Letter I Wrote to My Members of Congress after Watching Documentary "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone"

I encourage you to watch the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. Then take action. Attend your local peace group meeting. Ask people to watch the documentary. Write letters to your members of Congress. Become systematic with your consumer boycott by using the Boycat app. Do something. This is a copy of the email I sent to my members.

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Subject Header: Have You Watched the Documentary, "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone?"

Last night, a group of us in Augusta, Georgia watched the BBC documentary "Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone."

You can watch it here: https://archive.org/details/gaza-how-to-survive-a-warzone_202502

The movie follows three children and some of the adults in their lives during the ongoing genocide that Israel, using USA funds and benefiting from USA political and military support, is perpetuating.

One of the children, Renad, copes by making cooking videos and posting them in social media. Another, Zakariyya, volunteered at al-Aqsa Hospital helping the paramedic Said transport the dead and wounded.

The movie ended during the period immediately following the ceasefire of January 15, 2025. The children survived, and they were extremely happy that (most of) the USA-funded Israeli attacks ended.

Of course, since then, the USA-supported Jewish supremacist state has resumed its massacres of Palestinians. I could hardly sleep last night wondering if the people from the documentary were still alive. Was Said one of the 15 medical and rescue personnel Israel summarily executed on March 23, 2025? https://apnews.com/article/gaza-medics-killed-israel-ambulances-f34b6ecc985d9127265a400bd52c72b7

I found one of Renad's social media channels. Her most recent post is dated March 13, 2025. Is she still alive?

Zakaria complained in the movie about lack of food. The Zionist colonizers have prevented the entry of supplies into Gaza since late February 2025.

And then my thoughts drift to the votes of my elected representatives in the US Congress: Senator Ossoff, Senator Warnock and Representative Rick Allen (GA-12). I ask myself, "Do they think the voters don't know that the USA-Israel killing spree continues? Do they expect people of conscience to support them just because their opponents in the next election might be 'worse'?"

I urge you to speak publicly for a ceasefire and vote for a cessation of all assistance to Israel, an end to hostilities with Yemenis enforcing international law through their blockade of Israeli shipping in the Red Sea , lifting the siege of Gaza and a resumption of funding of UNRWA.

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Note that Renad has posted again around April 15, 2025.

PBS Independent Lens "Wild Hogs and Saffron"

The website of the United States's Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) allows you to watch the short documentary film Wild Hogs and Saffron. This is the film's page at the website of the director and one of the subjects of the film, Andy Sarjahani. You can read an interview with the director about the film (archive.org).

Can person-to-person interaction promote world peace and reduce ethno-nationalist chauvanism? Can it be done "at scale" in order to prevent humanity from destroying itself? If we answer "no" to these questions, what is the alternative?

Trailer on YouTube

Support Docuseries "What Happened to Rap?" on Unjust Incarceration of Imam Jamil Al-Amin

 Trailer on Vimeo

Consider donating to support completion of the docuseries "What Happened to Rap?"

Film: "A Town Called Victoria" by Li Lu

 

"A Town Called Victoria" by Li Lu aired in 3 parts on Public Broadcasting Service's Independent Lens beginning October 13, 2023. The film has a website.

The documentary explores the aftermath of a fire which destroyed a masjid in Victoria, Texas. The region's history and politics are exlored as factors in people's actions. Lest this point get lost in my musings below, the film is well done and worth watching.

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Authorities determined the fire was intentional. After a co-conspirator came forward as a confidential informant, police arrested Marq Vincent Perez. A federal court later found him guilty and sentenced him to more than 24 years in jail.

Here's a Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice document discussing a recent appeal from Mr. Perez.

A recent local news piece discussed changes in the Muslim community of Victoria since the arson.

What do we learn watching this? We knew that the Global War on Terror, whether in the Bush the Small or Obama mode, caused individuals in the United States to target Muslims and those perceived as Muslim-adjacent as threats. 

It surprised some people that the perpetrator was a Chicano (perhaps Tejano?). I'm not sure why that's surprising. Being part of an oppressed group doesn't preclude practicing oppression (see Palestinian anti-blackness in Chicago), and many white supremacist-adjacent USA-fascist organizations have non-white participants. In addition, Hispanic as an ethic group blurs the distinctions among those who identify as white European settlers in the Americas, the descendants of enslaved Africans and the indigenous peoples of the continent. 

One Muslim in Victoria placed great hope in Beto O'Rourke's campaign for one of Texas's seats in the United States Senate. A clip shows Beto speaking to Muslims. In that speech, he suggested that the endless wars of the USA were causing problems. Was that a consistent theme for him during that campaign? Or did he only say such things in front of Muslim audiences? Why do Muslims have no home in either the Democratic or Republican parties?

What is the benefit of police and judiciary actions? On the one hand, Mr. Perez is restrained from further crime, although at great cost to the state, his children and his parents. Did his severe sentence deter others? Not likely. Do Muslims in Victoria feel safer? Probably. Do they feel satisfaction at his suffering? Maybe. Might some type of restorative justice have produced a better result? The film doesn't explore this. I again recommend Arjun Sing Sethi's American Hate: Survivors Speak Out.

It's clear to me that USA Muslims, like other non-white peoples, will continue to suffer hate crimes as USA imperial interests require demonization of targeted populations abroad. The only long-term solution is dismantling USA Empire & its twin, the domestic colonization process of racial capitalism. The Muslims in Victoria are committed practicioners of respectability politics. It works for them (somewhat), but it doesn't solve the problem, as many subsequent hate crimes have demonstrated.

A recent interview with director Li Lu is worth reading.

I continue to be inspired by my memory one of the first books I ever wrote about in this blog, Sherman Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican. I haven't read it in 20 years, so I might be misremembering it. 

Review: 36 Seconds: Portrait of a Hate Crime by Tarek Albaba

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I watched 36 Seconds: Portraity of a Hate Crime by Tarek Albaba via the NYC Film Festival, where it is available for streaming through November 26, 2023.

Recommendation: Documentary "A Stranger at the Gates," Directed by Josh Seftel

 Check out the documentary A Stranger at the Gate by Josh Seftel.

My only reservation is the pressure Muslims in the United States place on reverts to represent us. May Allah help all those in the documentary to continue on His path, especially Richard McKinney.

Recommendation: Documentary "An Act of Worship" by Nausheen Dadabhoy

Nausheen Dadabhoy's documentary An Act of Worship uses Muslim-Americans' home movies, documentary clips of newsworth events, interviews with Muslims and a board where handwritten post-it notes with events which impacted the lives of Muslim-Americans to show the forces Muslim-Americans confront living in the United States. The film is available on PBS's show POV, and it is available for free online through January 16, 2023.

Documentary: Brooklyn Inshallah

 

United States's Public Broadcasting Service promoted this documentary as part of Arab-American Heritage Month. I liked it.

Documentary: The Problem with Apu by Hari Kondabolu

I've liked Hari Kondabolu since seeing a YouTube clip (profanity warning) of why he doesn't use an accent in his comedy acts. When Roku and HBO Max finally resolved their differences, the first movie I watched was his 2017 documentary The Problem with Apu. The documentary is an excellent walk-through about the importance of representation in popular culture, a topic which I've covered in this blog's entries on TV shows, movies and documentaries. There were several points the movie made which stand out for me.

The writers on The Simpsons never considered the impact the character Apu had on actual people. When Hari was interviewing a former producer who pointed out that the show's portrayal of the evil oligarch Mr. Burns was stereotypical and Hari pointed out that one couldn't compare the positions of oligarchs and convenience store operators in society, the producer said that the only consideration in the writers' room was whether dialog was funny. Hari then points out that the only reason Apu and his accent are funny is because society is racist.

Documentary: "Border Bandits" by Kirby Warnock

Update: The full film is now available on YouTube for free! Video starts at 1:17.

Border Bandits is a documentary and dramatization of the murder of two Hispanic USA citizens, Antonio Longoria and Jesus Bazan, by the Texas Rangers in 1915 in an area of the border with Mexico near the confluence of the Pecos and Rio Grande Rivers. While USA popular culture has glorified the Texas Rangers, the documentary notes its participation in two waves of violence directed at the people in the path of white supremacist settler colonialism in that region. The first wave was in the mid-19th century, and it was directed against the Apache and Comanche indigenous nations. The second took place under cover of the Bandit War and the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, and it was conterminous with the dispossession of Hispanic landowners in favor of Anglos. The documentary places the 1915 murders in the context of this second wave of violence, where up to 5,000 Hispanics were murdered as corporate Anglo agricultural interests took over the region.

Kirby Warnock's grandfather related in an oral history project that his father, Roland Warnock, had known the two murder victims and had participated in their burial. You can read the transcript.

The documentary explores the events of that day and the subsequent lives of the participants and their descendants. As such, it is a good example of social history.

When I watched the movie, I thought of the following:

1. The importance of oral history. If you have a relationship with an elderly person, ask that person about his or her childhood and record your conversation. Or get them to talk with StoryCorps.
2. The similarities in USA warfare from the original wars the Anglo colonists waged against the indigenous nations on the Atlantic coast of North America, through the Bandit War and now the Global War on Terror. The settler colonialists took advantage of divisions or acts of violence to mobilize its military and militias to seize resources from the indigenous or colonized peoples.
3. The wholescale violence employed in these wars & ethnic cleansings resulted in some blowback as murder replaced peaceful methods of conflict resolution. Roland Warnock, the great grandfather of the film's producer, was murdered in broad daylight in front of his son, who produced the testimony which forms the basis of the film.
4. The pressing need for every parent to read Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen and review their children's social studies curricula.
5. Uncle Karl (Marx) & Uncle Friedrich (Engles) were on the money when they said that police's purpose is to preserve the ruling class's control over the means of production.

The collective Refusing to Forget published an excellent thread on Twitter about an atrocity the Texas Rangers commited in 1918.

#OTD on January 28, 1918, Texas Rangers massacred fifteen men and boys at the village of Porvenir, Texas, in what is perhaps the single most notorious and consequential event in the history of the Ranger Force. 1/ pic.twitter.com/HOAI1v7B20

— Refusing to Forget (@Refusing2Forget) January 28, 2023

Film: We Believe in Dinosaurs

The IMDB entry for the documentary film We Believe in Dinosaurs will tell you that it explores the people behind the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter Park in Kentucky. I'm telling you it is an understated cry for anti-fascist action. And if you think that's a hyperbolic statement, then you haven't been paying attention to my entries tagged fascism at this blog and at my other blog. You are Günter Grass's Social Democrat.

Documentary: "The War to Be Her" by Erin Heidenreich

 
Description on PBS.org site: "In the Taliban-controlled area of Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan, where sports for women are decried as un-Islamic and girls rarely leave their houses, young Maria Toorpakai (Instagram) defies the rules by disguising herself as a boy so she can play squash freely. As she becomes a rising star, however, her true identity is revealed, bringing constant death threats on her and her family.

"In July 2018, POV asked The War to Be Her filmmaker Erin Heidenreich what's happened since the cameras stopped rolling."

PBS created a supplemental reading list, a lesson plan and discussion guide. The film has a Facebook page.

Documentary on Ongoing Human Rights Violations in Yemen - "In Darkness" by Mwatana

New Documentary by Mwatana on arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearance by all conflict parties in Yemen. وثائقي جديد لمواطنة يسلط الضوء على الاعتقال التعسفي و الاختفاء القسري، اللذان تمارسهما كافة أطراف النزاع في اليمن.
 
Ask your Senators and Representatives to support Senate Joint Resolution 7 to end USA involvement in Yemen.

Documentary: African-American Pioneer Muslimahs in Washington, DC by Zarinah Shakir

This documentary film uses oral history to examine the lives of African-American Muslim women in Washington, DC primarily during the 1940s and 50s.



Zarinah Shakir is the producer.

I'm still looking for Part 1.

Film "Wilmington on Fire" by Christopher Everett Reveals Important Chapter in U.S. History

Next time you hear somebody say, "Lincoln freed the slaves in 1865. If black people have problems today, it's their own fault," please get them a copy of Wilmington on Fire by Christopher Everett. This 89 minute documentary describes events in 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina. There, whites, through the vehicle of the Democratic Party, militias and a sympathetic judiciary, removed from office blacks and whites uncommitted to white supremacy. Black business owners and professionals were ordered to leave with the property they could carry, and the rest of Wilmington's blacks fled into nearby swamps to avoid murderous crowds. Subsequent to these events, the North Carolina legislature passed Jim Crow legislation,which continued to restrict opportunities for its black residents. White supremacist leaders, whose statues adorn Wilmington's public spaces and for whom its main streets are named, acquired the properties of the blacks who fled and even used them to defraud shareholders of the banks they managed through fraudulent mortgages. See the movie.

The DVD and digital download of "Wilmington on Fire" are scheduled to be available for purchase on November 10, 2016 the 118th anniversary of the massacre.

Find more information on the film's website, Facebook page, Twitter account, Soundcloud and Instagram. Dennis Leroy Kangalee has a more extensive review.

Listen to music and poetry inspired by the movie.

Director and producer Christopher Everett gave an interview on North Carolina Public TV's Black Issues Forum.
 
Wilmington on Fire (trailer) from Wilmington on Fire on Vimeo.

The In the Past Lane podcast of September 29, 2018 features an interview the Margaret Mulrooney, who wrote a book on the history of Wilmington, NC in which these events play a significant role.
 

Film: Continuous Journey by Ali Kazimi

I first heard about Continuous Journey by Ali Kazimi on Democracy Now!.

The movie is a wonderful introduction to immigration and white supremacy in the settler-colonialist societies of the Americas. You can stream it from Vimeo.

Of particular interest for us today is the amicable relations between Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus in Vancouver. The majority of Indians in Vancouver and on the Komagata Maru were Sikhs, but there were Muslims and Hindus as well. The solidarity was heartening.

Film: "The Ghosts of Jeju" by Regis Tremblay

Regis Tremblay's "The Ghosts of Jeju" is an 81 minute documentary film describing the resistance of the people of Jeju Island in South Korea to the establishment of a United States naval base.

Film: Rosevelt's America by Roger Weisberg & Tod Lending

Rosevelt's America is a 25-minute documentary film about Liberian refugee Roosevelt Henderson's struggles in Chicago earning enough to support his family. During this period, his wife was attempting to leave Liberia with their newborn child to join her husband and elder children.

At a time when the United States turns away hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers from other parts of the Americas and politicians are competing with each other to make entrance of Syrian, Iraqi and Afghani refugees more difficult, this film is an important resource to educate the public.

Review: "14: Dred Scott, Wong Kim Ark & Vanessa Lopez" Directed by Anne Galisky

Updated February 26, 2017: The film is now available for streaming.

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows:

My layman's summary of this Section is that it established birthright citizenship and forbade states from depriving persons in the United States of their Federally established rights without due process.

Documentary - Kareem: Minority of One

In November 2015, HBO released a documentary, Kareem: A Minority of One, about the National Basketball Association star Kareem Abdul Jabbar. If you are a sports fan or interested in the biography of a prominent Muslim-American, you really should check this out. It even has footage of Bruce Lee, with whom Kareem had formed a friendship!

Many of Kareem's problems in his personal life, including estrangement from his parents, stemmed from his commitment to following a religious path set out for him by Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, leader of the self-described Hanafi Muslims. Only as he began to make decisions for himself did his spiritual life and relationships become as rich as his professional life.

You can follow Kareem on Twitter. He also has a website.