Hunger. Cold. Thirst. Disease. These are the daily realities of life in Gaza, where for the past 423 days, Israel has unleashed a genocide that will come to define our contemporary era. As Palestinians struggle to meet their daily needs, they are also faced with a battle to preserve their memories and dignity. Over the past year, journalist and filmmaker Ruwaida Amer has produced numerous powerful, heart-wrenching documentary reports for TRNN from the rubble and ruins of Gaza, shining a light on the darkest realities of Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians, even as she herself suffers from—and struggles to survive—the onslaught. Calling in from Gaza, Amer joins The Marc Steiner Show to share an honest portrait of her life and the lives of her fellow Palestinians in the midst of genocide.
Please watch and share Ruwaida Amer’s on-the-ground reports from Gaza for TRNN, including…
- “Gaza’s orphans speak: ‘I found [my family] in pieces. in pieces’“
- “Palestinians pray in the ruins of Gaza’s bombed mosques“
- “‘Look at our suffering!’: Gaza’s message to the world after a year of genocide“
- “Life for Gaza’s children during Israel’s genocide“
- “Gaza’s survivors cling to life in Khan Yunis refugee camps“
Studio Production: David Hebden
Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s good to have you all with us.
The war on Gaza since Oct. 23 has killed at least 45,000 people. No less than 10,000 have been children. Most of the hospitals have been destroyed. Patients are dying, children are dying. The infrastructure has been obliterated. 90% of the 1.2 million Gazans have been displaced. There’s been no food, people living on one meal a day — If they’re lucky. And still it goes on, as I’ve said for decades, not in our name. This must end, and we must help to end it.
Israel just appointed Yechiel Leiter, who was part of the fascist Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League, as ambassador to the United States with Trump’s approval.
Now here, the war rages on. And many of you have seen the documentaries we’ve published by the amazing and brave Ruwaida Amer, who lives in Gaza, whose home and family have been torn apart. Ruwaida is a video and documentary filmmaker, writer, and producer. You’ve seen her brave and brilliant work here at Real News, as I’ve said, and also appeared on Al Jazeera, BBC, ABC, CNN, Euronews, among others. And written for The Nation and Slate, among others.
And Ruwaida, welcome to The Marc Steiner Show. It’s good to have you with us.
Ruwaida Amer: Hi.
Marc Steiner: Thank you so much for taking the time and being with us today. Can you just tell us where you are at this moment?
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah, as you know, I’m in Gaza. And I’m in [the] South of Gaza because I live in [the] South of Gaza. It’s my home there. Also, there’s no difference between North and South Gaza, anywhere there’s a very hard situation. And everywhere, the bombing… Maybe in the beginning of the war, if you were in the South, you weren’t safe. No. I’m in the South, but I live in a very hard situation. Every time I hear the bombing, before a few minutes, I was very scared because I had a very strong bomb around my area. So the situation here is not good and not safe. It’s not better than anywhere in Gaza. All the areas are under hard bombing, the worst war in the world. So no one is safe.
Marc Steiner: And you’ve lost friends and family personally in this war.
Ruwaida Amer: I have many stories about the losing of people in my life. In general, I don’t like to talk about this because I like to keep my work private. Or if I’m working as [a] journalist, so the people know that I’m a journalist. But I have [other] work, I’m a teacher. So as a teacher, I lost my students. My students, they are in fifth grade and sixth grade, that means they’re aged nine years and 10 years.
And recently I know I lost more than two or three or four students. I lost more than them. And my student told me we have another one, we lost them. In the beginning, in the war, he was killed by a very hard bombing in the North. And all the building, a huge building structure, [collapsed] on his head, with his family. So I lost my student, I lost my friends, I lost my close friend. Also, I lost my cousin.
Also, maybe I want to be more negative, but I want to tell you, anyone we lose in Gaza, I consider him or her like one of my family, one of my society, one of my people. Because all the people we lose during the war, they have a great story. They have dreams. They were planning the future for their families, their children. And we lose very close people in our life. We know them in our normal life, we meet them every day. Now we don’t have them.
Maybe it affected my feelings, my mind. When I write my articles or when I produce my stories, I feel very sad about the people in Gaza. To be more clear, I don’t like to talk about my experience because I don’t like the wars. And usually I told my friends, after the war ended, I said for my friends, I think anyone [who] died in the war, he won his life.
Because when you are alive and you remember your family, your friends, your studies, you will lose your mind when you think, how’s my life without them? How can I go to my school without my students? How can I go to the restaurant without my friends? How can I go to my work without my friend, also? How can I be strong when I see my auntie, when she comes back from Egypt, and she will come back to Gaza when the Rafah Crossing opens, and she will not find her son because he [was] killed by bombing Israel in the beginning of this war?
Maybe the best thing for me, during this war, I’m writing everything I live [through] in this war, I like to document it. Everything, every situation, anything [that’s] happened with me, I wrote about it in my articles, also in my documentaries. Like what I worked for Real News.
When you lose anyone from your people, you will feel like you’ve [lost] your life. It’s not easy. You will not be sad for your friend just, or one of your family, no. For example, I used to go to a restaurant, very, very famous restaurant in Gaza. So I have very beautiful moments and memories there. All the people working in this restaurant, they were killed by Israel. Who will open the restaurant again after the war?
Last two days or three days, I saw a post on this restaurant’s page. They posted in memory for the owners of this restaurant, because all of them were killed by the Israeli bombing. And all the comments asking who will reopen this restaurant, if we will see this restaurant again after the war. It’s not just people or persons, no. The places, the streets.
I live in Khan Younis city. If you will come to this city, you will just see destruction. Everything is destroyed. You will not find any building good. All of them [were] destroyed by the bulldozing of them and the bombing of them.
We have memories with the places, the streets, the sea. I feel like our sea is very sad because there are, near the sea, tents for the people. All the people put their tents near or on the beach of the sea. They used to just visit the sea to relax, now they are living near the sea. And the water attacks them because we are in the winter season. Maybe you’ve seen some news about many tents destroyed by the water, sea, and the raining.
It’s so sad. Just the situation in Gaza, it’s hard to express about it in words, or sentences, or paragraphs, or articles, or by documentaries. We need a lot of documentaries to show the situation in Gaza. Sorry, I’m not speaking the answer about the question [crosstalk] —
Marc Steiner: No, that’s fine. It’s fine.
Ruwaida Amer: About all the question. Sorry about that. Really, the loss is not just a person, the loss is also places, also streets, sea, our safety, our peace. We lost everything, by the way.
Marc Steiner: It’s hard, watching all of your documentaries, reading what you’ve written, following it every day, it’s hard to imagine, for you to be able to keep up your creative spirit and work in the midst of the madness that surrounds you. Living in that death and destruction, maybe lucky if you have a meal a day, and be able to produce what you produce. I’m sorry.
Ruwaida Amer: I will tell you something. Every day I say [to] myself, I will not work. I will stop my work. Because the war, it’s not just one day or two days, or one month or two months, we are under this war [for] more than one year. So every day I say, no, I will not work. I will not send ideas. I will not discuss with my friends about the ideas, if I can do that or not. But at the same time I would say, no, I will keep working, continue.
I will cover the stories because we need to show the world the situation in Gaza. I want to show for the world, or the people [outside] Gaza, we are human. We deserve to live in a good situation. We deserve to find food, water, electricity. Our children deserve to go to their schools. Our children deserve to live with their parents. I worked [on a] story about children [who] lost their parents. Maybe you watched this video. And I saw that there are many tens of thousands of views on this story. It was a very sad story to hear children talk about their family and their parents, and they will not see their parents again. It’s very sad.
Also, if I have patience to work, and complete my work, when I go to film the work or the story, I [go] back to my family, my home, [in a] very bad mood, sad. And I [go] to sleep, and think, I say [to] myself, when will this war finish? I ask my friends, is there any hope to finish this madness or this crazy war? It’s not easy to go to the people and talk with them about their situation, because you know their situation. You live in this situation. You are not different [from] them.
By the way, I live in the same situation with these people. And many times, the people don’t like to talk with me. They say, sorry, Ruwaida, because there are no people [who] hear us. I respect them, by the way. I respect them because they told me there are no people [who] hear us. If there are people [who] hear us, there are people [who] consider the people in Gaza as human like them, and deserve life, like them, the war [would have] stopped a long time [ago]. But we are more than one year in the same situation.
And I will tell you something, the war, it’s not different in the beginning and the middle. The situation, it’s not different. Because I will be not honest when I say, no, now the situation is better than the last two months or three months — No, no, no, it’s the same thing. Now we don’t have food. I live with very hard hunger. So I don’t know what I can eat every day, my family eat every day. There is no food, there is no water, there is no electricity. So the war is, every day, worse than before. So there is no change in the situation in Gaza.
So when you go to the people to make interviews or to film them, many people don’t like to do that. I’m one of them. I respect them. A lot of time I leave them and say sorry, and go back again, call them. I support them. I give them positive energy. I told them this is our right to talk about our situation. We need the world to know what we are living. So some people say, okay, and complete the story with me. Some people told me no, and I respect them, and I stopped the filming with them, and looked for another family like this.
So the people in Gaza live with very bad psychology, feelings. They are very nervous. They are very sad. They don’t have hope for tomorrow. Today the war in Lebanon stopped, they have [a] ceasefire. But Gaza, no. All the people in Gaza are very sad about it, because why are we allowed? Why don’t people care, the world doesn’t care about Gaza, to stop the war in Gaza? Why will we live in Gaza, live in this world, many days or many months? We don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
So when you work as a journalist in Gaza, during the war, you will live with a very hard challenge to complete your work, to continue your work. And also, as [a] filmmaker or producer, before the war, it’s totally different during the war. My work, it was totally different. Because before the war, I filmed very hopeful and happy stories. And the communities, I was so happy when I would film with a music group, and when I film with the sport, the groups or teams. Now I film with the people to talk about hunger, about bombing, about losing, about no schools, about no education, about no health, about no life. So it’s totally different. So it’s not easy for me to work like this, but I do it.
And when I finish any work, I feel happy. When I see a good reaction from the people [outside of] Gaza about their feelings, their support, I feel like I rushed the letter from Gaza, or the message from Gaza, and I told them what’s happening in Gaza. And because there is thankfulness for the journalists in Gaza, photographers in Gaza, because they are working very hard to send the real stories in Gaza, about the real happenings in Gaza, for more than one year. And they are under the bombing.
The journalists are also targeted by Israel. So we are not safe, but —
Marc Steiner: Including you?
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah. But we are working, still working.
Marc Steiner: It’s amazing to me that you can continue to produce and write just amazing, creative, brilliant work. You’re telling the story the world has to see. No one else is telling it like you’re telling it, because you’re telling it from the perspective, in the eyes of the people of Gaza, what they’re seeing and feeling. It’s not a detached person. And after watching your films and reading your articles, I just was amazed about how you can continue to do it in the midst of the destruction around you. Almost all the Gazans now are homeless. It’s been destroyed.
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah. Yeah. Also, I displaced my home last August.
Marc Steiner: August?
Ruwaida Amer: Not August, no… July. And when I displaced my home, I went to my sister’s home. Also, my sister’s home was destroyed. But we live in straight rooms. We bought plastic paper to close the walls, because we [can] see the street from the rooms. Her home is not good. You can’t live in it, but we don’t have a place to go there.
Also, my mother, she’s not good. Her health, not good. So we can’t go anywhere with her because she has problems with her walking. So we talked about a good place to go there. So it was just my sister’s home, destroyed. But there’s just one room. It’s good. But we can see the streets, the people on the road, because it was bombed [so much]. And her living room and kitchen don’t have windows and doors. And also the bathroom is like this. And her home, not just destroyed, [inaudible], so you can see plaque everywhere.
That’s affected my feeling so sad. I couldn’t still be there, because I know my sister’s home, it was very beautiful. We had very beautiful [inaudible] when [we] visited her. And she also didn’t have internet. And I wanted to work, I wanted to complete my work, So I would write an article and go to the hospital to send my work. Under very hard situations, I’m challenged, I worked. I want to work, I want to write because it makes me feel better. When I write what I feel, what I think, it will be good.
Also, when I produce videos like this, when I send it in, she left a refugee camp, by the way. And I saw this refuge is totally destroyed. Maybe you can find some articles about this thing. So I want to work, and I complete that. I complete my work, and I’m still working until now. Many challenges. If I want to tell you about the challenges I live in, I will not finish, because every second, I have a challenge. Every second living in Gaza, you are challenged. Challenge, the situation, how you want to complete your day, how you want to work, how you want to contact your friends, or your people you work with. It’s not easy to live in this war — I used to live in wars, by the way. I’m not very young. I lived in three wars before, or maybe four wars before. But it’s not like this war. No, this is not war. This is a very, very bad thing. It’s not normal war, no, it’s very hard war.
Marc Steiner: People have called it genocide.
Ruwaida Amer: Yes, maybe it’s more genocide, by the way. I haven’t eaten very well for two months. Also, we have people [who] need to take their medicine, to be good, they need to eat very well because their health is not good. There is no food. I don’t know why there is no food in Gaza. I don’t know, really. I want to tell you something. I told my family — All the time, by the way — I told my family, and gave them advice — It’s not advice. It’s crazy advice, by the way — I told them, live without thinking. Stop your mind and live. If you will think about the situation, you will be crazy — I do that, by the way [both laugh]. I’m trying to be good like this. I don’t like to think about my situation around me. If I will think, I will be crazy, I will not be Ruwaida. No, I’ll be crazy again. So I stop thinking [Steiner laughs].
Marc Steiner: I was wondering, as you’re speaking, how you have remained so calm, and sound so calm, in the midst of all you have to live in the war, people dying and places have been destroyed. And you tell the story so vividly. The way you tell the story, you almost feel like you’re there, you’re in the middle of it. But somehow you manage to keep yourself calm. I can imagine you as a teacher in school, you were probably a great teacher for the kids, to be this calm [laughs].
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah, yeah. I’m still teaching them. I stopped contact with them for a long time, but before one month, I restarted contact with them, because a lot of them [are] in Egypt. So I’m teaching them every Saturday, teaching them science. So I’m [a] clever girl, but in this war, I’m not sure [I’m] still clever. It makes me crazy. When I teach them science, I tell them, oh, I’m very happy because I’ve still saved the information [about] science in my mind. I thought I lost all the information, all my study, all my culture and science, but Alhamdulillah, I’ve still saved a lot of information, and I can think, and I can teach them.
So really, really, maybe it’s crazy words, but this is the real life in Gaza. If you think about what you are living, you will be crazy. Because it’s not normal, it’s abnormal. If you don’t have a problem today, if you don’t have [a] problem with the food, you will have a problem with the water. If you don’t have a problem with the water, you have a problem with the food. Maybe one of your family is sick, you need medicine, and there’s no medicine. And the pharmacies are in the hospitals. We were very sick the last three weeks, and I didn’t find any medicine on how I can be good, because there is not any medicine supplies coming to Gaza. So I feel like I will die [from the] flu. But I’m still stronger, Alhamdulillah.
And also, every time I tell my friends, I’m trying to be strong until the war finishes. I am not sure if I will be strong until the… I don’t know if I can keep my energy until the war finishes or not, but [I’m] still trying to be strong. Trying to save my mind, at least.
Marc Steiner: It seems, just seeing you and listening to you, that you’re tapping into some internal strength that you probably didn’t even know you had. To see what you’ve been able to do, to make the films you’re making. I can say here that, at Real News, we, and I personally, will do everything possible for the world to see your work. Because you tell the story that is real that nobody else is telling in the way you’re telling it. Especially when you hear the voices of the children in your documentaries.
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah, it’s so hard.
Marc Steiner: It’s hard. It must be hard for you. It’s hard living through what you’re living through, but to have to embrace the pain of the stories of the children and families every day in your work, because you clearly are a person who, you take that in. It’s not like a —
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah —
Marc Steiner: Go ahead.
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah, when I see the children. So if I want to help any family, I help them because they have children. Because the children don’t deserve to live in this world. We’ve lost many thousands of children, babies. Babies, just two days, three days, or a month, two months, their age.
So when I say I meet the children… My sister has two children, five years and three years, and they lost their home. Every day they are telling me about their memories of their home. Five years and three years. I think they don’t have big memories in their home because they are very [young], but they do. Her son thought Spiderman could come to Gaza and rebuild their home. He wants Spiderman to come to Gaza and rebuild their home. Can you imagine how the children in Gaza think because they lost their childhood?
There are a lot of children who have responsibility, their home, their families. So if you want to go to the market, you will see children selling in the market. Simple things. They sell simple things for $1, $2, $3, $5, and they go back to their family to buy food for them. The children live in very hard situations. Our children, their place is in the schools, not in the markets, not in the streets, not in bad tents, not crying about their parents or their families. So they lose their childhood.
Many times when I film the children, they are crying. And I hug them and say, you are heroes. You will be good in the future. And it will end very soon, and you will go back to your home in the North. And your mother and father [will] see you in paradise. They are in paradise, and they see us in Gaza, and they are very proud of us because we are very strong and still alive in Gaza. And you will complete your family life. But they are children, and very clever. They know the reality story in Gaza. You can support them, but they know the real story. They know they will not see their parents again. So it’s very hard for them. So you can’t say anything. For a child who says, I hope to hug my mother again. How can you pray [for] her mother to hug her? How can you?
When you work as journalists, or especially filmmakers, or produce long video stories like my works, you will spend more time with the children. Every place or every family in Gaza has children, and you will take your time for them and listen to their words and support them. You don’t know you need to support your family, yourself, your family, or the people in your work, or the people you filmed, you don’t know. So as I told you, I’m trying to not think about my life during the war. Because if I will think, I’ll lose my mind and go crazy.
Marc Steiner: Which is why I am deeply thankful and grateful that you agreed to this today, because I know, as calm as your demeanor is, this is very difficult.
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah, so hard. It’s not difficult. Difficult is [a] simple word to describe the situation here. No, it’s not easy. You feel like you want to cry every step you walk in the street, every second you meet the people outside. Really, many times I don’t like to call and ask about my friends, because I know the situations. My situation, it’s not good. And their situation, it’s not good, but maybe worse than me, because they are in tents, and they are out [of] their cities. We are living [in the] Gaza Strip, there is Gaza City. So they are out of their cities, Gaza, and the cities in the North, for more than one year, it’s a long time. So no one can bear to be away from their place [a] long time, like one year. And we live in the situation our grandfather, grandmother lived in ’48.
Marc Steiner: ’48, yeah.
Ruwaida Amer: 1948. We live in this situation. I remembered when I wrote [an] article about [the] Nakba, I asked my grandmother about how the experience was. He died two years [ago]. It’s [a] good thing to die, [the] last two years, because he didn’t like the wars. And I will tell you, they destroyed his grave, by the way, also, earlier.
Marc Steiner: Really?
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah. They destroyed his grave. And if we want to visit his grave, we will not find it, because they destroyed it as well.
Marc Steiner: I don’t think, in many ways, that the world, this country especially, really understands the devastation that’s taking place in Gaza. That’s part of the reason that your documentaries and your writing are so, so important. And I would encourage the world to watch everything you do, if you want to feel and understand what is going on. Because you do it from the heart and you do it from the head, and you bring that story to all of us. I think it’s unfathomable. Most people can’t even begin to understand what it’s like to have to live in this dystopian hell that you have to survive in.
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah. Many times I feel like we live… The people outside Gaza, or anyone supporting the war in Gaza to continue, they consider the people in Gaza not to be human. But we are human. We are doctors, teachers, journalists, and very important people. We are people [who] have dreams, we have plans for our future. We deserve to live, and we deserve to stop this war very soon, like Lebanon. So I hope to wake up to good news like this, stop this war in Gaza. I will be so happy, so very happy. Because we don’t have energy to complete or to live for more days in this war. Not just the young people or the men or the women, no, the children.
Also, always I said, please, stop the war, not just for the people in Gaza, just for the children, because they need to sleep. They need to be in their homes. They deserve to [go] back to their schools. This is the second year without schools. It’s too much. They will lose their education. The schools are their place, it’s not the road or the markets or the tents.
So I hope the people outside Gaza can know more about the situation in Gaza, and support [a] ceasefire in Gaza. Stop the war. And anyone can work to stop this war. Don’t be slow. Work very hard to stop this war, because the situation is very hard. And day by day, and second by second, we lose a lot of people, a lot of places, a lot of safety, a lot of peace. Peace is the best solution for everything. The war is not [a] good thing, by the way, because we lost everything.
So I hope my documentaries, my articles, my works, can wish for a lot of people, and very important people in the governments, countries, and they can work hard to stop the war in Gaza. I hope that. Because the war is not [a] good solution, just peace.
And all the people deserve to live in peace. Especially the Gazan people, because they’ve lived in siege [for] more than 20 years maybe, and they haven’t [had] any good day. So a solution for the life in Gaza. The people in Gaza want to complete their life without wars. So enough. I posted [a] story on Instagram. I said, Gaza wants to stop the war. Ceasefire now. And enough. Really, enough.
Marc Steiner: Enough.
Ruwaida Amer: It’s too much.
Marc Steiner: Enough. I know. And you’re doing it now, in terms of talking to our audience. And we can just maybe close with this, to continue what you’re saying about this and why it’s so important to watch your work, for people to understand what is going on, to see and feel what Palestinians are going through, and what we can do to stop it, that’s why your work is so critical.
Ruwaida Amer: I show the humanity sides of the people in Gaza. Because all the stories in Gaza now about the human people, they lose their lives, their safety, their very important things like food and water. Imagine you live without food for just one day. How will you feel? Imagine to try all your day to look for water. Measure your life, your children’s lives without schools. Measure your life without home. Measure your life to live and sleep in the roads, in the streets, without blankets, without good clothes, without good water. Imagine your life without medicine, without good health or good hospitals.
Imagine to spend just one day, anyone, feel sick and go to hospital, and sleep in the hospital just one night. He will be very nervous, and, I want to [go] back to my home. But the people in Gaza live more than one year in the hospitals, and they made tents in the hospitals, and see the suffering of people in the hospitals.
And it’s very important to look to Gaza, because when you see or watch the stories from Gaza, you will see there is no humanity in the world, because they accepted the war [for] more than one year. And the people live in that situation [for] more than one year.
I was very positive in the beginning of the war, and supportive of my family. And for my family, I told them, no, no, no, this war will be just one week, two weeks, three weeks. But it’s more than one year. I’m very surprised, because we are in this war [for] more than one year. It’s too much, too much. So it’s very important to follow the situation in Gaza. And Gaza needs the world. Don’t leave us alone, because we need the people’s support outside Gaza. Maybe their support will stop this war. Maybe. I hope that.
And if I receive any support message from my friends outside Gaza, I feel like I am not alone. There are people [who] feel about my situation, and don’t leave me alone. Also, I’m teaching Arabic language to non-speakers. I have students from America, Australia, Holland, and France, and many European countries. And they supported me, and still support me, so I feel I’m good. There are people thinking about Gaza. There are people supporting me. Sometimes they send me photos: We are with Gaza. We are in the roads and streets, we call it to stop the war in Gaza. So it’s good.
So I’m working to show the people what’s happening in Gaza. So I hope they are supporting us and working to stop the war in Gaza. I hope that maybe one day we will be free. I hope that.
Marc Steiner: Ruwaida Amer, we here at Real News, will be standing by you and with you as much as we can, and help bring your voice and your work out to the world. You need to be heard. And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done, the work you’ve done as a filmmaker, as a teacher, as a human being.
Ruwaida Amer: Yes. Also, I want to say I’m not working for me. I’m working for the world to see Gaza, to watch what’s happening in Gaza.
Marc Steiner: Yes.
Ruwaida Amer: I’m working every day to be the people following what’s happening in Gaza. If you want to come for me, many times in depression, many times in bad moods, many times very bad psychology, my feelings [are] very bad, but I’m working hard to show the situation in Gaza so the people know what’s happening in Gaza. My work is not for me, it’s for the world [to] see Gaza, to watch what’s happening in Gaza, to know what the people, how they live in Gaza during the war. What is the situation in Gaza? How they get the water, the food. How is the life for the children in Gaza, also?
So I hope my work reaches the people, and they see it, and they watch it, and they work hard to believe the people in Gaza have [the] right to still [be] alive, and have [the] right to be free, and live in freedom and live in safety and peace, and move in their countries and around the world, as any person in the world. Because we don’t have rights as normal people. No, the Palestinians [are] living under [a] bad situation in the world. So maybe the Palestinians come to live, and [be] safe, come to take their rights because we are under occupation.
So I know many people know more about the Palestinian case during this war. So that means our work [has] reached the world. So maybe it’s good [a] point for the journalists in Gaza, they show the real case of Palestine for the world. Maybe the people now, they have more information about the situation in Palestine, in general, especially in Gaza. So I hope that, if you like my work, I think the people also like my work.
Marc Steiner: [Laughs] People love your work.
Ruwaida Amer: Yeah, thank you so much.
Marc Steiner: You’re telling the story that has to be told, and we are here for you as much as we can be. And you, Ruwaida Amer, I want to thank you for telling the story of the Gazans, of the Palestinians, that needs to be told, and working with us here at Real News. And we’ll be linking to all of your work. And I promise you that I will do everything I can to spread that work so people see the real story through your eyes, through the eyes of the Palestinian people in Gaza. And —
Ruwaida Amer: Thanks.
Marc Steiner: Please stay safe. And we’ll stay in touch.
Ruwaida Amer: I will try, I hope to succeed to be safe. Inshallah.
Marc Steiner: Inshallah.
Once again, let me thank Ruwaida Amer for joining us today. She joins us in the midst of a war that has taken the lives of people she loves, of her students and her friends. Through it all, she keeps writing and making her documentaries that bring into stark reality what Palestinians face every day in Gaza. I have seen few do it as well. I encourage all of you listening to go to our website, type in her name: Ruwaida Amer, R-U-W-A-I-D-A A-M-E-R, and experience the reality of what Gazans face every day. We must do what we can to end the carnage in Gaza.
And thanks to David Hebden and Cameron Granadino for running the program today, and audio editor Alina Nehlich for working her magic, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News, for making this show possible.
Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. And once again, thank you to Ruwaida Amer for your work, for your bravery, for telling the story of the Palestinians in Gaza, and for joining us today in the midst of all of it.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
