It starts by the narrator “saying this is the scene in Camp Cinema; me and my friend Imad decided to bring a bit of color into the life of children and make a cinema in the refugee camp after 120 days of Israeli aggression and electricity blackout on the whole of the Gaza Strip.
Because of the fact that there is no television, we’ve decided to launch a cinema in one of the tents and call it Camp Cinema.”
He then showed the kids clapping happily, all gathering around a TV screen with the video clip turning on him while spraying the name of the cinema in black on the tent to tell other children to come and watch.
As the screen lit up everyone cheered. The narrator is then pictured with the happy children. “This is first time the children saw a television ever since 7th October. We decided on this idea for the thousands of children who became displaced,” over the last four months.
Children were shown enjoying the colorful screen full of cartoon characters. One little girl said she saw the television one week before by a friend of her brother who brought chocolates with him but he was quickly martyred, she added.
Chaos then followed with the children moving about erratically and in a hurry. The narrator told them not to be afraid as they shuffled out of the tent. There was sound of bombing thuds. The narrator then said: “After the continual targeting and when the sounds become nearer the cinema, the kids felt afraid and runway because the attacks were intense.
We then couldn’t continue and really can’t continue with the cinema because of the daily Israeli targeting of the areas that were near this cinema tent and we had to drop the idea.”
The video clip made by Mashhad Media (@almashhad.com) ends with children leaving the tent with someone above ruining their watching.
One writes on the X platform: “This is a beautiful initiative and do you think the [Israeli] occupation would leave our children alone? But regardless Camp Cinema for the children of Gaza is injecting a breather about the meaning of life even if it’s only for an hour or so.”
Mindboggling
Figures are mindboggling and moving upwards alarmingly. The numbers of children killed during this 4-month war on Gaza stands at 11,500 out of a total of 27,100 people who were slaughtered up till now. Disturbing figures by UNICEF also show that 17,000 children have been left either unaccompanied and/or separated from their families which is one percent of the 1.7 million displaced people of Gaza whose population stands at around 2.3 million people.
Dr Marwan Asmar is a writer based in Amman, Jordan.
