Shamaly, who hid wounded in his house for four days, was fortunate. His 23-year-old cousin, Salem Shamaly, who led a group of volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement to dig bodies out of the ruins in Shuja'iyya, was not.
"On the offensive's 14th day, July 20th, 2014, four other activists and I went to the Shuja'iyya neighborhood, which Israel had bombed for days, to accompany rescue teams in the rubble during the two-hour cease-fire," Joe Catron, one of the members of the International Solidarity Movement rescue team, says in the film. "A young Palestinian, whose name we later learned was Salem Shamaly, asked us to go with him to his house, where he hoped to find his family. It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time we thought the cease-fire would make it safe.
"As we crossed an alley with a clear line of sight to Israeli positions by the separation barrier, a gunshot from their direction struck the ground between us. We scattered into two groups, sheltered behind buildings on either side. After a pause, Salem stepped into the alley, hoping to lead his group to our side, but was struck by another bullet. He fell to the ground."
The film shows Shamaly wounded on the ground, barely able to move and crying out in pain.
"As he lay on his back, two more rounds hit him," Catron continued. "He stopped moving. The gunfire kept us from reaching him. The Israeli artillery began flying overhead and striking the buildings behind us. We were forced to retreat, leaving him. We only learned his name two days later, when his mother, father, sister and cousin recognized him in a video I had tweeted."
"We couldn't retrieve his body for seven days," Um Salem, the mother, says in the film. "His body was in the sun for seven days."
Waseem Shamaly, Salem's brother, who appears to be about 8 years old, is shown with his eyes swollen from crying. "He would take care of us, like our father," the boy says. "Even at night, he would get us whatever we wanted. He used to buy us everything. Whatever we wished for, he would buy it. There was nothing he wouldn't buy for us. He used to take us to hang out. He'd take us out with him just to kill our boredom a little."
Waseem wipes his eyes.
"Now he is gone," he continues weakly. "There is nobody to take us out and buy us treats."
"This boy hasn't been able to handle losing his brother," says the father, Khalil Shamaly. "He couldn't handle the news, seeing the way his brother died. He is in shock. It gets to the point where he goes lifeless. He collapses. When I pick him up he tells me his dying wishes. His dying wishes! As if he is leaving us. He is so young. But he gives us his dying wishes. If it weren't for God's mercy, I would have lost him too."
"Destroyed cities and shattered homes can be rebuilt if the resources are there," Blumenthal says. "But what about the survivors? How can they heal the scars imposed on their psyches? The youth of Gaza has grown up through three wars, each more devastating than the last. At least 90 percent of adolescents in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. With mental health services pushed to the brink, these unseen scars may never heal."
The film turns to the town of Khuza'a, a farming community with 20,000 people, which was systematically blown up by Israel after three Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting with the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas government in Gaza. The film shows a video from inside an Israeli tank as soldiers wait for explosives to bring down buildings in the town, including the mosque. When the explosions occur, the Israeli soldiers cheer and shout, "Long live the state of Israel!"
"We were shocked to see so many bodies in the streets," Ahmed Awwad, a volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent, says in the film about Khuza'a. "Many were decomposing. We wanted to deal with it, but we didn't know how. Once, when the Israelis let us in with our ambulance, we found about 10 corpses from different areas, scattered. As you approached a body, of course there is the odor, and there are worms. Hold it like this, and flesh comes off. Lift an arm and it pulls right off. We didn't know what to do. There was nothing we could do. We had to stop. It would have been easier just to bury them. But we figured families would want the bodies. Bulldozers eventually loaded the bodies in trucks. We couldn't pick up these bodies on our own. Most were executions, like an old lady at her front door. There was a young man, another man, and a little kid. The scenes, to be honest, were very ugly."
The Rjeila family, including 16-year-old Ghadeer, who was physically disabled, attempts to escape the shelling. As a brother frantically pushes Ghadeer in her wheelchair (the scene, like several others in the film, is reconstructed through animation), the Israelis open fire. The brother is wounded. Ghadeer is killed.
The camera pans slowly through demolished houses containing blackened human remains. Walls and floors are smeared with blood.
Ahmed Awwad, a Palestinian Red Crescent volunteer, describes what happened after he and other volunteers finally receive permission from Israeli forces to retrieve bodies from Khuza'a. They find a man tied to a tree and shot in both legs. One of the volunteers, Mohammed al-Abadla, gets out of a vehicle and approaches the tree. When he switches on his flashlight, which the Israelis had instructed him to do, he is shot in heart and killed.
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