Mainstreaming Palestine

Cinematic Activism and Solidarity Politics in the United States

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by Umayyah Cable

Type: Studies
Subject: Countries > Middle East
Keywords: Palestine, politics, propaganda
Publishing date: 2025 (October 14, 2025)
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 272 pages
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches (14 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-5179-1996-2

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Book Presentation:
A history of cinema’s role in popularizing the politics of Palestinian liberation

For decades, Arab American activists and allies have used film, video, and multimedia to mobilize support for the Palestinian cause in the United States. In this detailed history of cinema’s role within the broader solidarity movement, Umayyah Cable analyzes the various strands of cinematic activism that have helped move Palestinian liberation politics from the periphery and into the mainstream.

Cable charts the shifting discourse around Palestine as it has been shaped by grassroots film production and alternative media distribution networks as well as more conventional outlets. Ranging from the circulation of educational filmstrips by the Association of Arab American University Graduates in the 1970s to the treatment of Palestinian solidarity at contemporary Hollywood awards ceremonies and film festivals, Mainstreaming Palestine tells the story of how cinema has promoted Palestinian liberation and solidarity politics. While highlighting various public controversies and struggles against censorship, Cable also acknowledges the drawbacks of the Palestinian cause being subsumed by the mainstream, discussing how activism risks becoming fashionable, undermining the radical potential of the very tools that helped bring it there.

Combining archival research, ethnographic observation and interviews, text analysis, and visual analysis of film, video, and multimedia, Mainstreaming Palestine encourages readers to critically assess the relationship between the politics of liberation and the all-consuming engine of contemporary capitalism. By underscoring the impact of visual media on the evolution of the Palestinian solidarity discourse, this book offers both a treatise on the practical power of cinema and a necessary historicization of an urgent issue in American politics.

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About the Author:
Umayyah Cable is assistant professor of American culture and film, television, and media at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Press Reviews:
"Rich, wry, and authoritative, Mainstreaming Palestine provides a much-needed critical assessment of Palestine-focused cinematic activism and solidarity cinema in the United States. Umayyah Cable draws on theoretical insights from film and media studies, cultural studies, queer studies, and ethnography, offering an absolutely essential contribution for scholars and cultural activists alike."―Keith P. Feldman, author of A Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America

"Mainstreaming Palestine offers an unprecedented fifty-year cultural history of how films about Palestine contribute to the Palestine solidarity movement. This is an essential analysis of what happens when Palestinian cinema and Palestine solidarity cinema go from unspeakable taboo to inclusion in liberal multiculturalism. A powerful and illuminating story of how solidarity overcomes censorship and hostility; you will never see films about Palestine in the same way again."―Evelyn Alsultany, author of Broken: The Failed Promise of Muslim Inclusion

See the publisher website: University of Minnesota Press

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