“I must have seen at least five thousand bodies,” said Zakaria, aged 11, in Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone (BBC2). In different circumstances, this might be dismissed as youthful exaggeration. But this is Gaza and Zakaria is by no means your average child.
This exceptional documentary offered a fresh perspective because it was filmed largely through the eyes of three Gazan children, with two London-based producers directing two cameramen on the ground, remotely, over nine months.
It showed how Zakaria “volunteers” (and also lives) at the Al-Aqsa hospital carrying casualties, dead and alive, on stretchers, hosing the blood out of ambulances, sleeping in the CT scan room when he isn’t bedding down in the press tent or an ambulance.
He was an endearing old soul in a child’s body; a total character. He was referred to as a “hustler” and you got the sense that the hospital was getting his services whether it wanted them or not. He was being mentored by a senior paramedic and gave any money he made to his family. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day they make a film about him.
His father, who was a school principal before the war, said that his son used to be a troublemaker. “Now I feel he is 40 years old.” One of my recurring thoughts after watching those scenes of screaming children running away from explosions or witnessing sheer horror — (“I saw a man with his guts hanging out of his stomach,” said one; another pointed to where a “girl’s head” was found) — was what will be the psychological legacy? Even if the fighting stops permanently and Gaza is rebuilt, how will this trauma visited on so many young, developing brains play out in the future?
Abdullah, 13, was the film’s narrator with an impressive command of English tinged with an American accent, doubtless due to the British-run school he had been attending before the horrendous events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage.
As with the two others, he demonstrated the sheer resilience of children as he led cameras around the ruins and narrated the aftermath of strikes on a safe camp. He said the Israeli army claimed it was to target three senior Hamas militants involved in the October 7 attack.
As children gathered around the crater describing how they had seen body parts (19 people, we were told, were killed. All statistics were from the Hamas-run health ministry) one boy said: “Even for one or two is it right to kill so many?” There was one scene in which a man appeared to be burning alive that I will never forget.
But this was not primarily a documentary about politics, it was more about survival. Renad, a hugely charismatic, smiley little girl of ten who now has a million followers online thanks to the cookery videos she made on the roof of her home, explosions rumbling in the distance, said creating this content helped to relieve her depression.
Her way to cope seemed to be to laugh, even at the danger around her. If she takes too long to post a new video, her followers get worried. “They think I got killed,” she said, cheerfully.
There was a sobering moment when a 24-year-old woman referred to the “celebrations” the day Hamas attacked Israel. “If we had known this would happen to us no one would have celebrated,” she said.
“Do you like Hamas?” young Zakaria was asked. “No, because they started the war … They caused all this misery,” he said. How instructive it would be to do a sort of 7 Up and meet these three children again in a few years.
★★★★☆
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