Our Q&A in The Nation about attacks on our film “The Occupation of the American Mind”
Hi Friends and Colleagues,
We just wanted to share a new Q & A we did with The Nation magazine’s Dave Zirin in response to recent attacks on our film The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s PR War in the United States.
Click here to read the piece, which just went up on The Nation’s website this morning.
Some quick background: Last week, faculty and students at Montgomery College in Maryland faced a blistering attack from state senators and their own college president for trying to screen The Occupation of the American Mind on their campus.¹ It was just one of many recent attempts to stop schools from screening and discussing our film.²
The film, which we made in 2016 and re-released for free in abridged form six months ago, documents how mainstream American media outlets have amplified pro-Israel propaganda and failed to cover the brutality of Israel’s criminal 57-year military occupation and annexation of Palestinian land. It also looks at how pro-Palestinian voices have been routinely vilified as anti-Semites and terrorist-sympathizers – the very line of attack politicians and college officials have been employing to shut down screenings of our film.³
Here’s an excerpt from Zirin’s intro to the Q & A in The Nation:
Since October 7, 2023, we have seen how the US media has a separate set of rules when discussing the total war being waged on the civilians of Gaza. With more than 35,000 dead, an unprecedented number of child amputees, and over a million at risk for starvation, the urgency to decode media obfuscation of a genocide has never been greater.
That makes The Occupation of the American Mind and its trenchant media analysis a vital tool for understanding the current situation. That’s also why it’s been attacked by politicians and policed by college administrators and compared to Birth of a Nation and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Such responses are similar to Netanyahu’s comparison of the sit-ins at Columbia to the Nazi rallies in the 1930s.
We hope you’ll check out the full Q & A here. Now more than ever, MEF is committed to critically examining dominant corporate news media narratives, clearing space for alternative perspectives, and opening up democratic discussion and debate about the hyper-militarized direction of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond.
Best,
Loretta Alper, Jeremy Earp, and Sut Jhally
P.S. Click here to watch the new 49-minute version of The Occupation of the American Mind for free on YouTube. To stream the original full-length version for free, click here.
(1) “Montgomery College President Condemns Israel Movie,” by Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery Perspective, April 16, 2024.
(2) “D.C. students sue over alleged censorship of pro-Palestinian activity,” by Lauren Lumpkin, The Washington Post, April 24, 2024.
(3) “Outrage Builds at Montgomery College Israel Movie Screening,” by Adam Pagnucco, Montgomery Perspective, April 16, 2024.