Can the cinema save the world?

 Can the cinema save the world?

MAXIMILIAN obuszewski<mobuszewski2001@comcast.net>

On September 4, Janice and I watched Irene's Vow on Netflix. It tells a version of the life of Irene Gut, a Polish nurse. Just before Hitler and Stalin decided to carve up Poland, she enrolled in nursing school. While she was hiding during the invasion, Russian soldiers discovered her and she was beaten and raped. Later she was forced to work in a munitions factory during the German occupation.  During the occupation, the law was that if a Pole helped a Jew, s/he would be executed.  Nevertheless, Gut helped Jews by secretly taking food to the ghetto and even hiding them.  This is a well-acted film where everyone had to make a choice.  Do you resist the occupiers? Do you ignore cries of help? Do you ignore the occupier's rules? Do you keep your head down and hope you survive the war? It was directed by Louise Archambault and stars Sophie Nélisse as Irena Gut.  Gut has to repeatedly think on her feet and make the least-worst decision.  Janice was 16 when her mother named Irena died.  

 

 On September 6 at 4 PM we joined some 100 filmgoers at the SNF Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Avenue, Baltimore to see AMERICAN DOCTOR — a compelling film about three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — who enter Gaza to save lives and find themselves confronting the complicated intersection of medicine, politics, and truth. The screening was followed by a Q&A with director Poh Si Teng, a U.S. citizen from Malaysia. 

 

 A former Al Jazeera journalist who had trouble getting funding for a documentary about the genocide in Gaza. She used up her life savings, $150,000, but more was needed to complete the documentary. She was able to raise an additional $200,000 in donations during trips to Malaysia. 

 

 A crucial decision was made early in the filming to show the carnage, including the killings of babies and many other children.  I survived surgery on August 13 and had excellent care.  If you were injured in Gaza, the hospitals which were deliberately being targeted, lacked basic medical supplies.  An amputation might take place without sedation. The film focuses on three doctors who tried to bring in supplies despite the IDF's aim to withhold medical supplies and other necessities.  

 

 This film marks her directorial debut. She utilized two Gaza-based cinematographers, Ibrahim Al Otla and Christopher Renteria. They were embedded with the doctors while they faced food shortages and the threat of bombardment. They uploaded footage daily via a balcony at Nasser Hospital that was later destroyed in an Israeli strike that killed 22 people including journalists and medical workers.

 

 AMERICA DOCTOR has footage of the doctors and others going on lobbying visits in D.C. Having been to Chuck Schumer's office, I knew the delegation would be met with disdain.  Many legislators have Israeli flags outside their officers, as well as photographs of Israelis killed by Hamas.  They did not see any photographs of martyred Palestinian women or children.  The documentary also makes the point that the hospitals and medical personnel were intentionally targeted. There was some push back by the media hosts who accepted the Israeli propaganda that terrorists were at the hospitals.  The doctors strongly denied the allegations. 

 

 One of scenes in the documentary which was most disturbing was when President Trump placed his arm around Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu after his address to Congress.  Trump trumpeted that "we" have been sending many bombs to Israel.  And these bombs have been effective.  The camera cuts into a bomb blowing up a residential area in Gaza.   

 

 By happenstance, I was the first to address the director. Thank you for this wonderful documentary.  Thank you for bringing tears to my eyes.  And thank you for including Dr. Terry Fitzgerald, a member of Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility, who lives in Baltimore.  To the audience, I indicated that Terry addressed the doctors from the film at a Jewish Voice for Peace convention. I pointed out that from 1977 to 1981, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana, which borders South Africa.  I became quite aware of apartheid in South Africa.  While I was in Africa, Israel aided the white-minority government in South Africa to obtain the apartheid bomb.

 

 In 1989, I was part of a human rights delegation to Israel/occupied Palestine organized by the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.  It became clear that I witnessed Israeli apartheid.  At that time, I was able to travel to Gaza, where I visited Al-Shifa Hospital which was bombed in the film, Jabalia, Rafah and Khan Yunis.  I was taken into custody by Shin Bet and interrogated in my boxer shorts.

 

 On April 9, 2024, Janice and I were arrested with 62 others shouting Free, Free Palestine in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Cafeteria.  I look forward to your next documentary of the IDF attacks on Palestinian media.  Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

 

 Another audience member asked a question about the comparison between Gaza and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The director indicated she is unable to quantify such an answer.

 

 Finally, I am including another unpublished letter-to-the-editor of The Baltimore Sun about Mark Ruffalo.  He is one of my favorite actors--Dark Waters, Spotlight, The Kids Are All Right, All the Light We Cannot See and Foxcatcher.

 

Letters to the Editor

 

THE SUN

 

Talkback@baltimoresun.com

 

To the editor:

 

I have enjoyed very much Mark Ruffalo’s work as an actor and have been impressed by his social consciousness. So of course I have been following the allegations that he is antisemitic: “Jewish artists defend Mark Ruffalo amid Paramount’s allegations of antisemitism” [September 3, 2026, The Baltimore Sun].     

 

Of course, antisemitism exists and must be condemned.  However, when Larry Ellison, a financial supporter of President Donald Trump, makes such an allegation, I am very suspicious. Ellison is engaging in a right-wing takeover of media outlets. This controversy revolves around the fact that Ellison’s Oracle is assisting Israel in the killing of noncombatant Palestinians.  Ruffalo made his point that there is an ongoing genocide in Gaza, which is no different than what innumerable human rights groups have said.  The list is long—Amnesty International, the United Nations Commission, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights and others.

 

I was impressed by the list of Jewish artists supporting Ruffalo, including Joel Coen, Tony Kushner, Todd Haynes and Sarah Kuntsler.  The group’s letter made this conclusion: “It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.”

 

Kagiso, Max

 

Baltimore

 

410-323-1607

 

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.  Ph.: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

I just want to wash that cancer right out of my hair

 Friends,

 

I cannot sing, but I am hearing Mitzi Gaynor singing Rodgers and Hammerstein's Wash That Guy Right Out of My Hair. I know the feeling, but it is about cancer, not a guy.

 

Eventually, I plan to update you on my surgery on August 13 and its aftermath.  At this juncture, I’ve lost 18 pounds and continued to be anemic. Nevertheless, I feel healthy. This write-up begins the day I had a port installed.

 

On September 9, Janice and I arrived around 10 AM at the Surgi Center in Owings Mills, Maryland.  Sitting in the waiting room, I received a call from Charlie, a peace activist and a fellow basketball player at BYKOTA Senior Center in Towson.  He called to express his concern about my situation. However, he is recovering from shoulder replacement surgery and symptoms related to glaucoma. I am just suffering a bit of discomfort, as the five incisions in my stomach heal.

 

 I am called. I remove my clothes and put on a surgical gown. While my vitals were being checked, there was a question.  Where was the insertion of a subcutaneous port to be? 

 

I remarked that my oncologist said it should be by the clavicle.  The two nurses laughed and said I have two.  The presumption on my part was to do it on my left side, away from my dominant arm. Once the IV was in place, I walked over to a hospital bed. I was questioned about my medications. I stopped taking Eliquis, a blood thinner. I finished the Tylenol prescribed after the August 13^th surgery and did not take my blood pressure or cholesterol medications that morning. I was fasting from food and water.  Electric blankets were placed on each lower leg to prevent blood clots.

 

 A physician came over to check on me.  I found out she was born in Nigeria but has not visited her family there since 2017.  I mentioned that I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana from 1977 to 1981.  I had a layover in Lagos, Nigeria, and customs officials pulled me aside and took me to a room.  They wanted a bribe, but before departing for Africa, I pledged I would pay no bribes. I asked to see the U.S. ambassador and was eventually allowed to continue my journey.  The doctor indicated she was born in Lagos.

 

This request for a bribe occurred three other times during my African sojourn.  I was on another flight heading north, which landed in Kinshasa, Zaire, a notoriously corrupt country. Fortunately, I was allowed back on the plane despite my unwillingness to pay up. One time, another Peace Corps volunteer and I hitchhiked from Botswana to Lusaka, Zambia. There we boarded the rail line, built by the Chinese, to travel more than a thousand miles to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.  We ignored the pressure tactic from the conductor and did not pay a bribe. Finally, I was in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and a guard requested a “donation.” He had the wrong pigeon. 

 

Just before being taken to surgery, I met different members of the team, including the surgeon, Arthur Affleck.  He is a colorectal surgeon who specializes in installing ports for cancer victims.  I informed Dr. Affleck that I was told he was the best. 

 

He mentioned that his partner, Dr. Joshua Wolf, did my surgery at Sinai Hospital.  I told him I called my colon cancer trump and was thankful that Dr. Wolf removed the malignancy. He laughed, so I told him that just before going into surgery at Northwest Hospital for a scoping of my sigmoid colon, I was asked about my dream.  I said my dream was to walk into the White House to tell Trump it is time to go.

 

During this odyssey, which started in November 2025, very few members of the medical community would discuss politics.  So, it was refreshing to know that Dr. Affleck recognized Trump as a fascist.

 

 He informed Janice and me that during residency in Texas, the good old boys would want the port installed away from their shooting arm.  We informed him that, as peace activists, we had no guns in the house. I suggested installing the port on my left side.

 

 I was then wheeled down the corridor to a room packed with electronic equipment. There, a nurse placed an oxygen mask over my nose and mouth. The surgery team used sedation, not anesthesia, which allowed me to recover much more easily. I remember someone saying Give him 140 something or other. Maybe an hour later, I started to reach some form of consciousness.  Dr. Affleck let me know that he could not insert the port on the left.  So instead, I have a very secure bandage covering the port on my right side. 

 

 Since it took a few hours for the sedation to wear off, Janice was the driver.  We stopped to purchase Tylenol.  During breakfast around 4 PM, I experienced some discomfort just holding up a coffee cup in my right hand. Soon thereafter, I slept for several hours.  Tylenol presumably is helping, as I am only experiencing discomfort.

 

 My chemotherapy will begin on September 23 at the Maryland Oncology Hematology in Eldersburg with an injection of XELOX [oxaliplatin] through the port into a vein.  The next day, I will begin a fourteen-day regimen of first taking three capsules of CAPOX [capecitabine] 30 minutes after a meal, and later two capsules 30 minutes after a meal. This treatment is being pursued to prevent cancer cells from dividing and growing and can cause the cancer cells to shrink and die. Then I have a week off to recover before the next XELOX injection. 

 

I will get anti-nausea medication from my pharmacy, but the heavy-duty drugs will be mailed to me. I do not know how long the procedure will continue. Presumably, after every three weeks, a blood test will be ordered to determine the efficacy of the process.

 

  One supporter just told me that his brother’s wife is going to get chemotherapy and radiation before the surgery takes place.  It seems her malignancy has broken through her colon.  When I hear or read about others going through such traumatic situations, I realize how fortunate I am.  Through all the procedures and the surgeries, I have had little pain. My support community is from Erie, PA, down to Key West, and from the East to California, and places in between.  What comes next is another adventure.  How will I handle chemotherapy?  Stay tuned for another report. Kagiso, Max    

 

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.  Ph.: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

 

 "The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

 

This is why Janice and I will see the documentary Three Doctors because of "Zulm"

 

The SNF Parkway Theatre, 5 W. North Avenue, Baltimore on Sun., Sept. 6 at 4 PM will screen AMERICAN DOCTOR — a compelling film about three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — who enter Gaza to save lives and find themselves confronting the complicated intersection of medicine, politics, and truth. The screening is followed by a Q&A with director Poh Si Teng. Get your tickets at snfparkway.org!

 

By Jonathan Kuttab

 

The Arabic word “zulm” is usually translated as “injustice” and comes from the same root as “zalam” (darkness), which describes a situation of such overwhelming oppression that it cries out to the highest heaven. It is a situation of outraged frustration bursting with bitter anger at the impunity of those in power and their sneering delight for the suffering they cause, of their arrogant dismissal of the rights of the oppressed, and the lack of recourse or accountability for the victims who can only appeal to the Ruler of the Universe against the zulm. Ultimately, zulm is a much more powerful and evocative term than our usual protests about “human rights violations.”

 

Examples of zulm, both large and small, abound in Palestine today:

 

It is zulm that Palestinians cannot access their lands, as they are invaded and ravaged by marauding “grazing outposts” of settlers who drive their sheep and cattle right up to the doors of Palestinian homes. These settlers brazenly steal Palestinians’ sheep, destroy their crops and deny Palestinians access to their fields, all under the watchful eyes of Israeli soldiers.

 

It is zulm when those who dare to insist on filing complaints with the Israeli Police (located inside settlements) are themselves arrested and harassed.

 

It is zulm when thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned without charge or trial in Israeli torture centers, where their very humanity is denied and where they are routinely beaten, humiliated, denied adequate food, hot water, exercise, basic sanitary conditions and where over 80 prisoners have died in prison since the war on Gaza started.

 

It is zulm that I hear from my friend who was recently released from prison about having lost about 1/3 of his body weight and having to endure an operation on his leg without anesthesia to save it from amputation, after scabies had ravaged his foot. This same foot was severely beaten by the guards when he dared to complain about it.

 

It is zulm when more and more iron gates are erected at all entrances and side roads to Palestinian towns and villages. These gates are closed arbitrarily, from time to time forcing lengthy delays, detours and expensive transportation costs for no apparent reason.

 

It is zulm when Gaza, even after three years of genocide, continues to suffer a devastating siege as its people are squeezed into smaller and smaller areas. The people have no means of living a normal life, having to struggle daily for food, fresh water, shelter, medicine, and a place to go to the bathroom, much less privacy, education and anything resembling normal life. 

 

It is a zulm when over a thousand Gazans have been killed after a “ceasefire” was declared, where they cannot even fly kites and balloons but Israel freely rains bombs and missiles on their helpless tent encampments.

 

It is zulm when an area with the highest number of child amputees in the world is denied crutches, prosthetics, wheelchairs, and anesthesia for their struggling medical facilities.

 

It is zulm when Doctors, nurses, and health workers, like Dr. Aby Safiya, continue to languish in Israeli jails with no trial or accusation other than that they continued to serve their patients after being ordered to abandon them.

 

It is zulm when Israel literally razes tens of Lebanese villages to the ground and brags about it with little or no response from the world community, as it continues to flout international law.

 

It is zulm to place an entire population under the control of a strict permit/license regime, whereby each aspect of their lives, including movement, education, residence, economy and culture, is subject to the arbitrary control of their enemies. It is doubly a zulm if, after begging, waiting, and hoping for a coveted permit to meet an essential need, that permit is denied without any reason being given. 

 

Sabeel founder Rev. Naim Ateek wrote Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, the seminal book whose teachings comprise the guiding principles upon which the work of FOSNA is based according to its Statement of Purpose. Another way of putting it is that our mission is to do our best to ameliorate or remove the zulm which has become such a basic feature of Palestinian life.

 

The author is with Friends of Sabeel North America.

 

Donations can be sent to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206, Baltimore, MD 21212.  Ph.: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/.

 

"The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs

Staying active

 Friends,

 

Despite my precarious health situation. I am trying to stay involved.  Today, for example, Janice and I attended the Tuesday vigil across from Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus at 33rd and N. Charles Sts. in Baltimore.  The current theme is to condemn Trump World for its cruel positions, including the treatment of immigrants, the wars against Canada and Iran, and the outrageous military and nuclear arsenal budgets. The temperature during the vigil was 96 degrees.  We stayed in the shade.

 

Also, I continue to submit letters to the Baltimore Sun.  Occasionally I manage to get one published.  The one below is too hot to handle and was not published. Kagiso, Max

 

Letters to the Editor

 

THE SUN

 

Talkback@baltimoresun.com

 

To the editor:

 

It was the title of an article which I have seen way too much: “Israeli strikes kill 5 in Gaza, 3 in West Bank” [August 29, 2026, The Baltimore Sun]. It is cruel to call this phase in the onslaught against the Palestinians a “ceasefire.” According to the article, “at least 1,303 Palestinians” have been killed in “repeated airstrikes.”    

 

This ongoing tragedy is also taking place in the West Bank.  It was chilling to read this: “at least 87 Palestinians have been killed in attacks by settlers and soldiers this year.” This was followed by an astonishing statistic: “Three Israelis have been killed in 2026.”

 

This raises a question: When will the Israeli government recognize that this ongoing onslaught is tarnishing its image?  For the sake of both sides, I hope it is tomorrow.

 

Kagiso, Max

 

Baltimore

410-323-1607