It takes close to a day to travel from my home in Portland Oregon to Venice, Italy.

For those transporting the work on display at this exhibit, the journeys take weeks or months. The carriers are part of a global network reaching across the Mediterranean Sea and through various ports, borders, roadblocks and delivery stations to arrive in Venice.

This cargo began in the Palestinian villages and refugee camps where women embroiderers created 100 pieces in a year-long project funded through the Palestine Museum US and their Tapestry History Project. From Ramallah to Lebanon’s refugee camps and as far as New Zealand, Palestinian women have been embroidering panels to create a collective cross-stitched testimonial in solidarity with the people of Gaza. Each piece consists of 55,000 stitches, totaling 5.5 million stitches, and depicts scenes from the genocide in Gaza.

🏛️ The Exhibit

The exhibit is part of the official Collateral Event of the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia and on display from May 9 through 22nd November 2026.

The creators of GAZA–NO WORDS have a vision of this work as an enduring record of the genocide. There is deep heartache, grief and mourning etched into the pieces on display. They also express collective outrage over the scale of the ongoing violence and a call to hold the perpetrators accountable.

GAZA - NO WORDS is visually bold and aesthetically moving as well. The 19 by 31-inch tapestries reflect the intricate beauty of tatreez (embroidery) as well as its history as symbol of Palestinian resistance. A centuries-old Palestinian tradition, tatreez is used to adorn wedding dresses and for other celebratory occasions. But much like the keffiyeh scarves, tatreez designs have been taken up as expressions of Palestinian identity and pride.

🎞️ The Documentary

I am honored to be working with Faisal Saleh and others on his team at the Palestine Museum US on a documentary that we hope to produce over the summer of 2026.

As a first step, editor Jeff Harshman and I worked with Faisal to create a trailer on the exhibit.

Watch Trailer

The film (likely 30-40 minutes in length) will tell the story behind the exhibit. That story includes the daunting journey of the carefully wrapped packages as they are passed person to person, via taxis, boats, cars and planes. It is a network born of creative strategies of resistance and movement across inhospitable borders. In following that journey, the film provides glimpses of the embroiderers as well, many of whom live under conditions of displacement and occupation.

Please follow this project as the production team and I report from the field.

If you haven’t seen the team’s previous films on Gaza, check out these documentaries from 2025: The Palestine Exception and SUMUD: A Doctor’s Report on Genocide and Survival in Gaza.

Watch on Watermelon Pictures

Watch on Amazon Prime Video

Watch SUMUD Trailer

SUMUD is now available for streaming worldwide on Kinema.

The stream also includes the full panel discussion recorded after our premiere. The conversation is candid, searching, and deeply personal. We talk about what it means to document suffering ethically, about the burden carried by medical workers who return home, and about why storytelling still matters.

The stream will be available to watch anywhere in the world - with a suggested rental of $4.99 and a pay-what-you-can option.

Stream SUMUD on Kinema

I hope you’ll watch these films. I hope you’ll share them. And I hope you’ll continue to stand with those whose steadfast perseverance keeps truth alive.

In solidarity,

Jan

How do we understand the place of Noam Chomsky, one of the most revered intellectuals of the American left, and his place in this dark labyrinth? And is it the case that ideological differences or principles mattered little in resisting the seductive powers of Epstein?

As leftists, as well as people who are trying to understand Epstein’s monstrous network, what grace do we grant this old man who at the same time was seemingly in control of his powers late in life? He suffered a massive stroke in 2023 and now is reportedly incapacitated and living in Brazil where he and his wife Valeria Chomsky own a home. She speaks for him now during his debilitated state. But up through his early 90s, Chomsky remained mentally sharp and publicly active.

Disbelief, grief and outrage course through many indie news sites and podcasts as admirers of Chomsky struggle to make sense of revelations of the longstanding and close relationship between the two men. In the released files and email correspondence, there is nothing suggestive of sexual impropriety, no underage girls, no apparent sexual favors. But there was a kind of pleasure economy operating here even if it was not sexual in nature. As a feminist psychologist, I wanted to go beyond the sensational quotes available online and trace the course of this relationship through their correspondence over a number of years—a correspondence available through jmail.world—a brilliant research tool created by several techies at MIT. The site allows viewers access to Epstein’s personal emails.

Some defend Chomsky the same way that others in the Epstein class defend themselves: He didn’t know how vile Epstein was; he was manipulated by a masterful con artist; he was exploited during an emotionally vulnerable time in his life. Valeria Chomsky released a statement in February 2026 claiming that she and her husband were taken in by Epstein and that they were “careless” not to have thoroughly researched his background.

All of this feels quite lazy and inadequate.

The Linguist Takes on the Behaviorists

Before offering my psycho-analysis of this relationship, ruminations over how to think about it brought to mind memories of how I first learned about Chomsky and became an admirer. It was not in his political theorizing but through his interventions in psychology.

When I joined the psychology faculty at my university in 1980, Chomsky provided an arsenal of arguments to counter the operant behaviorists—the Skinnerians—that still dominated my discipline. I joined the faculty as a feminist psychoanalytic clinician with philosophical interests and an aptitude for attending to the practical tasks of the department. Early on, I found favor with my colleagues through lively intellectual repartee in the department’s conference room. The psychology rat lab on the fifth floor of Cramer Hall was still the epicenter of experimental research but the old paradigms were under strain.

In the famous debates between B.F. Skinner and Chomsky in the 1960s, the intellectual referees I followed called it in favor of Chomsky. He laid out early formulations of what he became most famous for as a linguist—his theory of universal and generative grammar. The theory became more abstract over time. But in that early counter to the behaviorists Chomsky’s model of language exposed the impoverishment of the behavioral models with their blank mental slates.

A Feminist Eye

Years into my academic career, I began to look at Chomsky’s theory of language with a more critical eye.

One memorable scene comes to mind. In Chomsky’s celebrated debate with Michel Foucault in the 1980s, Chomsky lays out what he views as the evidence for complex innate mental structures relatively independent of the influence of culture. “A person who is interested in studying languages is faced with a very definite empirical problem,” Chomsky asserts.

What is this empirical problem? Chomsky goes on to explain that the core scientific problem is “that of accounting for the gap between the really quite small quantity of data, small and rather degenerate quantity of data that’s presented to the person, to the child, and the very highly articulated, highly systematic, profoundly organized resulting knowledge that he somehow derives from this data.”

What is he saying here? The “degenerate quantity of data presented to the child” reflected Chomsky’s disregard—intellectually and emotionally--for the complex and sensuous surround of this world of the child.

Language for Chomsky was an internal affair and only indirectly related to social connection or culture. Imbued with Rousseauian romantic currents, Chomsky argued that humans are innately wired for creativity and freedom and that human realization centers on casting off the repressive constraints of capitalism and state structures. One can read in Chomsky echoes of Marx’s early theory of species-being and alienation as well—how capitalism estranges workers from their very nature as creative social beings. Chomsky’s increasingly abstract linguistics became a kind of defensive, intellectual edifice, however, disconnected from the messy currents of life. It confessed to a certain autistic way of thinking.

The Development of a Friendship

In the months before Epstein’s death in jail in 2019 Chomsky emails his friend to say that Valeria “is putting together documentation about the matter that I can use in a case around the children.” Chomsky’s adult children had expressed alarm over how funds in an estate set up through his deceased wife were being transferred to a marital fund for Chomsky and his new wife 35 years his junior. Noam and Valeria had sought Epstein’s counsel as someone with acumen in managing delicate financial problems.

And then Chomsky turns to Epstein’s own mounting problems in a passage widely cited and condemned in online discussions:

Beyond the glib tone of this email, Chomsky endorses the excessively defensive reactions associated with right wing men.

During this same period, Epstein offers: “You can stay in my apartment in New York as long as you live.”

Phases of an Intimate Relationship

In reading many hundreds of these email exchanges that took place from 2012 until just before Epstein’s death in jail in 2019, I noticed patterns that suggest phases in the development of their relationship. There was the courtship phase, then the challenges that produced a form of working alliance between them, and a later phase of renewed commitment and vows of their enduring bonds.

Close friends, much like romantic couples, often go through such phases. Epstein began his courtship of Chomsky in 2012 –a phase that continued over several years with Jeffrey’s regular offerings of gifts, dinners and visits to his many homes, interspersed with intellectual games and playful exchanges on topics of mutual interest. There were giddy expressions of affection on the part of both Epstein and Chomsky, joined by Chomsky’s new wife Valeria after they married in 2014. Emails are laced with Epstein’s frequent offers of sumptuous retreats and exciting dinner parties. The courtship between the two men extended early on to Valeria—a kind of third term in this bromance.

In 2015, the relationship turned to decidedly serious personal matters. On Feb 2015, Jeffrey writes to Noam. “I think we should set up the foundation so that valeria [sic] is taken care of if something were to happen to you…you can count on my help. but let’s not wait too long.”

The joyous meetings and playful emails of the courtship phase shifted to what clinicians often term the working alliance. Couples face life challenges and find out whether their capacities and interests are sufficiently aligned to continue on the road ahead. This opened a period of consultations that continued through 2019 on Chomsky’s tax issues and a lawsuit from Chomsky’s children that centered on claims around their father’s assets. Epstein regularly advised the Chomsky’s on legal and financial countermoves and how to protect their assets.

From the courtship phase through these somber consultations, we can see a consistent stylistic through line that Epstein adopted. It was notable in his other email correspondence but quite pronounced with Chomsky. Epstein would pick up a fragment of an idea, an element of Chomsky’s theorizing, particularly around generative language and linguistics where Chomsky’s influence was waning.

From November 2018, Jeffrey writes (verbatim from email): “What I’m suggesting is that what the term culture means is the same as what consciousness means. Culture can be described as Russell did for consciousness, the physics and math envy habit of trying to reassure things. We experience culture at a stubborn, transmitted, localized, contains memories, boundaries, dictum.” And so on.

Epstein’s intellectual overtures are stream of consciousness with many typos and sentence fragments. It was as if the restless mind of this would-be genius can’t settle down enough to keep up with the mundane task of writing. He is always flying somewhere and meeting interesting people. This frenetic, cryptic style of correspondence gives Epstein a kind of intellectual cover.

In his responses, Chomsky would gather up/cover up the fragments, often reframing what psychiatrists would call a “word salad.” And Chomsky expressed deep appreciation for Epstein’s brilliant insights.

In February 2018, Chomsky writes to Epstein, “Can’t thank you enough for what you did on this (advice on handling the legal problems with his children) -- a very small fraction of what we have to thank you for, by no means least, in fact most, just the gift of friendship over these years. And now off to prepare a class later today on the impending end of civilization.”

Indeed, in a character reference letter written on behalf of Epstein somewhere around 2017, Chomsky ends with lavish praise: “the impact of Jeffrey’s limitless curiosity, extensive knowledge, penetrating insights and thoughtful appraisals is only heightened by his easy formality without a trace of pretentiousness. He quickly became a highly valued friend and regular source of intellectual exchange and stimulation.”

As Epstein coached Chomsky and his wife on their legal moves, Chomsky was advising Epstein on how to manage his own public relations problems. So this letter by a dear old man who is presumably bamboozled by this con artist grew from commitments made over an extended period of time that overlap with growing public knowledge of the seriousness of Epstein’s crimes.

The Ties that Bind

The centrality of Epstein’s ability to procure girls and young women for wealthy men can blind us to a recurring undercurrent in this sexually exploitive, misogynist world. The girls and women on display did grant these men a form of uber-class status. But their presence—too young or vulnerable to assert any real agency-- allowed for the free expression of homoerotic bonds as well. The exchanges around sex take on the tone of anxious immature boys. Girls and women are mere fetish objects in Epstein’s world. (Note: Freud developed the psychological concept of the fetish around this form of masculine anxiety and fear of women’s bodies. The boy or man fixates on an exciting part—a shoe, a foot--as a defense against the whole of what woman represents.)

In the course of couples counseling, the therapist often turns to how the two people met and what drew them together. For many of us as clinicians, we listen for fantasies and unconscious desires that can be part of the field of attraction.

And so in closing, I turn to the first emails between Chomsky and Epstein. It was March 30th, 2012, and it started with Lawrence Krauss asking Noam if he would like to be introduced to Jeffrey. Krauss himself had been accused for close to a decade of sexual misconduct by students and fellow faculty members (situations for which he had sought Epstein’s advice). Chomsky stood by his friend saying he had no knowledge of any inappropriate behavior.

Krauss writes: “If you are willing, is there anyone I can have him (Epstein) contact to set up an appointment? I will owe you. He is an interesting fellow in any case.”

Noam responds: “Just suggest to him to write to me. It’s a Sunday, I think, so it won’t be when I’m at work.”

Lawrence replies: “You are in. He will meet with you. You of course owe me big time now. I was hoping I would get him out to Arizona for our deception [sic] meeting. So all I got out of the email was a meeting for you. Enjoy. Lawrence.”

This was before the troubles with his children were on the horizon and before the new wife. There was something Noam was to enjoy here and something that would be owed through this meeting.

In conclusion, I would say that as important as Chomsky has been as a left scholar, he is no friend to feminists. This kind of willful blindness and what Valeria Chomsky describes as their “carelessness” do matter.

After spending many days reading these emails, I was left with a sense of disappointment and disgust but not with the crushing loss of a hero. As feminists, we may be less vulnerable than our male comrades to over-idealization. We have had to collectively work through our daddy issues.

Targeting “Wokeness” in the Military

Early in his tenure as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth targeted the problem of “wokeness” in the US military. The US lost the wars it fought in the 21st century, the Secretary asserts, because of a corrosive feminizing of the war machine. After repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, Hegseth became a Fox News host. He gained prominence for rallying around service members convicted in military courts of war crimes—an ominous portent of things to come.

Outrage over “wokeness” has circulated in rightwing media for years now, initially as attacks on student groups and academic programs associated with race and gender studies. The Trump regime has extended this war against wokeness to all branches of government, including calls for the erasure of the contributions of women and racial minorities to the armed forces. The rhetoric resonates deeply with white Christian nationalists and their fascistic whitewashing of US history.

Reactionary Masculinity

But most palpable in this crusade is its reactionary vision of masculinity. Hegseth vows to return the military’s focus to killing the enemy unconstrained by the law or rules of war. “Maximum lethality, not tepid legality,” he raps. “Violent effect, not politically correct.” And as the US and Israel wage war on Iran, Hegseth barks threats like a playground bully: “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” As the US escalates into genocidal attacks and threats to destroy an entire civilization, Iran is showing that it can very much punch above its weight.

Mental Health, War Stress, and Military Adaptation

In 2010, I submitted a proposal to the US Army to make a documentary on how the military was handling mental health problems among troops in Afghanistan. Repeated deployments—some service members signing up for third or fourth deployments after being offered cash bonuses—raised public alarm over the emotional costs of the Long War. Further, the Defense Department’s expanded reliance on Reserve Units, as well as rising suicide rates in veterans, added to public concerns. In response, the Department of Defense for the first time in the history of American wars embedded Combat and Operational Stress Control (COSC) units in forward operating bases in Afghanistan. Multidisciplinary teams—psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists—were placed in military bases in combat zones to provide short-term interventions for soldiers suffering psychiatric symptoms or acute stress reactions. The mission of the stress control units centered on returning soldiers to duty quickly rather than evacuating them.

Proposal to Document Combat Stress Control

My proposal to the Army went something like this: There is a military literature that dates back to Freud after the First World War discussing ethical conflicts for military clinicians in treating soldiers showing symptoms of emotional breakdown while returning many of these same soldiers to duty. The public needs to be educated on how the military is responding to these conflicting demands and to learn about the expanded role of combat stress control in the war in Afghanistan. As a clinical psychologist, academic and documentarian, I am uniquely equipped to tell that story.

The proposal process through the Army and clearances through the Pentagon and ISAF/NATO in Afghanistan were indeed daunting. As a feminist scholar and anti-war activist, my chances of approval would seem doomed from the start. But a convergence of forces opened space for this project.

A Moment of “Wokeness” in the Military

Indeed, 2010 was a year of wokeness in the military. The officer in the Oregon Army Reserves who supported my project and recommended me to her superiors had just been promoted to Colonel. She had also married a woman in Oregon earlier that year as the military was assessing the costs of its policies on homosexuality. (By 2008, more than 12,000 officers had been discharged from the military for publicizing their homosexuality.) On December 18, 2010, the Senate overturned the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy by a 65-31 vote, which President Barack Obama signed a few days later. The repeal allowed gay and lesbian military members to serve openly in the armed forces.

It was the year when military units across the country were required to create task forces on sexual assault in the military and when military commanders were required to investigate complaints of sexual abuse or harassment.

It was the year when training for units deploying to Afghanistan included lectures on the oppression of women under the Taliban and on boosting public support for the mission by positioning the US military as the defender of Afghani women.

It was the year when service members were encouraged to get counseling and to interpret their feelings of vulnerability and disabling symptoms as strengths. Posters in VA clinics invited veterans to see that “it takes a strong warrior to get help.”

The New Military

At the center of this era of the New Military was the expanded role of mental health professionals in the management of warfare.

My film, MIND ZONE: Therapists Behind the Front Lines–stayed true to the promise of my proposal. But like wars themselves, documenting wars carry unintended consequences. Some of the supporters of MIND ZONE felt betrayed by the film while others–including featured clinicians–defended the documentary as presenting a respectful picture of the pressures they were under and the complexity of their mission.

The Army had given me complete editorial control with two conditions: 1) that the film not expose information or sites that would risk the military operation and 2) that the film not include images disparaging of US service members. After reviewing a cut of the film for distribution in early 2012, the U.S Army Office of the Chief of Public Affairs in Los Angeles signed off that those two conditions were met.

Colonel David Rabb

Filming started in 2011 as my crew and I interviewed Colonel David Rabb whose story is closely followed in the film. He often expounded on the new ethos of the military. He was a social worker and Army reservist working in a VA center in California and as a Black man he had complaints about racism in the promotion of people of color to higher ranks. But he was a true believer in progress in the military and of the righteousness of campaigns ushered in with the War on Terrorism.

“This is a very different leadership in the Army than the one of my father’s generation,” he explained. “This is no longer the world of the drill sergeant barking orders and humiliating those under his command.”

Ethical Tensions

In June of 2011, my crew and I filmed Col Rabb’s unit—the 113^th Medical Detachment—as they trained at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington State and as they prepared to deploy to Kandahar, Afghanistan later that month. The previous year, reports circulated in the media of soldiers with a Stryker Brigade based at JBLM accused of killing Afghan civilians.

Members of this platoon were accused of staging combat situations to deliberately murder unarmed Afghan civilians for sport in Kandahar province and collecting body parts as trophies.

Further, military psychiatrists at JBLM were under Congressional investigation for reclassifying service members diagnosed with PTSD to make them re-deployable. These cases weighed heavily on the 113^th as they navigated the daunting mission ahead.

There were other haunting pictures that complicated the mission of stress control. In a training session for Oregon Army Reserve members joining the 113^th, one extensive presentation showed torture scenes at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq—pictures that circulated widely in the media—as a lesson on the risk of troops descending into sadism. The Department of Defense had faced a full-blown crisis over images of American service members torturing and sexually abusing prisoners. Stripping prisoners of their clothes was a common form of sexual humiliation and degradation there. Obama, who had initially agreed to release photographs, changed his mind after lobbying from senior military figures. Obama stated that their release could put troops in danger and “inflame anti-American public opinion.” Further, pictures of political prisoners tortured through “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantánamo Bay represented another public relations crisis for the military.

For many parents who sent sons and daughters into these conflict zones, the fear was that the military was turning their children into monsters.

War Narratives

The war in Iraq had become a bad story. The war in Afghanistan was a better story for the military and for President Obama as he authorized in 2009 a massive troop surge. For Obama, too, the campaign in Afghanistan was “the necessary war.” In that classical psychological defense of splitting, of cordoning a messy situation into good and bad elements, Obama sought political refuge in Afghanistan. It was a righteous cause, unlike the war in Iraq that his predecessor George W. Bush had launched against the protests of much of the world.

I was authorized to embed with a Combat Stress Unit deploying to Afghanistan because commanders were proud of this expanded form of caregiving in the theater of war. As a psychologist, the film became a case study in the problematic role of my own profession and other mental health professionals in the conduct of war.

Reception, Decline, and Historical Context

MIND ZONE was produced by Herzog & Co and completed in 2012. After Obama drew down troops and declared the war in Afghanistan to be essentially over that year, distributors lost interest. The film was now an old story.

Spanning four presidencies, the war cost over 2 trillion dollars and resulted in massive casualties before ending with a troop withdrawal in 2021 and the Taliban’s return to power.

The war killed an estimated 176,000–212,000 people, including 46,319 civilians.

None of the political or military leaders promulgating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has been brought to justice or faced demands for accountability. We shall see if the current regime of warmongers confronts a different fate.

We met last month at the Al Ard Film Festival in Sardinia. It’s wonderful to continue our conversation after the festival.

You can subscribe to Dr. Claudia Ortu’s newsletter on Substack for more of her work.

This was one of the most wonderful festivals I’ve attended. You also joined me for the Q&A after the screening of my film The Palestine Exception. Can you tell us a little about the festival and how you became involved?

The festival has been running for 22 years. I initially became involved as a translator and subtitler for the films. I also helped with Q&As conducted in English, since my academic background is in English linguistics and discourse analysis.

Because of that expertise, I’ve always contributed to the linguistic side of the festival—translation and interpretation. But over time I’ve managed to reshape my role as an interpreter making it less technical and hybridising it with that of an interviewer/interlocutor.

Have you seen a blossoming of film culture focused on Palestine as you’ve reviewed submissions this year? It seems like a golden era for Palestinian filmmakers, though of course there is also a long history of cultural work through film. What stood out to you this year?

It is becoming harder and harder to select films, that’s for sure. As you said, there has been a flourishing of creative work about Palestine, and we have seen an increase in submissions both this year and last year.

I should admit something that feels strange to say as a scholar of discourse analysis. I have been losing faith in words lately.

Yes, I know—it sounds crazy. But we use words in every possible way to try to defend Palestinian life and rights, and at the moment it feels as if no word is strong enough.

That’s why cinema can be so powerful. Film brings together images and language, and meaning emerges from their interaction. Communication is always multimodal, but cinema highlights that in a particularly powerful way.

Our societies have become increasingly image-based. Perhaps the “naked word” now needs the support of images in order to reach people—to speak to those who share this moment in history with us.

I was curious about the challenges of translation during the festival, especially in the Q&A discussions around the film. The Palestine Exception examines words and slogans that have become controversial or condemned in the pro-Palestinian movement. Movements often develop slogans as a kind of shorthand speech, but these can later be repressed by dominant powers. How did those ideas translate to audiences in Italy?

That’s a very interesting question. Many of the concepts and slogans explored in your film are actually the same ones that are debated and criticized in Italy.

Take the phrase “From the river to the sea.” In demonstrations here, we often chant it in English rather than Italian. Partly that’s because the English version rhymes with “free,” while the Italian translation does not.

So sometimes we keep expressions in English when they have been adopted by the movement. They become part of the shared language of activism.

The word “Zionism” is another interesting example. Before the events in Gaza intensified, it was mostly used within activist circles. It belonged to a relatively small speech community.

But after Gaza, the term entered wider public discourse. For me, words are like coins—they only have value if people recognize them and agree on their meaning. Zionism has now become a word with broader “currency” in public debate.

People may disagree with you when you use the word, but they understand what you are talking about. And that is an important step.

Were there particular parts of the film that resonated especially strongly with Italian audiences?

Yes. The scenes showing police violence against encampments and demonstrations resonated deeply. Italian audiences recognize that kind of repression.

Police forces around the world increasingly use similar tactics, and many of those tactics have been developed through cooperation with Israeli security institutions.

Exactly—and that includes surveillance technologies as well.

But also the methods used to control crowds and suppress protests. Many activists argue that tactics first tested on Palestinian bodies are later used elsewhere.

This is why activists often say, “We are all Palestinians.” It is not just a symbolic statement. Palestinians are often on the front line, where certain forms of repression are tested before they spread globally.

So their struggle becomes connected to struggles elsewhere.

One of the things I noticed while making the film was how many young people identify with the Palestinian cause. They see connections between settler colonialism, capitalism, racism, and other systems of oppression. They are horrified by the violence but also inspired by Palestinian resistance. Is that something you see in Italy as well?

Definitely.

You reminded me of an idea discussed by the scholar Saree Makdisi in the film: oppression exists because there is resistance. Oppression is a response to people refusing to submit.

Palestinians refuse to accept a life reduced to mere survival. Because they refuse, they are punished.

The same dynamic appears elsewhere. When people refuse to live only as consumers or producers within a system—when they say, “I am a human being with ideas and principles”—that challenges the system.

Students demonstrated this very clearly. They said: “My career is not the most important thing. My humanity is.”

That is something the state and the economic system struggle to tolerate. They prefer individuals who only pursue personal success within the existing structure.

When people insist on being human beings rather than cogs in a machine, that becomes threatening.

I’d like to conclude with a quote from the Marxist cultural theorist Antonio Gramsci, who was from Sardinia. His famous line reads: “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.” He wrote this while imprisoned by Italian fascists. How does that quote resonate with you today?

Yes, that quote—about the “morbid symptoms”—is very well known here.

I’ve actually used it recently in an article I wrote about the criminalization of protests. In Sardinia alone, 79 people are currently under investigation for participating in demonstrations.

So I wrote that these prosecutions are exactly what Gramsci described: the “monsters” that appear when the old world is dying but refuses to disappear.

The system senses its own decline and reacts violently in order to delay that process.

But we must remember the other side of the quote: the new world struggling to be born. Our task is to organize so that this new world can emerge.

And in many ways, we are learning from Palestinian resistance. Resistance can take many forms—from students pursuing their education despite everything, to mothers caring for their children, to people simply insisting on their right to dignity.

All of these are forms of resistance.

So the key word for me is organizing. We organize so that the new world can be born.

And perhaps, continuing your metaphor, there are many midwives helping to bring that world into being.

Exactly.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Claudia Ortu. It was an honor to present The Palestine Exception at the festival this year, and please extend our solidarity to your colleagues and comrades.

Thank you.

The Palestine Exception is a searing and unflinchingly honest account of what it means to stand for something, and the immense consequences of speaking up. This is a vital documentary for our present moment, but also a terrifying look at how institutional power has always tried – and will always try – to enforce silence on every last one of its critics.

Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Winner of National Book Award

Watch on Watermelon Pictures

Watch on Amazon Prime Video

▶️ Now Available for Streaming on Kinema

I’m excited to let you know that SUMUD is now available for streaming on Kinema.

The stream also includes the full panel discussion recorded after our premiere. The conversation is candid, searching, and deeply personal. We talk about what it means to document suffering ethically, about the burden carried by medical workers who return home, and about why storytelling still matters.

The stream will be available to watch anywhere in the world - with a suggested rental of $4.99 and a pay-what-you-can option.

Stream SUMUD on Kinema

🎥 Free Screenings for Teachers, Community Organizers, and Groups

For teachers, community organizers, and groups, SUMUD is also available directly through our website for educational screenings. I have long believed that films do their deepest work in shared spaces - in classrooms, union halls, community centers - where difficult conversations can unfold collectively.

We are making the film available free of charge to activist organizations and educators.

Host a Screening

From our theatrical premiere to festival screenings and online conversations with colleagues and audiences, these gatherings have been powerful reminders of how film can open space for collective reflection and engagement. I’m grateful to the many organizers, collaborators, and viewers who continue to bring these conversations to life and sustain the broader movement for justice and dignity for Palestinians.

“The closest sort of English analogy to sumud is steadfastness--this notion of standing your ground, of withstanding. A large part of the reason why it has come to take on the meaning it has, particularly with respect to the occupation of Palestine and to the myriad indignities to which the Palestinian people are subjected on a daily basis, is because it relates to the notion of not just steadfastness, but steadfastness in the face of glaring asymmetry, asymmetry of violence, asymmetry of resources, and so on and so forth.”

- Omar El Akkad, SUMUD documentary

🎞️ The Palestine Exception Screening at Al Ard Film Festival

In February, I was honored to screen The Palestine Exception at the Al Ard Film Festival, held annually in Cagliari, Italy. The festival brings together filmmakers, scholars, and audiences committed to exploring Palestinian history, culture, and political struggle through cinema.

Sharing the film in this international setting created space for thoughtful dialogue about academic freedom, censorship, and solidarity movements on university campuses, and we were grateful for the engaged audience and the meaningful conversations that followed the screening.

🎞️ SUMUD Screening at Doctors Against Genocide

On March 1, Doctors Against Genocide hosted a special webinar featuring a screening of Sumud: A Doctor’s Report on Genocide and Survival in Gaza. The film was followed by a discussion with Travis Melin, the anesthesiologist and intensivist featured in the film who has completed multiple medical aid missions to Gaza, working at Al Aqsa, Al Awda, and Nasser Hospitals and supporting medical evacuations from northern Gaza.

🎞️ SUMUD Screening at Glia

On March 8, I will join an online event hosted in support of the work of the Glia Institute of Collective Care, beginning with a screening of SUMUD followed by a conversation about the ethical responsibilities of storytelling during times of mass violence. The discussion will explore filmmaking as a form of social memory - how narratives are shaped, whose voices are centered, and what responsibilities filmmakers carry when documenting suffering in real time.

Registration will be offered through a capacity-based donation supporting Glia’s wound care clinic in Gaza. In the spirit of shared responsibility, I invite you to contribute to help sustain the clinic’s essential work and keep participation accessible for others.

Donate to Register

❤️ Thank You for Your Support

Last month, we held the theatrical premiere of SUMUD in Portland, Oregon. I was deeply grateful for the many people who came together to support the film. The evening was a powerful reminder that filmmaking is always a collective effort. From the healthcare workers who shared their experiences, to the organizers, volunteers, and audience members who contributed their time, energy, and donations, the event reflected a spirit of solidarity and care.

I extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped make the premiere possible. Your support strengthens the ongoing movement for justice, dignity, and freedom for Palestinians.

Watch SUMUD Trailer

▶️ Now Available for Streaming on Kinema

I’m excited to let you know that SUMUD is now available for streaming on Kinema.

The stream also includes the full panel discussion recorded after our premiere. The conversation is candid, searching, and deeply personal. We talk about what it means to document suffering ethically, about the burden carried by medical workers who return home, and about why storytelling still matters.

The stream will be available to watch anywhere in the world - with a suggested rental of $4.99 and a pay-what-you-can option.

Stream SUMUD on Kinema

🎥 Free Screenings for Teachers, Community Organizers, and Groups

For teachers, community organizers, and groups, SUMUD is also available directly through our website for educational screenings. I have long believed that films do their deepest work in shared spaces - in classrooms, union halls, community centers - where difficult conversations can unfold collectively.

We are making the film available free of charge to activist organizations and educators.

Host a Screening

I hope you’ll watch this film. I hope you’ll share it. And I hope you’ll continue to stand with those whose steadfast perseverance keeps truth alive.

In solidarity,

Jan

In Arabic, SUMUD means steadfast perseverance. It is a word I have heard again and again over the past year - spoken quietly in hospital corridors, in the exhausted voices of doctors, and in the testimony of those who continue to bear witness as the world looks away.

As increasing numbers of journalists in Gaza are killed by Israeli forces, Gazan health care workers and international medical volunteers serve as vital reporters bearing witness to the ongoing genocide.

🎞️ Theatrical Premiere

On February 8, 2026, we held the theatrical premiere of SUMUD: A Doctor’s Report on Genocide and Survival in Gaza in Portland, Oregon. The film follows Dr. Travis Meleen, an American anesthesiologist volunteering at Nasser Hospital in Gaza as he works with Palestinian surgical teams that continue training at Nasser Hospital even as the medical center is under siege. The film includes commentary from Omar El Akkad, an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer reporting on the genocide. He is the author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

The premiere was followed by a panel discussion and audience Q and A with Dr. Meleen, El Akkad and myself.

Watch SUMUD Trailer

▶️ Now Available for Streaming on Kinema

I’m excited to let you know that SUMUD is now available for streaming on Kinema.

The stream also includes the full panel discussion recorded after our premiere. The conversation is candid, searching, and deeply personal. We talk about what it means to document suffering ethically, about the burden carried by medical workers who return home, and about why storytelling still matters. The total program running time is 66 minutes.

The stream will be available to watch anywhere in the world - with a suggested rental of $4.99 and a pay-what-you-can option.

Stream SUMUD on Kinema

🔊 Podcast on NPR Think Out Loud

Dr. Meleen and I joined Think Out Loud to discuss the making of SUMUD. In that conversation, we spoke about what compelled him to go, what compelled me to film, and what we hope these stories might move viewers to do. You can listen to the episode online through NPR. The exchange reminded me that documentary filmmaking is never a solitary act - it’s a web of conversations, risks, and responsibilities.

Listen to Podcast

🎥 Free Screenings for Teachers, Community Organizers, and Groups

For teachers, community organizers, and groups, SUMUD is also available directly through our website for educational screenings. I have long believed that films do their deepest work in shared spaces - in classrooms, union halls, community centers - where difficult conversations can unfold collectively.

We are making the film available free of charge to activist organizations and educators.

Host a Screening

I hope you’ll watch this film. I hope you’ll share it. And I hope you’ll continue to stand with those whose steadfast perseverance keeps truth alive.

In solidarity,

Jan

This year we’ve had over 110 screenings of The Palestine Exception across the country, at the Capital City Film Festival, Chicago Palestine Film Festival, and Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival. And in Europe, Palæstina Film Festival (Denmark), Exile Film Festival (Sweden), and London Palestine Film Festival (UK). We are honored to receive the award of Best Documentary Feature at Morehouse College’s Human Rights Film Festival.

The Palestine Exception is a searing and unflinchingly honest account of what it means to stand for something, and the immense consequences of speaking up. This is a vital documentary for our present moment, but also a terrifying look at how institutional power has always tried – and will always try – to enforce silence on every last one of its critics.

Omar El Akkad, author of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Winner of National Book Award

Watch Trailer

New Release

J Haaken Productions has created a sequel to The Palestine Exception, SUMUD: A Doctor’s Report on Genocide and Survival in Gaza.

As increasing numbers of journalists in Gaza are killed by Israeli forces, Gazan health care workers and international volunteers serve as vital reporters bearing witness to the ongoing genocide. This film follows an American anesthesiologist volunteering in Gaza, with commentary from an Egyptian-Canadian journalist and writer reporting on the genocide. The doctor calls out the medical profession in the US where the “Palestine exception” on genocide in Gaza speaks volumes.

Watch Trailer

Global Spotlight

We were delighted to participate in the Climate Tipping Point 2025 film festival in Taipei, Taiwan where we screened Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance.

This film follows anti-nuclear activists, tribal leaders, scientists and attorneys as they draw lessons from the decades-long campaign to shut down the Trojan Nuclear Power plant in Oregon and extend those lessons into a new struggle to stop small modular reactors (SMRs) from being built across North America.

Watch Full Film for Free

Thank You to Our Friends & Supporters!

We want to express our deep appreciation to the many people who contribute to these documentary projects and who have helped us to maintain momentum. We continue to expand our networks to build our “anti-nuclear renaissance!” and to challenge institutional power that collaborates with the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

And finally, welcome to our new Communications Coordinator, Sarah Chivers. Most of us on the team are volunteers but we do have paid staff roles and hard costs associated with screening events. So please help us keep these shows on the road! Support independent activist cinema!

Thanks so much,

--Jan