A girl called Jewel
An eyewitness account of Israel’s war on Gaza from a girl who lost 30 family members to it.
Watch part two
Filmmaker: Ashraf Mashharawi
On December 27, 2008 the Israeli military began a brutal air assault on the Gaza Strip that was to kill around 1,400 Palestinians and leave thousands of Gazans wounded.
The death toll included a very high proportion of women and children.
A special United Nations investigation after the war reported that the Israeli army had deliberately targeted civilians in actions that, it said, amounted to war crimes and in some respects crimes against humanity.
Just days into the war, in early January, the extended Al Samouni family, some 48 men, women and children, was attacked in the homes they occupied together in the south of Gaza – and almost all of them were killed. Thirteen-year-old Almaza – ‘jewel’ – is one of the very few who survived the attack in which 30 members of her family died, many before her own eyes.
A Girl Called Jewel is Almaza’s story, a heart-breaking eye-witness account of the war in Gaza.
From the rubble of her former home, Almaza, walks us through the wasteland and recounts, with a worldliness beyond her years, the massacre of her family.
From the scarred wasteland that was once her family’s home, Almaza faces a bleak future – like many other orphans of the war in Gaza.
A Girl Called Jewel aired from Sunday, January 3.