Gaza has been suspended in a bloody limbo for months. Despite the much-hyped ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—declared on October 10, 2025—peace has not arrived in the Gaza Strip. The bombings have continued, killing at least 509 people; hunger persists; aid trickles in rather than flows; and Israel remains in control of nearly 60 percent of the terrain. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to live in threadbare tents. Meanwhile, US promises of a “technocratic governance” mask a colonial project bestowed on a people with no say.

As Hollywood continues to prevent Palestinian films from reaching wide audiences, films like Palestine 36 and The Voice of Hind Rajab have made their way into award season discussions despite production and distribution challenges. Between these two films, Palestinian-led stories are telling crucial pieces of history, drawing a clear line from past to present.

Palestine 36, directed by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacir and distributed in the U.S. by Watermelon Pictures, is one of the most discussed international films of the past year. It received a twenty-minute long standing ovation after premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, won the Tokyo Film Festival’s top prize, and was even named to the Oscar shortlist for Best International Feature last month. But it almost didn’t make it to the big screen.

Like a lot of women, I do vaguely care about the latest political implosion of Peter Mandelson – but I think we’re all massively more obsessed with the fact that there really was a network of incredibly famous and powerful men trying to help a known ex-con minimise and wave away his underage sex crimes. Amirite, ladies? Sure, I’m crying my eyes out about some Gordon Brown adviser having his asset-sale memo forwarded in 2009 … but at the same time I’m a whole lot more concerned about the actual Sex Bilderberg. Which, even now, our eyes seem to keep being conveniently dragged away from. Can we refocus?

A panic pervades the internet: terrified talk of troops in American cities, federal shock troops brutalizing citizens and neighbors, the targeting of gun owners, mass surveillance, the deployment of militarized artificial intelligence, and the suspension of the Constitution. The year is 2015, and the far right is incensed.

This was a period of intense American paranoia and anger, largely spurred by the right-wing meltdown over the consecutive victories of President Barack Obama. It was also a time of post-Snowden horror, as a nation realized it lived inside an unfathomably immense government surveillance dragnet endorsed and expanded by both political parties. It was in this moment that, for a certain segment of conservatives, Jade Helm 15 became an American crisis.