who originated the march and is interviewed in the film, Ahmed Abu Artema, says that the film attributed far too much significance to Hamas, and neglected the “primary role played by civil society activists in Gaza.”

In a detailed critique of the film, he writes: “The documentary did not show the reality of the prison that Gaza has become. One shot of the cattle market that exists at the Erez crossing would have been enough to convey the reality of this cage, where there is no freedom of movement, no economic growth, no future prospects – no hope.”

The U.S. connection

The film also fails to inform American viewers of our connection to Israeli actions – that the U.S. gives Israel over $10 million per day. (The U.S. has given Israel on average 7,000 times more per capita than it has given other people around the world.)

And in its framing, the film neglects the fact that a prime driver of Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy is billionaire campaign donor Sheldon Adelson, who attended the celebration with his Israeli wife Miriam. (Adelson once said that he regretted serving in the U.S. army rather than the Israeli one – video here.)

Despite its flaws, Americans should see it

But the film cannot do everything, and it does some things extremely well. Overall, it’s not difficult to see why Israel partisans would not wish it broadcast to Americans.

It shows footage that the American public almost never sees. It was this kind of footage that eventually led to Americans ending the Vietnam war.

One of the main take-aways from the film is the extreme ruthlessness of Israeli forces.

Fully armed Israeli soldiers from one of the most powerful armies on earth are seen targeting multitudes of thin, unarmed men, women, and children. The film shows Israeli snipers shooting people in the head, in the back, in the legs.

It shows a youth whose leg was amputated and reports that many of the demonstrators lost limbs that day. (The UN recently reported that 1,700 Gazans shot by Israeli snipers are currently at risk of amputations.)

While U.S. news reports often downplay these actions, the film shows them in all their tragic and horrific reality.

The film shows people who are just standing there suddenly being picked off by snipers. It shows a 14-year-old girl chatting with a friend, then suddenly being shot in the head. And it shows her little brother, who had been with her, later describing how his sister had been killed. This is not footage that Israeli hawks wish American audiences to view.

Another takeaway from the film is the poverty of Gaza’s imprisoned population, particularly compared to the gathering in Israel to celebrate the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem.

Amid the expensive suits and fashionable dresses, American-born Israeli official Michael Oren bemoans the fact that the situation in Gaza has blemished his enjoyment of the festive occasion.

This contrast with Gaza is stark.

With no powerful lobby to represent them and little clout in U.S. media, Palestinians are at the mercy of Israel. The film shows that many in Gaza feel they have little to lose after years of escalating oppression. Some voice impossible dreams that had motivated them, that they could recover their lost homes. Some simply hoped to see them. A few voice the fury that results from dispossession, imprisonment, and brutalization.

While this goes unremarked in the film, there are indications that the “tear gas” Israeli drones poured on people may have been particularly virulent. In the film we see some people convulsing, and one man is delirious. This seems reminiscent of a mysterious gas used in Gaza in early 2001 that caused similar symptoms (reported in the James Longley documentary Gaza Strip).

Courage

While Israeli soldiers shelter behind diverse barriers, armed with advanced weaponry and guided by female soldiers watching it all on TV screens in a remote bunker, it is the Palestinians who demonstrate incredible, sometimes tragic courage.

We see them without weapons, without body armor, without helmets, without uniforms. Old and young, men and women, strong and disabled, they wield slingshots, wave flags.

They’re out in an open field, Israeli forces in front of them, drones overhead. When yet another demonstrator is shot, the blood pouring out, they run to rescue him or her, and then sometimes they, too, are shot. Yet they continue.

The contrast between the Israeli and Palestinian women taking part in the day’s hostilities is acute. Israeli female soldiers are far away, watching the action on computer monitors, telling soldiers when and where to shoot. Their faces are blurred to keep their identities secret. One seems to question what she’s doing, but there’s no indication that she stops.

Gazan women join the mass gathering. They’re out are in the open field, marching, carrying flags, helping the injured… and getting shot.

Theft of a nation

For over 70 years, Israel has gotten away with its astoundingly massive theft of the land and homes of the non-Jews it dispossessed to create an ethnically defined nation, and its decades of violence to maintain this ethnic cleansing. A Palestinian historian has validly termed this the Palestinian Holocaust.

One Day in Gaza shows some of Israel’s millions of victims, their attempt to be free, and what’s being done to them. Americans are not supposed to see that.

While Artema’s biting critique of the film is valid and necessary, it is useful to be aware that for many Americans much of the film will be revelatory.

PBS’s action

PBS’s cancellation, however, has prevented Frontline’s more than 4.6 million viewers from seeing it.

While PBS calls itself “a trusted window to the world,” someone at PBS shuttered the window on One Day in Gaza.

PBS spokespeople state that Gaza will be broadcast at some point in the coming months, but say they don’t know when. Since the film’s scheduled broadcast date was specifically focused on the one-year anniversary of the day it depicts, it seems odd for PBS to be so unconcerned about broadcasting it in a timely manner. BBC, on the other hand, aired the film on May 13.

According to a Frontline statement, One Day In Gaza was pulled because Frontline “decided to air a timely update to our documentary on the Mueller investigation.” The Mueller investigation report had been broadcast on March 16 and 17 and has been available online ever since. It can be viewed here.

The updated version that bumped One Day in Gaza can be seen here. The update consists of a few minutes added at the end of the report. This new information had already been reported widely in U.S. media, including PBS’s own primetime news program News Hour.

PBS vs local stations

PBS wields considerable power. A national study rated PBS “the most-trusted institution in America.”

Its Frontline program claims to be “American television’s top long-form news and current affairs series.”

According to its website, PBS is a “near-universal media service, available in 9-of-10 U.S. television households. For many Americans, public television is their connection to the world.”

PBS emphasizes the alleged independence of its nearly 350 television and radio stations, stating they are among “the last locally owned media organizations in the country.”

However, in reality it appears that local stations have less control than this implies. When someone at PBS prevented the broadcast of Gaza, that decision prevented all the local stations around the country from airing it.

The fact is that local PBS stations do not have independent access to the film – even though it received funding from the stations.

While most Americans may think that PBS is a public institution, given its name – Public Broadcasting Service” – it is not. It is, in its own words, “a private, nonprofit media enterprise.” One that is, however, largely funded by American taxpayers.

Its ownership is a bit convoluted and multi-layered. While it says it is “owned by its 350 member stations,” its funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB is another private nonprofit, but 95 percent of CPB’s funding comes from the federal government. Most of this money is then given to the member stations.

Phone calls to a PBS station, KQED in San Francisco, revealed that KQED had received many calls complaining about the cancellation and asking when Gaza would be shown. KQED’s customer service representative explained that none of this is in KQED’s hands.

“We Answer to You”

Frontline has refused to divulge who was involved in the decision to pull Gaza. It seems likely that its Senior Editorial Team – consisting of Raney Aronson-Rath, Executive Producer; David Fanning, Founder and Executive Producer at Large; and Andrew Metz, Managing Editor – would have been involved. Fanning has previously been accused of censoring content regarding Israel/Palestine, a charge he denies.

Frontline’s website announces: “We answer to no one but you.”

It’s unclear who the “you” is. It does not appear to be the member stations who fund it, or the many people whose federal dollars financed the film and wish to see it.

While PBS holds on to the film and fails to release it, people in Gaza continue their David against Goliath struggle.

On May 15th, Gazan men, women, and children again protested, and Israel again unleashed its heavily armed military, injuring 144, including 49 children. The same day, Israeli soldiers also fired at fishermen who were fishing off the coast of Gaza, injuring one of them – a frequent occurrence that Americans rarely, if ever, see on the News Hour.

And so it goes.

Perhaps at some point PBS/Frontline management will decide that the massacre of 60 people and the shooting of a thousand others in a single day is important enough to merit scheduling the film – particularly when the perpetrator has received more U.S. tax money than any other nation in the world.

This post will be updated if PBS schedules a new broadcast date.

It will be updated again if PBS actually shows it.

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Frontline says it may never broadcast the Gaza documentary

First, PBS’s flagship TV program, Frontline, said it had only temporarily cancelled a riveting documentary on Gaza that was to be shown nationwide.

Now Frontline admits it may never show it. Originally, the taxpayer-funded TV program was trying to take full credit for the film, now it’s trying to disown it. (Scroll down below to see our video of it)

By Alison Weir, May 31, 2019

PBS’s Frontline says it may never broadcast a powerful new documentary about Gaza that it bumped from approximately 300 PBS stations around the country. PBS calls Frontline its “flagship public affairs series.”

The film, billed as Frontline: One Day in Gaza, had been scheduled to be broadcast nationwide on May 14, 2019, the one-year anniversary of the deadly day it portrays. Instead, viewers found a slightly updated Frontline film about Robert Mueller that had been broadcast in March and had been online ever since.

When disappointed viewers called PBS/Frontline, located at Boston’s WBGH station, to find out what had happened to the Gaza documentary, they were told that the scheduled broadcast had simply been preempted. One Day in Gaza, they were told, would be screened sometime in the coming months.

Now Frontline, according to an email from spokesperson Pam Johnston, says that PBS may never broadcast it…. or that if it does, it may screen a different version.

Johnston’s email was in response to an article I had written about the documentary, which discussed Frontline’s action. In her email to me, Johnston wrote: “If and when we decide to broadcast a version of ‘One Day in Gaza,’ it will be announced through PBS and PBS stations, our website, newsletter and across our social channels.”

In the email, Johnston also claimed, “The documentary you are referring to is not ‘a FRONTLINE documentary’ or ‘Frontline/BBC documentary’ as you continue to write. It is a BBC documentary.”

Yet, nowhere in PBS’s copious announcements for the film could I find a single instance in which PBS called it a “BBC documentary.”

In fact, all its announcements make it appear that it is a Frontline documentary. Its promotional video for the program specifically says: “Frontline investigates what happened one day in Gaza.”

(While PBS has since removed its promo, the video is still on some PBS stations’ websites and YouTube channels, including WLRN, WTVIPBSCharlotte, and South Florida PBS).

 

 

 

 

Questions for PBS-Frontline

Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper calls it “a BBC-PBS Frontline production.”

In my phone and email exchanges with Johnston before my article, she never suggested that the film was not a Frontline documentary. My very first email to her had specifically said: “I’m working on a story about the non-broadcast of the Frontline documentary ‘One Day in Gaza’ that was scheduled for yesterday…” Johnston’s response to my email did not contain the “correction” that she now suddenly demands.

After Johnston sent me her perplexing email, I’ve tried to learn the true situation, and to discover to what degree American taxpayer money went to the project. I responded to Johnston’s email with two questions:

1. What was the PBS/Frontline relationship to the project?

2. How much money did PBS/Frontline provide to BBC for it?

When Johnston didn’t answer, I sent the same questions to PBS-Frontline management and added a third question:

3. If no money has yet been disbursed, how much was expected to be allotted for it?

Johnston and others have refused to provide this information despite follow up emails and phone calls.

Originally, it seems, PBS was trying to take full credit for the film. Now, it appears, it’s trying to take none. The question is, why?

BBC broadcast it in UK

The BBC says the film was made “for BBC and WGBH/Frontline.”

While Frontline had canceled its broadcast to Americans, BBC had screened the documentary on May 13 in England. It is now available for download from the BBC website for the next 11 months – but only if you’re in the UK. People elsewhere, including in the United States, can’t view it.

Since the US gives Israel over $10 million per day, it’s extremely important that Americans be well informed on Israel’s actions. Accordingly, our nonprofit organization, If Americans Knew, works to inform Americans fully on Israel-Palestine. We particularly focus on information largely omitted by U.S. media.

As part of this mission, we have worked to make the documentary’s information available to Americans through a video we created.

One Day in Gaza contains much profoundly powerful footage of the type that caused Americans to change US policies in Vietnam. Among other things, it shows footage of Israeli snipers intentionally shooting unarmed individuals in the head, including a young teenaged girl.

At the same time, however, the film leaves out some important information and often tilts toward the Israeli narrative. I detail this in my article, and we added some of it to our video, with a link to the article.

We uploaded this video to YouTube and Vimeo. It didn’t last long.

A few hours before Johnston sent her email to me claiming the film is not a Frontline documentary and saying: “It is a BBC documentary,” BBC had filed a copyright violation claim against our video.

Both YouTube and Vimeo immediately removed it. (BBC has not contacted us about our video.)

Americans have the right to see it

We feel that we have the right under U.S. Fair Use law – and the obligation, under our mission statement – to post this video. People in the UK can see this footage; we feel that Americans, whose tax money funds PBS as well as Israel, also have the right to see it.

The very first Senate bill of 2019 proposes to send Israel a minimum of $38 billion over the next 10 years. That is approximately $23,000 per Israeli family of four, and works out to over $7,000 per minute. In addition, US wars promoted by Israel partisans have cost the U.S. trillions of dollars.

Surveys show that most Americans already think we give Israel too much money. If Americans see this documentary, despite its sometimes pronounced pro-Israel spin, it’s entirely possible that many Americans will demand that politicians stop sending our tax money to Israel.

In fact, Frontline reports that its shows have sometimes “spurred both policy and social change.”

Perhaps that’s why whoever is in in charge at PBS/Frontline pulled the show. This action has prevented Frontline’s 4.6 million viewers around the United States from seeing the documentary’s revealing footage on their TVs.

However, our video is now back online.

UPDATE: We’ve just learned that our video is also now on archive.org.

Americans who dislike censorship and who feel we have the right and the need to be fully informed on Israel-Palestine, can download the video from there, at least for now, and share it with others.

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Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

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Top photo is a screenshot from the video “Frontline: One Day in Gaza – Preview” posted on the Mountain Lake PBS website and on its YouTube channel.

 RELATED:

View the Frontline Documentary on Gaza that PBS pulled – This includes important information that the film omitted

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RELATED:

• Great Return March (video)
• Youngsters “disabled for life” by Israel’s shoot-to-cripple policy in Gaza
• Gaza Women’s March – News Roundup
• Video screened at UN Human Rights Council meeting February 28 2019
• UN Video of Teenagers Shot By Israeli Snipers in Gaza
• MASSACRE IN GAZA (caution: highly disturbing footage)
• ANOTHER MASSACRE IN GAZA