May 06 2022: The New Documentary "Boycott" and Media Coverage of Palestine

Voices of the Middle East and North Africa

**Boycott, is screened on this year’s DocLands on Sunday, May 8 at 4 PM at SMITH RAFAEL FILM CENTER in San Rafael- For more information please visit, doclands.com** The freedom to refuse to buy a product at any time from anyone you want, which has historically been used by oppressed minorities throughout the world, witness the bus boycotts of the 50s, the grape boycotts of the 60s or the anti-Apartheid campaign of the 80s, is now at the heart of the struggle for Palestinian rights. The new documentary film "Boycott," examines the heroic plight of three individual Americans in three different states who rejected the dictate of anti-BDS laws surreptitiously passed by 31 states of the union, challenged that ban in court and prevailed in the head. BOYCOTT chronicles the stories of three everyday Americans -- a speech pathologist, a public defender, and a newspaper publisher -- who take the extraordinary step of suing their states after new laws require them to sign a pledge saying they won't participate in boycotts of Israel in order to receive a government contract. VOMENA’s Khalil Bendib spoke with the film’s producer Suhad Babaa. Palestinian American journalist Laura Albast says the media must stop giving reign to Israeli aggression & begin telling the full story of Palestine. Recently- Ms Albast and Cat Knar coauthored an opinion piece in the Washington Post on the biased & inaccurate coverage of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine- they write, we have seen the same patterns over and over again in media coverage of Palestine. Palestinians are not killed; we simply die. When Israeli forces raid our neighborhoods in the middle of the night, bomb our children, demolish our homes, colonize our land and kill our people, we are somehow equal instigators. Media descriptions regularly imply a false symmetry between occupier and occupied, propping up anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic narratives that blame the Palestinian people for Israeli aggression.” Malihe Razazan spoke with Laura about the media coverage of Palestine in the US media and Why the media fails to cover Palestine with accuracy and empathy. Laura Albast, a Palestinian American journalist and translator, is senior editor of digital strategy and communications at the Institute for Palestine Studies-USA.