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Fida Qishta is a young Palestinian whose video camera is witness to the demolition of her family home, and some of the scenes from the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008-09, Operation Cast Lead, central parts of her new documentary, Where Should the Birds Fly? Click here for GoDaddy deal that benefits the PBC Podcast!
Qishta gives a vivid if understated account of life in Gaza, which includes home demolitions by Israeli bulldozers that are random and unannounced. In the middle of the night, her family scrambled to help a neighbor evacuate, only to see their own home destroyed, too. She went on Palestinian fishing boats, well inside territorial waters, and captured scenes of harassment by Israeli gunboats, which shoot at the fishing boats several times in one day, at one point severing the cable to their nets in the water. During Cast Lead, she recounts how 97 Palestinians were herded by Israeli soldiers into a home that was then hit by missiles, and 21 died. She shows scenes of the chemical weapon white phosphorous rained on Gaza, and the wounds caused on a young man named Ayman. And she follows the story of Mona, who was 11 when she survived the missile strike but saw her parents and other close family members killed. This is powerful, eyewitness testimony of the apartheid imposed by Israel on the Palestinians in Gaza. Qishta is in the US for several months, and available to speak and show her film, and can be contacted via her website.