Mark Ruffalo Receives Support From 170 Jewish Artists After ‘Outrageous Smear Campaign’ of Antisemitism
Mark Ruffalo received support from more than 170 Jewish public figures in an open letter on Tuesday, calling accusations of antisemitism against the actor an “outrageous smear campaign.”
The letter was signed by his fellow creatives Hannah Einbinder, Abbi Jacobson, Gina Gershon, Kate Berlant, Joel Coen, Ilana Glazer and more.
Read the full open letter, below:
“We are Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers who have, in response to the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo, a simple message to share with the world: Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.
The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies. Yes, it will destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods. Yes, it will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media (witness the gutting of CBS News). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.
But it will do all this and more as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting — and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors. We all saw this after their Trump-brokered takeover of TikTok — a takeover they openly proclaimed was in large part motivated by their desire to boost pro-Israel propaganda. Larry Ellison personally, with his astonishing purported $350 million in funding and pledges to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been Blair’s major backer as Blair assumes an influential role in the Trump-concocted “Board of Peace” takeover of Gaza, a territory which has become an open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies like the ones celebrated by former Oracle CEO (and current Oracle and Paramount board member) Safra Catz.
The AI road to WarnerMount runs through Gaza, and Ellison has often let us know the Orwellian world he has in store for us as he consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us: “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting.”
Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty. According to a recent Washington Post poll, 61% of American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza; and four in ten even agree that these crimes amount to genocide. Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too? Or that we don’t see the connection between, on the one hand, the criminal impunities that have led the US and Israel into unending disaster and, on the other, the oligarchic powerplays of the Musks, Ellisons, Thiels and others who are working to dismantle our democracy?
But the virulence and falseness of the slanders they direct towards their critics is evidence of the increasing weakness of their position, based as it is on innuendos. Today, more and more people of conscience are joining together, to loudly and univocally proclaim: The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out, this time in the defense of war, oligarchy, and AI domination. That tired playbook has run its course.
We stand proudly with Mark Ruffalo, and with all decent people who are bravely rising and speaking truth to power.”
More to come…