the Israeli army continues its bombings on several places in the Gaza Strip

The day after a very tense session in the Assembly on the situation in the Middle East, the related deputy La France insoumise Aymeric Caron broadcast on Wednesday a film on the daily lives of Gazans under strikes by the Israeli army since the attack of Hamas on October 7.

Only around fifteen deputies attended the screening, most coming from the left, a few from the majority, and two from the RN. Aymeric Caron said to himself “shocked” by this small number of parliamentarians, denouncing “a political approach which for many deputies consists of boycotting” his film.

Called “Gaza since October 7”, it aggregates in 1 hour 30 minutes seven months of images of the war in the Gaza Strip and mixes very crude scenes of death with others depicting food shortages or very great difficulties. access to healthcare in the Palestinian territory.

Most of the images were collected via social media, coming from “journalists, photographers, filmmakers, caregivers and residents of Gaza”then verified by him and his team, explains the parliamentarian, ensuring that there is no “no image of Hamas”. Others come from international media, institutions or even Israeli authorities.

With this film, Aymeric Caron challenges responding to the one compiled by the Israeli authorities on the unprecedented massacre committed by Hamas on October 7, and which was broadcast on November 14 in front of around a hundred deputies.

Some videos are difficult to support. Including countless images of children, sometimes infants, killed, seriously mutilated or suffering after bombings. Death is shown without blurring. “Our subjectivity must be expressed in a minimal way”, claims the former journalist. Other images show the desperation of families searching for loved ones under the rubble, like a crying man trying to break up enormous rubble using a simple hammer. The film also presents testimonies of everyday life, the absence of electricity in a hospital or very spartan sanitary conditions. He intersperses these scenes with martial speeches from Israeli leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu and certain ministers.

Asked about the absence of peaceful Israeli voices, Mr. Caron acknowledges that there are “important” in Israel, but admits to wanting to show those who are “dominant” and led, according to him, “to what we observe today in Gaza”.

After 90 grueling minutes, the deputies left the room in silence or commented quietly on what they saw. “The goal has been achieved, we want it to stop. The events are unbearable. The attacks of October 7 were an abomination, but we must stop punishing an entire population”estimated Mireille Clapot (related to Renaissance). “It enlightened me. Seeing suffering allows you to go beyond the numbers”commented for his part Jérôme Guedj (Socialist Party), evoking a “respectable job”.

Some elected officials claimed their absence from the screening, like Mathieu Lefèvre (Renaissance). The president of the France-Israel friendship group notably denounced a “victim competition” and the omission of the term “terrorist” to describe the Islamist movement in Aymeric Caron’s invitation email. Others told Agence France-Presse to pass because of their sensitivity and the violence of the images.

Aymeric Caron wants to put his film “available to anyone who wants to see it”. But, “an hour and a half of serialized horror, won’t that also sow the seeds of hatred? »asks Mireille Clapot.