Boycott (2021)

Wednesday, November 2, 2022 at 6:30 pm., St. John Fisher College, Basil Hall, Room 135.

This film will be shown on the same program with We Never Left, Palestine.

Director: Julia Bacha

Producers: Suhad Babaa and Daniel J. Chalfen

Run Time: 1:13

Language: English

Style: Documentary

Year: 2021

Award Nominations: Julia Bacha for the Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up award (Cleveland International Film Festival, 2022), and Julia Bacha for the Festival Favorites Audience Award (SXSW Film Festival, 2022)

Admission: $9 adults, $6 students at The Little Theatre on October 30. Admission is free at St. John Fisher on November 2.

Over the past six years, unbeknownst to most Americans, 33 states passed laws intending to silence boycott and other nonviolent measures aimed at pressuring Israel on its human rights record. These dangerous bills remove the legal protection that has been awarded to boycotts for generations, granting governments the power to condition jobs on political viewpoints.

As this wave of anti-boycott legislation has swept through the country, so has a counter-wave in defense of freedom of speech. Everyday Americans are challenging these laws for their constitutionality in a nation-wide battle likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Boycott focuses on three successful court cases challenging government actions to oppose boycott of Israel by requiring state vendors to contractually pledge not to boycott Israel during the duration of the contract.

1. Alan Leveritt; publisher of the Arkansas Times, a weekly newspaper supported only through advertising; sued the state university system as an advertiser requiring the contract clause.
2. Bahia Amawi, a Palestinian-American speech pathologist, sued the Texas school district where she provided services and the Texas Attorney General.
3. Mik Jordahl sued his client, the county government in Sedona AZ where he provides legal services.

With full access to the plaintiffs and in revelatory moments with elected officials, Boycott chronicles one of the most consequential First Amendment battles of the past few decades and investigates the question – how did we get here?

The story of Boycott weaves through the personal histories and legal battles of three “accidental plaintiffs” across the U.S.

Panelist Zoha Khalili 

Zoha Khalili is a staff attorney at Palestine Legal. She provides legal advice and advocacy support to activists in the movement for Palestinian freedom on issues ranging from free speech violations, discrimination and disciplinary charges to doxxing, surveillance and threats.

Zoha’s legal career has been devoted to defending the rights of marginalized communities. Before joining Palestine Legal, Zoha fought against housing discrimination and advocated on behalf of people with disabilities as a staff attorney at Project Sentinel. Prior to this, she represented immigrants in naturalization and deportation proceedings as an immigrant rights fellow at Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus.

Zoha is a graduate of Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar and a managing editor of the Columbia Law Review. Zoha holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.