Reel Bad Arabs dissects a slanderous aspect of cinematic history that has run virtually unchallenged from the earliest days of silent film to today’s biggest Hollywood blockbusters.

Deepa Kumar, one of the nation’s foremost scholars on Islamophobia, looks at how Muslims have become the predominant face of terror in U.S. news and entertainment media — even though terror attacks by white extremists have far outnumbered attacks by Muslim Americans since 9/11.

Edward Said examines the origins and evolution of Western attitudes towards the Middle East. Said shows how perceptions of the Middle East as an exotic land full of villains and terrorists are deeply rooted in the Western imagination, and argues that this caricatured cultural heritage continues to blind too many Europeans and Americans to the complexity and diversity of the region.

Over the past few years, Israel’s ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territory and repeated invasions of the Gaza strip have triggered a fierce backlash against Israeli policies virtually everywhere in the world — except the United States. The Occupation of the American Mind takes an eye-opening look at this critical exception, zeroing in on pro-Israel public relations efforts within the U.S.

Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land provides a striking comparison of U.S. and international media coverage of the crisis in the Middle East, zeroing in on how structural distortions in U.S. coverage have reinforced false perceptions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This personal narrative tells the story of a children’s theatre group on the West Bank that was established by Arna Mer Khamis, who grew up in a Zionist family and later married a Palestinian Arab. Directed by Arna’s son Juliano, Arna’s Children shifts back and forth in time to show the children in rehearsal from 1989 to 1996, and then revisits them later to discover the tragic fates that awaited three of them. Devastating and shocking, the film reveals the tragedy and horror of lives trapped by the circumstances of the Israeli occupation.

In Life in Occupied Palestine, Anna Baltzer, a graduate of Columbia University and the Jewish-American granddaughter of Holocaust refugees, documents her experience as a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in the West Bank. Baltzer provides a straightforward account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while chronicling the almost unbearable living conditions of Palestinians under the Occupation. An accessible introduction to a difficult subject for American students.

U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), an original member of “The Squad,” the only Palestinian American in Congress, and a fierce critic of the Biden-Harris administration’s active role in Israel’s ongoing mass slaughter in Gaza, spoke at UMass-Amherst on Friday, Nov. 22, 2024 about the future of pro-Palestinian resistance in the wake of the presidential election. The event was entitled “What Now? Resisting Occupation & Genocide.” Tlaib, whose unapologetic defense of Palestinian rights has earned her condemnation from the Biden White House, censure from the House of Representatives, and repeated smears from corporate media outlets like CNN, was easily reelected to a fourth term in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District on November 5th.

The War Around Us tells the absorbing true story of the only two international journalists on the ground in Gaza during Israel’s bombardment and invasion of the troubled Palestinian territory over a three-week period in 2008-9. Award-winning filmmaker Abdallah Omeish (Occupation 101) chronicles the experiences of Al Jazeera’s Cairo-born, Arab-American Ayman Mohyeldin and Arab-British Sherine Tadros as they report from Gaza City throughout the devastating assault. With never-before-seen footage and gripping personal testimonies, the film bears witness to Israel’s ongoing siege of Gaza in the wake of its withdrawal in 2005, and pays tribute to the power of journalism – and friendship – under conditions of enormous conflict and stress. The result is a deeply human glimpse into wartime reporting and life in one of the most besieged places on earth.