Rating: 
Summary: The Arabs created Gaza as an permanent excuse to kill Jews
Review: Shortly after the end of the 1967 war, C.L. Sulzberger filed a report for the New York Times from Cairo after visiting the "City of the Dead". A vast cemetary, which long ago - since Cairo is as crowded as Calcutta - the poorest of the urban poor moved into this cemetary and began living there. Creating homes for themselves, huts among the graves, the tombs and mausoleums.And it is a place, a slum, where a family with a dozen kids is not unusual. Where the parents might choose one of them to chop off the boy's hand in order to make him a more pitiable beggar. To bring in more coins to the family to buy food. Sort of a variation on a theme. Of the story of Muhammad al-Dura, who they shot in order to make of themselves a more pitiable people. The entire Gaza strip, in fact, is an Arab creation. Which the sole purpose was to keep the refugees of '48 in their misery in order to always justify murdering Jews and striving to destroy our freedom and our new tiny state - a state smaller than Togo in West Africa. The Arabs at anytime in the last 55 years have had the money, and the space to evacuate everyone of those refugees and resettle them in better living conditions - let them restart their lives. Indeed in 1949 when the ceasefire lines were signed off on, what many people expected was for the countries that had driven armies over hundreds of miles of desert in order to attack Israel would as a matter of course, of simple human decency, assume the responsibility for the refugees from the war they had started and lost. But, no. To have done that would have meant admitting to their own aggression. In their eyes every refugee was the result of the "root cause" - the wicked Zionists whose political movement was the "root cause" of their suffering. "But for Zionism there would have been no war and no refugees." So for more than a half century the Arab League has stated that Israel is the one, and the UN, are the bodies that have to take care of these people. That's why UNRWA was created to look after the Arab refugees the Arabs refused to contribute to. Like all those little children in the City of the Dead who've had their hands chopped off by their parents in order to make them more successful at begging. The Arabs created Gaza.
Rating: 
Summary: A burning, painful and illuminating film
Review: I saw this serious and painful documentary at UCLA recently and left the screening shaken and speechless. Watching this film was the first time I really had the feeling that I could see the Palestinian situation in an honest, uncensored way. I found this film deeply moving, frightening -- an endictment of Israeli occupation and a portrait of a people yearning for freedom. Everyone should see this.
Rating:
Summary: A Must See - Brilliant
Review: Gaza Strip tells the real story Israel does not want told. The Palestinians are brualized and terrorized and humiliated daily by Israeli military. This film documents this brutality and let's the world see all the inhumanity dumped on one group of suffering people. Gaza Strip is a Middle Eastern history lesson. This great film enabled me to FINALLY put all the missing pieces together and understand why there is such Arab anger directed towards the United States who directly bought all the weapons used by Israel on Palestinian people. Gaza Strip will open your eyes to the truth. We can use this truth to make the world a safer place for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: This is a must-see film
Review: If you want to understand the Palestinian/Israeli conflict you have to understand both sides. In the United States, we are constantly being bombarded with the Israeli position, and shown detailed coverage of the attacks on Israelis. Most of us know little or nothing about what life is like for the Palestinians on the other side of the fence. This film goes miles toward filling that void. I think it is the first film of its kind I have ever seen -- a verite documentary film set inside the Gaza Strip, narrated by real people telling their stories. The camera sometimes seems like it's just floating on its own, or inside the heads of the protagonists. This is a great doc, and well made. It's not simple, either -- it draws on layers of visual and audio meaning to build a portrait of the Palestinian people that is more intimate than we ever get to see. Get this film and show it to your friends!
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Summary: Powerful because it's HONEST
Review: This is a moving story that shows the human face of one of modern history's longest and bitter conflicts. Powerful because it's HONEST!!!
Rating:
Summary: The most revealing look inside you can find
Review: I saw this film when it was showing at the Cinema Village theater in NYC last fall. It wasn't just that "Gaza Strip" is a strong documentary about Palestinians inside the Occupied Territories -- it was that this is the *only* real presentation of Palestinians' daily lives that I have *ever* seen in a movie theater. I think this says quite a bit about the difficulty of making a film about this subject and getting it released. As some of the reviews here demonstrate, there are lots of people out there committed to silencing any Palestinian voice and hiding any picture of what is taking place away from the press offices in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. This film shows the face of military occupation, ugly, brutal and disturbing. This film lets Palestinians talk, say what they think -- there is no English narration in this film; the whole documentary is narrated by interviews in Arabic with Palestinians. This film shows material that clearly can never be shown in our mainstream media. And it is gripping. I was literally holding on to the arms of my seat as I watched this documentary, feeling a terrible, sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach as I realized how little we are allowed to see of what is really happening in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the awful forbidden truth. Maybe this documentary doesn't show everything -- what documenary does? It also doesn't pretend to show everything. It is very clearly documenting a side of this conflict we don't normally see: that of Palestinian non-combatant civilians. And that is what makes it a valuable film. It's not about Hamas, it's not about Islamic Jihad. It's about the majority of Palestinians -- the ones living with 9 siblings in a Gaza slum, the ones running from the fighting and bulldozers, the Palestinians dodging bullets on their way home from school. This will not be the only film you should ever see when trying to understand the Middle East conflict -- but it should definitely be one of them. It is a document of Palestinian reality that has no equal. Some reviewers have said this film is full of lies. I don't know exactly what they're talking about -- though they seem to have more than a touch of extreme zionist politics behind their analysis. For my part, when I watched this film I felt as if I were seeing something honest and direct about this conflict for the first time in my life. The straight-on style of the film almost seems to look out of the eyes of its subjects. You can almost feel what it's like to be there in the Gaza Strip, a result of the non-glossy detail, the minimal music and thematic flow of scenes. This is daring documentary in many ways -- both politically and stylistically. It seems to have roots in French New Wave and radical films like The Battle of Algiers. But it also has its feet on the ground as a document, it takes enough time to flesh out incidents without being didactic. The aesthetic considerations Longley takes are kind of incredible, considering he's filming under gunfire much of the time. I can't imagine anyone making another film quite like this under such difficult circumstances. Watch it.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible, low quality film that is full of lies
Review: This has to be a joke. People are actually buying this ? This was the WORST documentary ever made. PBS, Sundance, IFC, HBO and several other independent networks REJECTED this film because it lacked objectivity and was basically full of lies and myths. The continuity throughout the film was terrible, with few subtitles to explain all the yelling in Arabic that went on throughout the movie. The people behind the making and marketing of this movie have their own agenda, and that is to portray Israel as the bad guy. We have access to media that shows both sides of the story, including the recent terrorist attack by Palestinians that killed 3 Americans. Gaza is a land filled with hatred. In schools children are taught to become suicide murderers and sing songs about murdering Jewish people in Jerusalem. The Filmmaker didn't allow any of this to be shown in the movie so he could portray a false picture of life in Gaza Strip. Please don't waste your money on this, it's only hateful propaganda.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible, full of hatred and bigotry
Review: I saw this bad movie at a campus theatre as it was put on by the biased Middle East Studies Association. I was appalled by the lack of truth in this "documentary". It is simply a movie that pushes the myths of the Arab street into the free world that has not been corrupted by Islamic dictatorships. The editing in this movie was terrible, cutting to scenes of tanks rolling down the street shot on one night, to terrorists dressed in military fatigues being wheeled into a hospital on another day. The lack of subtitles makes it difficult to keep up with what is going on. I guess the director chose not to use the subttles since the only thing these people are saying is "Death to the Jews". And reviewers here call Israelis racist? Don't listen to the other reviewers, the Israelis do not "occupy" 30% of Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority has all power over the people living in Gaza. This is why they live in such filth and poverty. Arafat has stolen over $800 million from refugees and buys weapons that keep the Palestinians under military rule. Blame Arafat and the PA for the ills of Palestinian society, not Israel.
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Summary: TO DEBUNK THE RADICAL FROM SANTA BARBARA
Review: The reviewer from Santa Barbara who questions the authenticity of this documentary gives him or herself away with the complaint that no Jewish settlers were interviewed for the film. The reviewer from Santa Barbars states, factually, that "thousands of Jews live in Gaza"---to which I say *exactly!*, you fool, there are settlements on the best land (easiest access to water from acquifer) which house a few thousand Jews in luxury and are consuming a full 30% of a small parcel of land that is legally the property of the Palestinian state, which squeezes over a million into the other 70% of this small parcel. Apartheid is alive and well and in violation of UN resolutions and the 4th Geneva Convention in the occupied territories, and this film shows it how it is.
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Summary: I will ignore the zionist in the previous post
Review: I plan to view this film in the next few days. Since it got so many stars from others i assume it is a good movie to watch. I will come back and update my post.
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