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 a number of Ruffalo’s fellow Hollywood creatives, including “Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder, Abbi Jacobson, Gina Gershon, Kate Berlant, filmmaker Joel Coen and Ilana Glazer. In it, the Jewish creatives push fervently back against the claims of antisemitism that have been levied against Ruffalo in recent days.
“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 letter states.
“The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies,” the letter continues. “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.”
“It will do all this and more as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination,” the letter argues. “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.”
The ongoing controversy surrounding Ruffalo and Paramount began on Aug. 21 when Ruffalo shared his concerns in an Instagram post about the potential connection between Paramount’s bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery with Israel’s war in Gaza. Paramount CEO David Ellison’s father Larry is the head of Oracle, a multinational tech company that has helped supply Israel with military technology, according to Oracle executive vice chair and former CEO Safra Catz.
Ruffalo called the war in Gaza a “genocide.” He quoted Catz, who said at the Israeli-American Council National Summit in 2024 that Oracle had created “profoundly scary technologies” that would be used by Israel in the conflict. He used these facts to further warn against the potential economic and geopolitical dangers of Paramount’s merger with WBD.
Paramount quickly fired back at Ruffalo, releasing a statement to TheWrap the same day of the actor’s post accusing him of engaging in “antisemitic tropes.”
“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,” a Paramount spokesperson said. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Creative Community for Peace have since come out against Ruffalo as well.
Meanwhile, creatives like Einbinder, Jane Fonda and “Manchester by the Sea” filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan have publicly stood with Ruffalo. The latter penned a letter Monday in defense of Ruffalo, in which he wrote, “Mark has been a dear friend for 30 years. The notion that he is antisemitic is overtly preposterous, and the accusation itself a cynical and disgusting lie.”
The open letter released Tuesday echoes Lonergan’s assessment of Ruffalo’s remarks and slams those who have been quick to label the actor antisemitic.
“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,” the letter notes, asking, “Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too?”
You can 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.
