Regardless of being protected by worldwide regulation, not less than 175 journalists and media staff have been killed by Israel’s Occupying Forces (the IOF, also called the IDF) since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas forces killed 1,200 individuals in an assault on Israel. That is along with the deaths of “greater than 400 help staff and over 1,300 well being staff” in Gaza, not too long ago underscored by the invention of a mass grave containing 15 paramedics and rescue staff who had been murdered execution type. 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, topic of the brand new documentary movie Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Stroll, is the most recent sufferer; she and 9 members of her household have been killed simply 24 hours after studying that her movie can be screening as a part of the ACID part on the Cannes Movie Competition.
Hassouna and her household have been bombed by the Israeli navy, including to the tens of hundreds of civilians who’ve been murdered since Oct. 7. The precise quantity is not possible to establish in the intervening time, primarily on account of Israel refusing entry to Gaza and journalists being threatened and killed. The official toll of killed Palestinians is roughly 52,000, although it is doubtless that greater than 100,000 have died, whereas practically 80% of the realm has been bombed into rubble. Reporting about Hassouna’s demise, The Instances of Israel, typically thought of to be a propaganda arm of Israeli navy, wrote:
“The IDF says the strike focused a Hamas operative concerned in assaults on troopers and civilians. ‘Previous to the strike, measures have been taken to reduce the chance to civilians, together with using precision munitions, aerial surveillance, and extra intelligence,’ it says.”
Filmmaker Sepideh Farsi, whose movie focuses on Hassouna, her work, and conversations between her and Farsi, realized the information as she was in conversations with the French Embassy to carry Hassouna to Cannes for the screening of their movie. “She was such a lightweight, so gifted. Once you see the movie you’ll perceive,” Farsi informed Deadline. “I had talked to her a couple of hours earlier than to inform her that the movie was in Cannes and to ask her.” Hassouna needed to attend the screening, however needed to return to Gaza; regardless of all of the hazard and tragedy, this was her house.
She crossed / And I didn’t cross / My demise crossed me / And a pointy sniper bullet / I turned an angel / For a metropolis / Big / Larger than my desires / Larger than this metropolis / I turned poetry… — Fatima Hassouna, from the poem “The Man Who Wore Her Eyes”
Farsi continued:
“She stated, ‘I’ll come, however I’ve to return to Gaza. I don’t need to go away Gaza.’ I used to be already in contact with the French Embassy. We’d simply began the method. I used to be apprehensive about how one can get her out and again in safely. I didn’t need to have the accountability of separating her from her household. Now the entire household is useless. I’m looking for out if her dad and mom are useless however for certain Fatima and her sisters and brothers are useless. One of many sisters was pregnant. On a video name two days in the past, she confirmed me her stomach. It’s so horrible and devastating. Fatima herself had gotten engaged a couple of months in the past.”
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ACID & Cannes Will Proceed to Display ‘Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Stroll’
Fatima Hassouna
Journalists and artists shine a lightweight on what Amnesty Worldwide, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and different organizations accurately name Israel’s genocide in opposition to the Palestinian individuals, which makes them a goal for the IOF. Farsi, like many others, consider that Hassouna was in all probability focused intentionally on account of her work. This echoes the current remedy of Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal, one of many administrators behind the Oscar-winning documentary No Different Land; he was attacked by Israeli settlers earlier than being detained by Israeli police for no authorized motive.
“I used to be making an attempt to be a voice and intensify her and now I don’t know. I even really feel responsible… possibly they focused her as a result of the movie was introduced. I don’t know. We’ll by no means know.” she stated. “The Israeli military stated it bombed the home as a result of there was a Hamas officer in there, which is completely false. I do know the entire household. It’s nonsense. It’s simply so devastating.” ACID launched a press release on social media studying:
“We, filmmakers and ACID workforce members, met Fatima Hassouna whereas discovering Sepideh Farsi’s movie Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Stroll through the Cannes programming. Her smile was as magical as her tenacity: testifying, photographing Gaza, distributing meals regardless of bombs, mourning, and starvation. Her narrative reached us, we rejoiced at every of her appearances of residing information, we feared for her. Yesterday we realized with fright that an Israeli missile focused her constructing, killing Fatem and her household.”
“We had watched and programmed a film through which the life pressure of this younger girl was [on full display]. It is now not the identical movie that we’ll carry, assist, and current in all theaters, beginning with Cannes. Every considered one of us, filmmakers and spectators, have to be worthy of her mild.”
Who Was Fatima Hassouna?
Filmmaker Sepideh Farsi wrote a tribute to the photojournalist and topic of her movie for Liberation, “Fatima Hassouna: The Eyes of Gaza.” Its English translation is reprinted under in its entirety.
I haven’t got a CV / To acknowledge two eyes / Mysterious / And I consider / I wouldn’t have a narrative / One clear for a stranger / To consider it / And he believes / I’ve no bodily traits / Full / To fly / Outdoors of this gravity / And I consider. / Perhaps I am ushering in my demise / Now / Earlier than the particular person in entrance of me lifts / His sniper rifle/ And it ends / And I am performed / Silence.
These are the phrases of Fatima Hassouna (Fatem to her associates), the start of an extended poem entitled “The Man Who Wore Her Eyes.” It is a poem that smells of sulfur, smells of demise already, however can be energetic, as Fatem was, till that morning of April 16, earlier than an Israeli bomb mowed her down and her whole household, lowering their household house to mud.
She had simply turned 25. I had met her by probability from a presentation by a Palestinian good friend in Cairo, after I was desperately on the lookout for a strategy to get to Gaza, encountering blocked roads. I used to be on the lookout for a solution to a query that was each easy and complicated. How do you maintain up? How do you reside underneath the bombs? I had simply completed my movie The Mermaid, in regards to the Iraq-Iran conflict, which had a distant style of explosion shock waves, and needed to know what Gazans have been experiencing. A solution that I could not discover by means of the information, within the media. I needed to be there. However with my passport as a French girl born in Iran, the Egyptian administration and the Israeli occupation made it not possible for me to journey.
Fatima Hassouna
So, I seized the assembly with Fatem. She turned my eyes in Gaza, and I used to be a window to the world for her, at some point of these exchanges that lasted only one yr.
“What’s it prefer to be Palestinian?”
“I am pleased with it… No matter they do, they won’t be able to defeat us.
“They will not be capable of defeat you? Do you consider it? Why?”
“Sure. As a result of we’ve nothing to lose.”
That is how Fatem was. Usually, throughout this yr of each day exchanges, I went to mattress sending her a message, and awoke in the midst of the night time to examine if she had replied to my message. And when the 2 “ticks” have been there, that meant that she had not less than seen my message.
At present, after I heard the information, I initially refused to consider it, pondering it was a mistake, like a couple of months in the past, when a household of the identical identify perished in an Israeli assault. On daily basis, I assumed in regards to the Palestinians exterior Gaza, removed from their households, and puzzled how they may proceed to reside with such a degree of anguish. I typically discovered myself transfixed with concern, on the thought of shedding her due to a bomb. And for that too, I had no reply. I informed myself that I had no proper to be afraid for her, if she wasn’t afraid. I clung to her energy, to her sunny smile.
I used to be very skeptical when the ceasefire was introduced in December, however I informed myself that I had no proper to not consider in it, if the Palestinians and Fatem believed in it. I swallowed my tongue. We continued our exchanges, however with way more connection difficulties than earlier than the ceasefire, so video calls turned sophisticated, if not not possible.
However I lived with these pictures, these of our conversations, and her pictures, so highly effective, marking moments of life and demise in Gaza, at all times underneath her tender and uncompromising eye. I used to be nonetheless capable of name her the day earlier than yesterday and, miraculously, she answered. I needed to inform her that the movie was chosen by ACID, that it was going to be proven in Cannes.
“Have you learnt the Cannes Movie Competition?”
“Sure,” she stated with a giant smile. “However the place is Cannes once more?”
“Aren’t you afraid generally?”
“Afraid of what?”
“That the movie places you at risk?”
“No. After which, you already know… Nothing is everlasting on this earth. Even this conflict. It’s going to finally finish.
“Sure, it would finish in the long run.” However after what number of deaths?
She gave me a smile. It’s this smile that I maintain because the final picture of her. To that I cling in the present day. And in her phrases, after I requested her how she felt when photographing shredded our bodies after a bloodbath: “I need individuals to see the photographs of this genocide, to know what we went by means of and what we went by means of.”
“If I die, I need a loud demise,” Hassouna as soon as wrote on social media. “I do not need to be simply breaking information, or a quantity in a gaggle. I need a demise that the world will hear, an affect that may stay by means of time, and a timeless picture that can’t be buried by time or place.” Hassouna is useless, however don’t let her identify be buried.
You’ll be able to see a few of Fatima Hassouna’s work on her Instagram web page right here. You’ll be able to see a part of the trailer for Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Stroll in the beginning of the video under, through which filmmaker Sepidah Farsi speaks with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Please contemplate supporting The Palestine Kids’s Aid Fund, American Close to East Refugee Support, Medical Support for Palestinians, and the Palestinian Crimson Crescent Society.
Supply: Deadline