There are numerous misunderstandings concerning the decades-long battle for Palestinian rights, largely resulting from misinformation, ignorance, or simply dangerous religion, and this has clearly been exacerbated for the reason that Hamas assaults towards Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. A very powerful factor to clear up earlier than even broaching the topic is to outline our phrases. Professional-Palestine doesn’t imply pro-Hamas. Anti-Israel doesn’t imply antisemite; one can criticize the actions of a state with out concentrating on an ethnicity or faith. For example, one may critique former President Joe Biden with out attacking People. Zionist doesn’t imply Jewish; there are maybe extra Christian Zionists on the earth than there are precise Jews. Having gotten that out of the best way, let’s check out the brand new documentary, The Encampments.
Watermelon Footage continues its wonderful streak of political documentaries with The Encampments, a movie that transports us on to a particular place and time — Columbia College in New York, again in April 2024. Columbia college students had arrange a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” which drew the ire of conservatives and liberals alike, what with this nation’s help of Israel remaining considerably bipartisan.
The media and authorities centered on Columbia, however college students all through the nation — certainly, the world — started to emulate the identical pro-Palestinian sentiment; ultimately, practically 300 Gaza Solidarity Encampments had been arrange globally. The Encampments explores this short-lived phenomenon of true protest, its crushing defeat, and the ramifications main as much as this very day.
Disclose, Divest, Doc
The Encampments
4.5
/5
- Launch Date
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March 28, 2025
- Runtime
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85 Minutes
- Producers
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Macklemore
- An intimate and matter-of-fact have a look at the coed encampments in Spring of 2024.
- A fast and fact-based examine of occasions whereas additionally a politically astute showcase of the character of protest.
- A traditionally important doc with a haunting, chilling ending.
For a lot of, the coed encampments appeared to return out of nowhere, however they had been truly the fruits of months spent protesting in several methods. On Oct. 9, 2023, simply two days after the Hamas assaults, the teams College students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) started organizing protests and calling on Columbia College to divest from Israel. What does that imply? Universities have come to function increasingly like companies, and have shares in varied corporations (and board members kind them). In essentially the most simplistic sense, protestors known as on universities to disinvest from corporations that offer expertise or arms to Israel, like Common Electrical and United Applied sciences.
One of many lead negotiators of the Columbia protests was Mahmoud Khalil, whose identify has permeated the information in current weeks as certainly one of many individuals to be arrested, disappeared, or deported for no crime in any way, merely for pro-Palestine sentiments. Khalil is featured closely all through The Encampments, saying at one level within the documentary, “Via my conversations, I simply felt how a lot the college is indifferent from actuality. What college would need to spend money on weapon manufacturing? Why would you do this? You are involved with schooling. We’re actually supplying you with again the college to be an ethical college.”
Khalil was born and raised in a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Damascus; his grandmother walked 40 miles to Syria and gave start alongside the best way. Whereas there are numerous Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab college students who take part within the protests, there are additionally many Jews (i.e. Jewish Voices for Peace) and other people of all stripes. Zionists and the alt-right tried to fire up as a lot hassle as doable, although, together with the notorious assaults on college students at UCLA by masked thugs. The police did not present as much as assist the scholars as they had been attacked. As one pupil says in The Encampments:
Our dean [Miguel García-Garibay] watched because the Zionists got here and beat up college students from the balcony of Royce Corridor. Nobody is coming to avoid wasting you. Not even the individuals who took an oath that they had been coming to avoid wasting you.
“I verified with a few Congress folks they usually mentioned it is an empty risk. We known as the governor, the governor mentioned there is not any intention of sending the Nationwide Guard,” says one pupil within the documentary. They had been lied to.
The Aftermath of Mahmoud Khalil and the State of Protest
When the particles had cleared and the campuses had been emptied, when all was mentioned and finished, 3,100 college students and school members had been arrested. On March 8, 2025, ICE thugs took Mahmoud Khalil from his residence and grabbed him away from his weeping, eight-month-pregnant spouse. They put him into deportation proceedings even though he is a everlasting resident, was by no means charged with a criminal offense, and by no means obtained any sort of due course of.
Khalil’s arrest has been vocally condemned by quite a lot of non-partisan teams, reminiscent of Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression, Amnesty Worldwide, the American Civil Liberties Union, the California College Affiliation, the First Modification Coalition, and the Heart for Constitutional Rights. Even rabid Zionist Invoice Maher has spoken out towards Khalil’s arrest, as has far-right troll Ann Coulter.
Khalil’s destiny stays in query, which makes the top of The Encampments all of the extra haunting. He tells the digital camera, “When the occupation ends, the very first thing I’ll do, I am positively going again to Palestine. I’ve this dream of mine of leaping off the wall of Agdah into the ocean. Then proceed constructing a state for everybody, a state that embraces all its residents, a state that valuses human lives. Someday, God prepared.”
The Encampments is now in theaters from Watermelon Footage. You could find extra data, theaters, and showtimes right here. The movie can be screening at Movie at Lincon Heart in New York; discover showtimes and data right here.