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: "Eid Mubarak" - Streaming on PBS

Eid Mubarak

"A privileged six-year-old Pakistani girl embarks on a mission to save her beloved pet goat from being eaten on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Azha, only to learn the meaning of sacrifice."

You can watch it at https://www.pbs.org/video/eid-mubarak-iobidg/ through July 14, 2026. 

Note: I disapprove of the visual depiction of Ibrahim & Ismail غليهما السلام in the film. The narration of the sacrifice differs in important ways from my understanding of what Allah عز و جل says in the Quran about it. Does this variant exists in Pakistan or other countries? Possibly.

Nevertheless, the film is good in depicting a child wrestling with what she sees as an immoral action her family is committing.

"Shakespeare through Islamic Worlds" by Ambareen Dadabhoy

Please use this discount code for 20% off: EFLY01. https://t.co/fZvAC9cPaH

— Ambereen Dadabhoy 🪬 (@DrDadabhoy) February 11, 2024

In case you have trouble with the Twitter embeds above, here's the link to Professor Ambareen's blog entry describing her book and here's the link to order the book from the publisher. Use the discount code EFLY01.

I have not read the book.

The Failed Academic Who Became a War Propagandist: A Minor Character in Leo Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina"

A Russian soldier laughing at an Ottoman Turk. Before being pitted against each other in WWI, bad blood between Russia and Turkey dated back to the 16th century. source

All quotes are from Book 8 of Constance Garnett's translation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on Project Gutenberg. Go read Book 8, Chapter 1, and then return to this page. The character on whom this article focuses is Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, the half-brother of Konstantin Dmitrievitch Levin, at whose estate Sergey Ivanovitch will later in the Book spend some time and from which more quotations will be drawn.

So Sergey Ivanovitch spent years writing a book which he expected "would be sure to make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in the scientific world." Instead, after indifference and a devastatingly effective hostile review, "Sergey Ivanovitch saw that his six years’ task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace."

Sergy Ivanovitch turned his talents and energies into mobilizing Russian support for Slavic peoples revolting against the Ottoman Empire, in particular, the Serbs and Montenegrins.

Support Local Independent Media Like Atlanta's "285 South" by Sophia Qureshi

R to L: Robert Redford & Dustin Hoffman
 in "All the President's Men (1976)"

How many great movies portray journalists, editors and publishers as heroic bulwarks against the corruption of the powerful? Did your high school social studies teacher tell you that the news media were the Fourth Estate, nearly equal in power to each of the three branches of the United States government?