The recent screening of “Gaza: Journalists Under Fire” by Brave New Films, held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Monterey Peninsula in Monterey, was the first screening of its kind for the area.
The Sept. 19 event, a collaboration between many members of the community, featured a film screening, a tone poem from a local artist and a Q&A with a Palestinian journalist currently covering the conflict in Palestine.
The film explored the role of journalists in the conflict in Gaza, notably the risk they are forced to take due to repeated military attacks on the profession. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, over 170 journalists have been killed so far in the conflict.
“I might die today, tomorrow, I don’t know,” said Palestinian journalist Waja Bani Moufieh over Zoom.
But the event itself, which drew about 35 attendees, was more broadly about bringing attention to an issue that they feel is still underrepresented. A message that for journalists in Palestine is more dangerous- and important- to share than ever.
“It is our duty to show up, we have lost 300 of our own colleges trying to send our message to the world,” said Moufieh.
For the crowd in Monterey, part of that awareness is America’s own complicity in the conflict, a sentiment echoed by many guests and attendees.
“We created this event to help spread awareness, this has been going on for almost two years straight and America is complicit,” said sociology major and emcee Marina Aiwaz, “We are paying with our taxes.”
In a conflict that often polarizes, Aiwaz emphasized the need for community and empathy. “This isn’t one side vs another side, we don’t want kids to keep dying, we don’t want people to keep dying,” said Aiwaz.
Emphasizing this sense of community was the crowd, a diverse mix of members of the Monterey and Carmel community, as well as students and faculty from CSUMB..
The lobby featured food – often homecooked – brought by organizers, as well as a booth selling merchandise to send to a panelist’s family back in Gaza. Hanging around the lobby was a quilt display created by the community, on each one the names of Palestinian children who never saw their first birthday.
The film’s content, and the knowledge of the war itself, often stunned the crowd into silence or gasps of horror, but Aiwaz says that’s part of the point.
“I am very happy (with the screening),” said Aiwaz, ‘a lot of people kind of out of sight and out of mind (the conflict)- it’s hard to look at, it’s hard to see children’s bones being ripped apart- but I’m glad people still care and are still paying attention to the news.”