this is an example of one of the many fissures they are from elderly to young to children to the the woman that kevin mentioned so another thing aspect of the difficulty of fishing is not only the limitations but the fact that the israeli navy routinely abducts fishers so they will either come into palestinian what well they're already in palestinian waters but they'll come into their own in four six mile limit and abduct fischer's or they'll they'll point their machine guns at the fishers and say roe if they happen to be on the hosack which is like a surfboard with with paddles or they'll say motor out and then they'll say you're beyond your limit and they will tell the fishers to strip down to their underwear dive into the sea and swim or tread water for about twenty or thirty minutes until they're exhausted and frozen then they they are hauled aboard the israeli gunboat blindfolded handcuffed and taken to detention where they're interrogated and guess what they're not interrogated about the so called fishing limits and their fishing activities they're interrogated about who they know who their brothers work for who their neighbors who work for does do they know anyone in hamas so it's obviously a policy of collective punishment and information gathering there they are attempted the israeli months or even in year and if and when they both are returned they're inevitably stripped of any equipment often damaged and the fishers themselves have to pay for the return of the boat for the travel of these supposed to co this is one of the last two years the other one fished our boat builders in gaza and when i talked with them they told me nobody wants to apprentice their sons or the nephews nobody wants to apprentice because fishing has gotten to be so hard in g because people are so poor and unemployment is so high that they can't afford to print apprentice for six or seven years they need work and money now so when these two men pass on in less the trade finds some other apprentices the whole  building trade will also die and this is very important because this is a part of gaza's culture and history so now i'll move on to address the siege the blockade on gaza which has been enforced since two thousand and seven and in fact i usually say two thousand and six when hamas was democratically elected because at that point most governments cut ties with gaza but in two thousand and seven the israeli authorities inforced a very severe closure of borders and total ban on exports limited imports and this all of this included including limiting things like fuel and cooking gas and things will get on to a second all this has caused gross unemployment and poverty above what is already the huge manufactured poverty in the gaza strip so you have more children doing any sort of work to contribute to their family's income so in this case this child is gathering sand which will then be used in construction and this one is gathering stones also for construction this one recyclables so construction materials are among the most banned items and they're currently still banned there was a period of so called easing when construction materials were allowed in in limited amounts t borders for the u n and other n g o s project projects sorry but as of october israel has again completely banned the entrance of any construction materials put it on hold all of the un's school in other rehabilitation projects palestinians in gaza did important cement and other materials through the tunnels from egypt so the tunnels many people refer to as the lifeline and they truly are or i should say were because there were ninety percent destroyed now there were hundred some people say over a thousand tunnels running from gaza to egypt and through these tunnels came everything that israel banned in the height of the years of banned items israel was banning everything but forty items so they were banning diapers they were banning  baby formula fertilizer seethes fishing equipment anything you can imagine in need for your own life so the tunnels are a necessity for palestinians to actually live in two thousand and six the israeli army bombed gaza's only power plant and that plant provided one third of gaza's electricity palestinians bought electricity from israel and from egypt and after the bombing of their plant palestinians in gaza have not been able to rehabilitate the plant enough to provide enough electricity for their needs so i've lived in gaza over the years and on a good day the power is out for eight hours and you get used to it you learn to accommodate when the car is going to be on and off and hope that your food doesn't go bad or in the summer you swelter but you live with it but the hospital suffer in anything the sewage in sanitation plants suffer and water stations suffer anything that is critically dependent on electricity suffers at present and gaza suffers up to eighteen hours a day of power outages so recently if you've seen any news about gaza you might have heard that the sewage some sewage pools in gaza city have overflowed and ha images of the tunnels so the tunnels as i mentioned are countless and numerous and they are both side by side and over top of one another so in this case you can see two tunnels and you can also see some wiring and the wiring i used for the lighting and also for the winches which bring things through the tunnels but the wiring is often faulty and if you touch it you get electrocuted and many palestinians have been killed this way many more have been killed by tunnel collapse or by flooding through by the egyptians or by israeli bombing and i believe there's no statistic yet i haven't found an accurate statistic for deaths in the tunnels but i believe it's well over two hundred thirty perhaps two hundred fifty in the past seven years and the people that are working in the tunnels are not sea so of course nobody wants to pump sewage into the sea but because palestinians haven't been allowed to maintain their sewage infrastructure lines and expand their sewage well in pools they have no option if they don't want the sewage to overflow into their towns they have no option to to pump it into the sea in two thousand and seven this sewage pulling pool in big lie here in northern gaza did overflow and flooded the bedouin village below and for people drowned including this child so another critical issue is water in gaza ninety five percent is undrinkable according to w h o standards this is another preventable disaster this is another manufactured disaster  if palestinians had access to clean drinking water they would not be over extracting the sole aka for and if water was allowed to flow from the west bank and other parts of palestine through gaza to the sea as it did until it was blocked by israeli dams and wells than aga for would not be as over extracted as it is now but at present the un issued a report last year saying by two thousand and sixteen the arc of her would not be usable and by two thousand and twenty it would be destroyed and gaza itself through all the other problems would be unlivable so although the water is undrinkable highly contaminated with sewage and with nitrates and other things a large majority of people in  are actually using it for bathing and drinking because they can't afford to buy the drinking water sold by israel so you have an increase in water borne diseases these are some of the best strawberries ever ever tasted gaza is known for its citrus but also it has wonderful strawberries that it used to export to european markets and it has a nice because the growing season in gaza is from november to february and so it being a farm only they had they exported to europe they exported citrus even as far as north america but as i mentioned exports have been completely banned with the exception of a token truck or two now and then for propaganda purposes so with the ban of exports like these fruits or this furniture which the makers when i went to this trade show they told me some of this french was actually destined for american markets with the ban on this is obviously a huge impact on gaza's economy and therefore on the poverty level in gaza this is some embroidery that women in gaza are doing to contribute to their family's incomes but again they don't really have a venue for selling the importer yet because they can't get it out of gaza's borders because it's so dangerous to israel  and i should mention just that eighty percent of the population is dependent on food aid this is completely not a historic thing it's not a necessary thing it's a manufactured thing if gaza's borders were opened and of gaza had a viable economy and farmers and fishers were able to work as they did then there would be local produce local fish on the markets for a very cheap price instead of the imported israeli goods and also palestinians would have more work in their economy would be a lot better just going to play for you a little sound so you get the sense of what it sounds to be like under drones summer twenty seventh two thousand and eight the israeli army attacked all across gaza strip hitting police stations throughout the whole strip simultaneously killing hundreds in the first day i happened to be near the abbas clee station in gaza city so i went there and started to document and then i went to schieffer hospital to see who the injured w wasn't going to survive and as soon as the patient did pass away he'd be cleared of the cot and room would be made for the next patient because there wasn't enough room this was a surprise attack the schieffer hospital i c u was not equipped for the hundreds of people that were coming in and people were lying and waiting and floors waiting for space in the i c u let alone minor treatment so prior to the attacks the israeli authorities had closed the borders meaning that for about three weeks before the attacks people weren't allowed in or out of gaza including foreign journalist so we felt there were about seven of us and we felt it was important to do what we could to document what israel was doing in gaza because obviously the israeli narrative was going to be different to using such words as targeted attacks or targeting terrorists on the occasions but after the first week and after two medics had been killed and many more injured we decided to accompany medics in their ambulances both to try to ensure them some degree of protection and also to see who it was these terrorists were that were being attacked on the first night of the land invasion  shelling was so intense around the red crescent station in northeastern gaza that the bombs were coming quite close to it and we had to evacuate by early morning when we later returned at the end of the attacks we found the station had been hit multiple times by bombs and by machine gun jabalya this is one example of a strategic attack that of course had collateral damage so when you hit whether it's a police station or hospital or kindergarten which the israeli army did or a mosque you're also going to mean or kill the neighboring houses because everything in such a small space is very tightly billed close together so in this case when they bombed the mosque they did obviously damage or destroyed neighboring homes and killed neighboring people including the five girls that were sleeping in this room from the pollution of family the israeli army used chemical weapons in gaza this is well known although the corporate media doesn't really talk about that in this case the army bombed just beside the fucker school which was a un school in which people were taking sanctuary these are people that had fled their homes in northern and eastern in northwestern gaza because the israeli land invasion had occupied those areas so they had fled or else they were under heavy bombardment so the israeli army had the cordon it's for all these un schools yet they proceeded to bomb right next to the school raining white phosphorus down on the people inside killing forty four people with this brutal chemical i went to schieffer again and i went to the burns unit and talked with the doctor there and met a family not that had not even been at the school but they were in another air area me they were in alabama in northwestern gaza and their home was bombed it was sh repeatedly including with white phosphorus so i'm sorry some of these photos are difficult to see but i feel like i should show them to honor the people that have been victimized so this woman heard her say the daughter was killed by this white phosphorous bomb and she herself was badly injured as was her daughter in law who later died of her injuries and the daughter in law's daughter who survived but is badly mutilated and the baby who did not survive and the found that baby said in all his twenty years of medical work in gaza this is the most horrific thing he'd ever seen this is an example of white phosphorous it burns intensely and it keeps burning until it's deprived of oxygen and that means that if you are a vict hood with the white phosphorous bunches chances are nobody will be able to smother that burning and it will burn until it hits bone the medic in the middle the other was one i worked with the first night and throughout the night and this is the american high school which was bombed in the dead of the night and we went there in the dead of the night but we didn't have enough search equipment to actually find any any survivors or martyrs so we went back at first light and found the one survivor  sorry the one martyr i should say and carried him out and then i went back to gaza city to write a book report because all of gaza was blocked oh there were only a few places that had electricity so i went to the main media building wrote my report sent it out came back and learned that our of us ambulance had been hit with a dart bomb or a flechette bomb which kevin mentioned with thousands of razor sharp darts inside and our if i was standing right beside the ambulance so he was shredded and died of shock these little darts are designed to break apart on impact so when they hit a person they create multiple channels in the body which make it almost impossible to extract the fragments so in many cases when i met people later taking their testimonies i found that they still had these you can see in the road there and ironically this was the first day of the so called humanitarian ceasefire in which palestinians were supposed to have three or four hours of relative safety safety in which they could go to get food and water and the israelis promised they wouldn't attack so as to medics wearing their uniforms went to perform their duties they came under sniper fire by the israeli army who were occupying the other side the neighborhood across the road so they kind of the body and started running with it but soon had to drop the body and just ran for their lives and thankfully weren't killed but a son was injured in the leg this is one of the civil defense and kevin was talking about there at the state of their fire trucks so here is somebody that was also injured and lost his leg in the line of duty rescue work during the attacks and this is another amazing medic who has been injured multiple times also injured again during this last during the two thousand and nine attacks and the medical center that i said that we evacuated so many ambulances were completely destroyed hospitals were attacked including the other could the hospital which was hit by white phosphorous and during that time we were called to tell kids to the evacuated people because  israeli army was surrounding the hospital it was being bombed and as people tried to enter the hospital they were coming under israeli army's sniper fire so it was a miracle we were able to actually get people out of the hospital and to schieffer hospital which is already overcrowded and impossible situation this hospital here in the photo is a rehabilitation hospital in which there are about seventy people who are mostly invalid and not able to move on their own and it came under heavy shelling including also with white phosphorous and some of the carnage of the homes in the aftermath of the two thousand and nine attacks so many of the homes were taken down by of sixteen's or drums but also homes were taken down by explosives put in structural parts meaning that the israelis  only just so called attacked terrorist locations but they also brought down numerous homes in the buffer area in the border area to clear out the border area part of their policy of rendering that area desolate and absent of people this is one of many outdoor prisons that were formed to bulldoze in land and men were taken usually men were taken and stripped and held there for days on end and interrogated and some of them were in and evidently taken to israeli prisons so on the first day of the ceasefire the israeli army honored the ceasefire by continuing to bomb gaza and by shooting a young boy in his head i don't think he made it you can see the bullet in the skull there and as i went through taking testimonies and documenting the horrible aftermath of the two thousand and nine attacks i found nasty hate graffiti that israeli army had left in homes they occupied so if we missed one house will come back to get you the next time and it will hurt more next time that particular one was actually left in the house of the family that came under white phosphorous shelling with a baby was killed i also found the homes were trashed as is normal when the israeli army occupies them and also  excrement was all over the place and cupboards and walls and sings etc a mother whose son was killed during the ceasefire hours by a drone attack and only days later were she and her husband able to find bits and pieces  a boy that still has a fragment of the bomb in his shoulder and boy are rendered unable to speak or think properly by his trauma and the gaza community mental health center issued a report some years ago saying ninety one percent of children in gaza suffer from mild to severe p t s d many munitions did not explode so they had to be exploded within gaza because there was no way of transporting them out so this is the mines advisory group exploding white phosphorus gaza and then a few years later it started up again in november two thousand and twelve when with a brutal unit of israeli attacks on children and a hamas leader that was actually brokering peace with the israeli army  for then another eight days the army bombed gaza relentlessly and this time i was in central gaza in a hospital documenting who were coming into the hospital so on the last day of the attacks within hours of the cease fire that had been declared it was around six pm the ceasefire was to be enforced at nine pm the bodies kept rolling in including this girl rehab who was four years old in her home a bomb outside her home and she got trapped up to the head and died at hospital and this siblings because for the last five days they don't had bread so he takes the money goes to a nearby shop but he doesn't make it to the shop and an israeli drone missile strikes him and kills him and his father here's the explosion runs out to find his son and finds a puddle of his son and later collected the bits and pieces which i believe to be a drone bomb attack but not only did the israeli army ravage gaza civilians but also the infrastructure and this is because in all the attacks they destroyed key infrastructural components like bridges or water and sanitation lines governmental buildings the stadium that kevin showed earlier meaning that in the case of this coastal bridge people that wanted to go from central or southern gaza to gaza city or the north had to take a detour through the wadi gaza where all the sewage is and here's an image this is from two thousand and eight  a sewage line that had been hit and was basically spilling sewage onto farmland and neighboring land so after the end of the two thousand and twelve attacks within a week the israeli army was shooting at farmers including this man and this m who were both on land that was deemed to be so supposedly safe according to the israeli army and kevin already showed you some dry and so i won't labor that point but these are drawings done by children and this is a boy that i met in egypt before  ever made it to gaza so he's another victim of a prior israeli attack the so called hot winter he was on his roof in jabalya camp checking out the water tank that are common to palestinian homes and as he was trying to find out what was wrong with the tank an israeli soldier sniped him in the back and he suffered since then all sorts of related injuries to his initial injuries so his life has been destroyed he's an invalid and not only that now he has kidney problems et amount of nice photos showing gaza palestinians in gaza as there is that's true life their love their incredible love their charisma their humor so i won't labor that point but i usually do like to point out that i'm a very well traveled person but i've never seen such unconditional love and such generosity as i have in palestine and as i have in my years in gaza and that you know despite that nice point in that nice image they are suffering right now they're suffering from a media blackout they're suffering from a political block oh they're suffering from power outages eighteen hours a day their life is hell and we really need to do whatever we can to challenge this because they are brothers and sisters and they as kevin said all they are asking for is a for the world to know and then for borders to open for them to have a normal life of exports of freedom of movement freedom to access health care freedom to travel even if they want to do so freedom to farm and fish without being shot at and freedom to know that their kids aren't going to die of a water borne disease or preventable malnutrition or being bombed or sniped or drone attacked so that's how and because they don't have a happy message