Don't you just hate it when successful, pampered celebrities bash Israel using antisemitic tropes – and so many Hollywood Jews stay silent?
That could be a line from one of Jerry Seinfeld’s latest stand-up shows, because Seinfeld, never known before as being particularly political, has become one of the celebrities leading the charge to counter the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish voices in the entertainment industry.
If we look at this situation from the glass half-full perspective, he has been joined by a relatively small but bold group who have chosen to speak their minds about anti-Zionism and antisemitism. These include comedians, actors, and musicians such as Boy George, Debra Messing, Michael Rapaport, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Patricia Heaton, Montana Tucker, Amy Schumer, Mayim Bialik, Julianna Margulies, Helen Mirren, and Liev Schreiber.
Israelis in Hollywood have had vastly different reactions to the climate of sympathy for terror groups cloaked as concern over the well-being of Palestinians following the Hamas-led massacres in Israel on October 7, 2023. Gal Gadot, the most visible of all Israelis in Hollywood, has never played down her nationality or failed to speak what was in her heart, while also consistently showing public solidarity with her homeland.
In contrast, Natalie Portman, whose real last name is Hershlag, and who was born in Jerusalem, posted a few times about child hostages at the beginning of the war, but has since been almost completely silent on anything to do with antisemitism and Israel.
Speaking up
Several influential producers have also stepped up. Lawrence Bender, Matti Leshem, Haim Saban, Teddy Schwarzman, and Ram Bergman are all members of The Brigade, the Hollywood industry group formed by Jewish entertainment figures and allies. The group boasts nearly 1,000 members and has recently intervened publicly in industry controversies involving Israel and antisemitism.
Bender, who has produced Oscar-winning films such as Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds, announced that he wants to make projects in Israel, and was one of the producers of Red Alert, a series about the October 7 attacks. Leshem has continued working with Israeli actors on his series, co-produced by Martin Scorsese, Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints.
David Ellison – chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, who has been spearheading his company’s bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery – led Paramount to publicly reject the proposed boycott of Israeli film institutions and Paramount+ acquired Red Alert. He reportedly told Bender that he wanted to be involved with getting the series to audiences.
Steven Spielberg, the highest-profile Jewish creator in Hollywood, waited till March 2024 to speak out, saying in a speech at the 30th anniversary of his USC Shoah Foundation: “We can rage against the heinous acts committed by the terrorists of October 7 and also decry the killing of innocent women and children in Gaza.” Spielberg has never publicly weighed in on the anti-Zionist rhetoric emanating from Hollywood figures.
Oscar- and Emmy-winning director/writer Aaron Sorkin fired his agent, Maha Dakhil of the CAA talent agency, because of her pro-Hamas social media posts after October 7, and moved to a different agency, saying, “Maha isn’t an antisemite, she’s just wrong.”
But much of Hollywood has remained silent, and every day, more celebrities spew anti-Zionist rhetoric that reeks of classic antisemitic tropes. Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon said she has “had movies taken away recently” over her criticisms of Israel when she spoke at a Venice International Film Festival press conference to promote her new film, The Echo Chamber, a prestigious, star-studded film by Italian director Andrea Pallaoro.
Let’s look at reality, though. The actress, who said she was dropped by a talent agency for speaking out about the war, has two upcoming projects listed on the Internet Movie Database, in addition to two movies with 2026 release dates. That’s more than other Oscar-winning actresses around her age (80), such as Sally Field and Cher.
Sarandon has won four awards in the past three years as well. At Venice, she gave no evidence of which movies she was dropped from, but did find time to say, “There are still positions in my industry that are held by Zionists who have not relaxed their feelings toward me.”
Blacklisted, really?
Sarandon and her ilk still say “Zionists” rather than “Jews” but seem to be getting ever closer to saying the quiet part out loud. Paul Laverty, a screenwriter on the Feature Film Jury at Cannes, said that Sarandon and others who criticized Israel had been “blacklisted… Isn’t it fascinating to see some of them, like… Javier Bardem and Mark Ruffalo blacklisted because of their views in opposing the murder of women and children in Gaza?”
Let’s look a little closer at the careers of Bardem and Ruffalo, too. Ruffalo has been nominated for an Oscar and two Golden Globes since 2023. He has six upcoming roles listed and is currently starring as the Hulk in the latest Spider-Man movie.
Bardem was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for a TV role in Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story in 2025. He has roles in three upcoming movies, including the third film in the popular Dune series. He stars in the recently released Apple TV+ remake of Cape Fear, which Spielberg and Scorsese executive-produced.
Where would these actors be if pro-Israel loyalists had not supposedly derailed their careers? Would Bardem have 12 upcoming roles instead of three, and would he be working not only with Spielberg and Scorsese but also with George Lucas and James Cameron?
Bardem and Ruffalo have continued to disparage Israel at every possible opportunity. After the crisis in Ceuta, a Spanish-controlled enclave in North Africa, when some 70,000 Moroccan migrants entered illegally in July, Bardem wrote: “We don’t know who engineered this crisis, but we know who benefits from a weakened, destabilized Spain: Israel and the Western far-right eager to turn migration into a weapon against Muslims.”
Recently, Ruffalo wrote about Oracle, the company owned by David Ellison’s father, Larry: “This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros. acquisition… [Military technology developed by Oracle] will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you. Look how [an Oracle executive] revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Paramount responded with a strongly worded statement. “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong – they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.”
Viewers decide
In the end though, words are just words, and in an industry that depends on the public as viewers, ticket buyers, and subscribers, perhaps the best revenge is high ratings. On September 2, Amazon’s Prime Video released The Runner, a new movie starring Gadot, and by the end of the week, it was the streamer’s top movie around the world.
Similarly, on September 8, Netflix released season five of the Israeli series, Fauda, which focuses on the Hamas massacre; within days, it was in the top 10 in about 40 countries, including much of Europe and the Middle East. It even hit the number one spot in Lebanon, where people know a bit more than Hollywood celebrities about the reality of terror, and they did not mind watching a series about it from the Israeli perspective.
If only privileged entertainment industry insiders were this open-minded. ■