, explores Palestinian loss, trauma and the fight for justice over decades of life under Israeli occupation. We speak with two people featured in the film: Ashira Darwish, a Palestinian journalist and therapist, and Dr. Gabor Maté, an acclaimed Hungarian Canadian physician whose work focuses on addiction and trauma.
But this is the reality every single march in Jerusalem, where the Israelis take over the streets, and they harass, terrorize the population there. And they are, of course, not friendly to the journalists, because they don’t want anyone filming them as they chant “Death to the Arabs” and as they attack the Palestinians. Every day on this day, for a Jerusalemite like me, I would walk through the streets of Jerusalem just to say that “we are here, and this is our right to be here.
And that was my first experience of being held down and attacked by the soldiers. And I was on the floor, and the cameras were flashing. And they were beating me with sticks on my knees, trying to break my knees. And I would just remember waking up and closing my eyes and just not understanding why the cameras are just taking pictures of me. And I was only 16 when I was taken. And I knew — I was shouting when I got into the Jeep, and then the other activists were like, “Calm down.
There was a study done in 2005 reporting many studies done on the mental health of Palestinian children. And a large percentage of them, long before Hamas became the ruling government in Gaza, a large percentage of Palestinian and Gazan children were suffering symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, which included nightmares, aggression towards the parents, bedwetting.