BY EMMA ABATA
Los Alamos
If you are working multiple jobs to keep up with endless bills, anxiously watching your stocks or 401(k), wondering how Social Security is going to hold up, or just feeling like this country is being run for someone else’s benefit no matter who is in charge, this Tuesday’s film at SALA is for you.
On Tuesday, May 19 at 7 PM, the Free Palestine Film Series in Los Alamos will screen The Occupation of the American Mind, a documentary that explains how a foreign government and its lobby have spent decades shaping American media coverage and American foreign policy. The film is almost ten years old. What it predicted has now arrived.
On February 28 of this year, the United States and Israel jointly launched nearly 900 strikes on Iran. The attack came in the middle of active nuclear negotiations between the two countries. Reporting since has confirmed what most Americans were never told plainly: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally lobbied President Trump for the strike, and Israeli intelligence was cited as a decisive factor in the decision to go to war. American bases in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE were hit hard in retaliation. American servicemembers were put in the line of fire. American taxpayers picked up the tab.
Ask yourself a simple question. Whose interests were served when the United States bombed Iran during a negotiation with Iran? Not yours. Not your neighbor’s. Not the families where parents are working multiple jobs to make ends meet. The interests served belong to a small transnational class of colonial billionaires, weapons contractors, and political donors. This class is deeply embedded in the Israeli government, in our own government, and in ruling circles around the world. It is the same network that protected Jeffrey Epstein for decades. They profit from the wars. We pay for them.
The Occupation of the American Mind explains how they pull it off. The film walks you through the mechanics. How pro-Israel lobby groups coordinate talking points across newsrooms and Congress. How words like “occupation,” “blockade,” and “illegal settlement” disappear from major coverage. How journalists who show empathy for Palestinian children get pulled from assignments or worse. Why a country running record deficits and telling Americans there is no money for healthcare or housing somehow always finds money for one specific foreign government.
This is not only a Palestine issue. It is an American issue. It is about whether the country you live in is actually being run by you and for you. SALA sits in Los Alamos, the town that built the bomb. There are few places where this conversation feels more directly relevant.
The screening is free. Donations are welcomed. Bring your skepticism. Bring your neighbors.
The Occupation of the American Mind
Tuesday, May 19, 7 PM
SALA, Los Alamos