I’m personally honored to inform you that Palestine’s entry to this year’s Academy Awards, the brilliant film FROM GROUND ZERO, has recently been voted by the members of the Motion Picture Academy — one of only 15 films worldwide — for this year’s Oscar shortlist for BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE. I am a proud Executive Producer of this acclaimed movie — AND IT OPENED TODAY in theaters across America.

Check it out here

FROM GROUND ZERO, the first film ever from Gaza to be elected to the shortlist for the Oscar in the category that honors what used to be known as the Best Foreign Film of the Year, is unlike any movie you’ve ever seen — filmed during a mass slaughter of over 50,000 civilians, the vast majority of them children, women and the elderly. In a brisk and powerful one hour and fifty-two minutes, it weaves together 22 short films made by 22 courageous Palestinian filmmakers living and surviving in Gaza over this past year — all of it told in under 2 hours!

With the genocide in Gaza far advanced, and having lost the recent election when supporting peace might have won it, the Biden administration -- on its way out the door -- has told Congress it wants to send yet more weapons to Israel, the majority of which it would take a year or several years to deliver.

The incoming Trump administration plans to continue the slaughter and destruction.

Is this last-minute proposal from Biden part of a competition for greatest support of mass killing? Or is it a move to demonstrate bipartisanship before the storm, by doing something that most of both parties' elected officials support?

Either way, this is a time to make clear to everyone in Washington that the demand for peace and compliance with laws and basic human decency has not gone away, that -- on the contrary -- it is growing.

Over the past 14 months, I have received hundreds of messages from family members throughout the Gaza Strip. The nature of the messages often conveyed a sense of urgency and panic but, at times, contentment in God’s will. 

 Some of those who wrote these notes have been killed in Israeli strikes, like my sister, Dr. Soma Baroud; others lost children, siblings, cousins, neighbors and friends. It may seem strange that none of those who communicated with me throughout the war have ever questioned their faith, and have often, if not always, begun their messages by checking on me, and my children. 

 The samples of the messages below have been edited for length and clarity.

 Ibrahim: 

 "How are you? We are all fine. We had to leave Shati (refugee camp). The Israelis arrived at the camp yesterday. Our whole neighborhood has been destroyed. Our home, too, was destroyed. Alhamdulillah - praise be to God." 

 Soma: