‘The Encampments’ Movie Pitches A Tent For Mahmoud Khalil

It’s obvious directors Kei Pritsker and Michael T Workman set out to make a world-changing advocacy film with The Encampments when they embedded themselves with pro-Palestine student protesters at Columbia University. They probably thought they were doing social justice a big solid. What they produced instead is an 81-minute case study in youthful delusion and antisemitism, ending in abject political failure … and possible deportation.

The Encampments begins with headlines of administrators and politicians characterizing the student protesters as “extremists” and “radicals.” They designed this opening sequence, cliche as it may be, to both hook and set-up a contrast with notorious characters we’re about to meet. In the end, they intend for us to come away thinking, “silly me, they are not radical extremists after all!” Pritsker and Workman failed.

You may ask, if you’ve been living in a cave on Mount Zion, what’s this protesting all about, anyway? Just the ancient religious conflicts of the Middle East boiled down into the microcosm of Columbia University’s $14 billion endowment fund, and the fact that the endowment includes investments with mutual funds diversified into defense contractor stocks. Only that.

For a few minutes in The Encampments’ first act, the filmmakers act like this is damnably-scandalous breaking news! Foreboding music plays as they show us document closeups highlighting endowment stocks. So what? Nobody cares.

Nobody but “protest organizer” and “student negotiator” Mahmoud Khalil, and several hundred students on an ivy league campus in New York City, demanding their trustees divest from defense contractors in a bid to end a so-called genocide in Palestine. They care a lot, and in all-the-worst obnoxiously activist ways: “occupying” lawns and buildings, repeating chants like programmable infants, and issuing absurd demands to university admins.

The rest of us don’t care because we understand Hamas provoked Israel into a war, that enemies both surround and outnumber Israel, and we want Israel to exist. That’s the underlying problem with this film: its protagonists are obnoxious and delusional. Even the most talented of political advocacy filmmakers, say Michael Moore in his folksy prime, couldn’t overcome this fundamental flaw in the source material.

Pritsker and Workman don’t even attempt the illusion of balanced narrative. They dare not ask their subjects hard questions. Nor do they attempt to investigate or surface on-campus conflicts stemming from the polarization they in-part caused, including reports of targeted antisemitic intimidation. They don’t raise any point in Israel’s corner, either.

In their historical view, which we finally get around to seeing in the third act, it’s about Zionist settlers versus righteously indigenous Palestinians, and this settles everything. They don’t so much as mention the devastatingly ironic fact that while students wave Palestinian flags, barricaded in an American Academic Building, Gaza’s controlling terrorist government is holding American citizens hostage. We don’t see anything like that.

To the filmmakers and protesters of this student-led movement, words don’t mean anything anymore. Israelis and anyone who supports or defends Israel’s existence are “Zionists” and Zionists are the bad guys. Trespassing vandals and agitators unlawfully occupying buildings are “freedom fighters” and their inciting leader is a “student negotiator.” Everyone who helps them is a human rights hero making a stand.

One student who “got involved” put herself in charge of food. As far as I can tell, she set-up a folding table, and Manhattan’s finest Mediterranean eateries sent camping ivy leaguers tasty to-go orders, for free! She calls this organizing and logistics. Impressive.

At one point in their protest, and I may have to rewatch it only because it seems unbelievable that ivy leaguers could be this dumb. But, at one point, a Columbia University admin offered the protesters  a review role on the university’s endowment fund. Protesters rejected the offer, scoffing that this isn’t “real change.” If that isn’t, what is?

The feds recently “disappeared” Mahmoud Khalil, according to the Newspeak language of his activist friends. In reality, they’ve detained him, pending a deportation verdict for violating the terms of his green card. I suppose it’s apropos of something that Khalil closes The Encampments longing for a return to Palestine. You might even call it camp.