Skip to main content
Despite clocking in at a paltry 71 minutes, the film documentary The Palestine Exception thoughtfully covers multiple facets surrounding the Israel-Hamas War protests that became one of 2024’s most divisive social issues. Portland State University was the scene of among the more prominent campus protests behind those at Columbia University, with students occupying Millar Library before being removed by police in April.
The question at the film’s core remains simple: When demonstrations and civil disobedience have been staples of American culture for decades, why is criticizing the Israeli government considered taboo compared with protesting the United States’ other foreign allies?
The answer is far from simple, leading Exception’s directors, PSU professors Jan Haaken and Jennifer Ruth, to investigate the issue from all sides: cultural, historical, political, theological and personal. In so doing, the pair have crafted a moving and passionate work of investigative journalism that invokes the past to explain the present. Haaken and Ruth will host a special open-caption screening of The Palestine Exception on Sunday, Jan. 26, at Cinema 21.
One of Exception’s biggest takeaways is the knowledge that despite statements to the contrary, we have been here before. In particular, the documentary examines and compares the Biden administration’s response with the campus protests of 2023–24 to the McCarthyism and Red Scare of the 1950s, another time when dissenting political beliefs were seen as hostile by the U.S. government.
Watching clips in the documentary of former Harvard president Claudine Gay being questioned by Congress in 2023 alongside House Un-American Activities Committee inquisitions, it’s not hard to imagine “antisemitism” as shorthand for “subversive” the same way “communism” was. While it’s true that attacks on Jewish people have grown in frquency over the past decade, Exception cautions against conflating the diaspora’s struggle with criticisms of the Israeli government. One of the film’s interviewees, UCLA professor Saree Makdisi, calls Congress’ investigation the “House Committee on Un-Israeli Activities,” adding: “The first question we have to ask ourselves as American citizens is why are our elected representatives doing so much to repress us in the interests of a foreign power?”
Exception, naturally, finds multiple answers to this next question, starting with the way the founding of Israel and the dream of Zionism have been mythologized in Western culture, but emphasizing how so in Jewish American culture, where the idea is often more directly relevant than in gentile cultures.
Sophie Smith, an educator with National Nurses United, recounts in the film attending a Jewish summer camp as a teen and being forced to participate in “Escape to Israel Night,” a scenario in which the camp became “a kind of Nazi gauntlet” with campers as mock refugees trying to escape persecution. Smith remarks onscreen that this kind of retraumatization, evoking the strong emotions inherent to the Holocaust, is used as a tool by defenders of Israel to distract and deflect attention from the state’s violence against Palestinian civilians.
Despite this, students around the world still came out en masse after Oct. 7, 2023, to demand a cease-fire, the release of Hamas’ hostages, and that their universities to pull endowment fund investments from companies like Boeing that were selling arms to Israel. The students were met with hostility and force, whether getting arrested by the police or reprimanded by their colleges. Exclusion argues that this too is old hat for Americans: many of their students modeled their demonstrations on the anti-apartheid movement of the late ’80s, while the backlash brings to mind the response to anti-war protests of the ’60s and ’70s—including the shootings at Kent State when Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on protesters, killing four and wounding nine others.
Interspersed throughout the proceedings is footage from the International Criminal Court as it heard the 2023 case that South Africa brought against Israel, accusing its government of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention, which formally recognized genocide as a crime against humanity after the Holocaust. Even though the court’s response was an ambiguous order to deescalate the conflict, which the Israeli government rejected, the case highlights the fact that student protesters aren’t alone in their outrage.
Exception closes by admitting that neither the interviewees nor the filmmakers themselves know what will happen next. World events are so rarely predictable, especially at this scale. A cease-fire has come as President Trump returns to office, and while that initiative feels long overdue, how long it might last is anyone’s guess. Whatever’s to come, The Palestine Exception is an erudite, efficient and engaging documentary that asks us to question our biases and speak out for justice in the face of an uncertain future.
SEE IT: The Palestine Exception at Cinema 21, 616 NW 21st Ave., 503-223-4515, cinema21.com. 4 pm Sunday, Jan. 26. $9–$11.