A new documentary, Where Olive Trees Weep, explores Palestinian loss, trauma and the fight for justice over decades of life under Israeli occupation. We speak with two people featured in the film: Ashira Darwish, a Palestinian journalist and therapist, and Dr. Gabor Maté, an acclaimed Hungarian Canadian physician whose work focuses on addiction and trauma.
“I was only 16 when I was taken,” says Darwish, describing the first time she was beaten and arrested by Israeli soldiers, which motivated her to become a journalist in order to both document and fight against the occupation. “What’s happening in Palestine is devastating, and what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza has been going on for 75 years.”
Maté, a Holocaust survivor born in Hungary, recounts his own trauma as a child and says “that same horror” is being inflicted on Palestinian children today.