It’s gotten to the point where I can’t be quiet anymore. Not that I’ve ever exactly been silent. My Instagram stories have done their fair share of whispering into the void, and I’ve muttered about it over late-night peppermint mochas with friends who tolerate my rants the way you tolerate a friend who insists The Phantom Menace is secretly good. But this is different. The time for small asides has passed.
For me, the entertainment industry was always a kind of secular temple. Movies and music, television and theater, these were my places of worship. I entered them not with a program or a hymnal but with popcorn and a suspension of disbelief. I could leave behind the real world, even when that world featured grotesqueries like the Human Centipede franchise or algorithmically generated Netflix rom-coms designed to auto-play until you no longer remember your own name. Hollywood was never perfect, but it was a refuge.
Now that refuge feels more like a battleground. The very industry that taught us to imagine aliens with feelings, talking toys, and redemption arcs has decided that Jews don’t get one. People I’ve interviewed on podcasts, celebrated at parties, defended against critics, people whose art I encouraged others to support, have climbed aboard a bandwagon of misinformation that has turned into something uglier than a Cats CGI close-up.
And I wish I could say I was surprised. But history is nothing if not repetitive, and antisemitism has always had the tenacity of a bad sequel. Two years ago, on October 7th, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust took place. The aftermath should have been a global reckoning. Instead, antisemitism spiked 2,000 percent. That’s not an opinion, that’s arithmetic. And many of the very communities that once held themselves as arbiters of peace and progress instead pulled a plot twist worthy of an M. Night Shyamlan film, they abandoned logic and compassion in favor of slogans, hashtags, and bandwagon fury.
I didn’t want politics to seep into my fantasy island. I like my politics where I like my steamed cabbage, off the plate entirely. Yet every day an actor, musician, or filmmaker takes the microphone not to announce their new project but to issue proclamations about Israel committing genocide or to chant “Free Palestine” as if they were cheering on the Dallas Cowboys. It would almost be hilarious if it weren’t so grotesque. Most of these celebrities haven’t been within a thousand miles of Israel. Some never made it through high school, and suddenly they’re Middle East analysts, fluent in geopolitics. I’d laugh harder if it weren’t so corrosive.
Let me be clear. I want the war in Gaza to end. Yesterday. Everyone does. No one, not the mothers of kidnapped hostages, not the families under bombardment wants this to continue. But wanting it to end doesn’t erase the context. A terrorist group entered homes and a music festival, and slaughtered civilians, women, men, children, the elderly, simply because they were Jewish. They kidnapped hundreds. Dozens remain underground two years later, starved, tortured, allowed a shower maybe once every three months. They pray for bread. They dream of air. Has one Hollywood celebrity with a million-dollar platform shouted their names safely on the red carpet 6.000 miles away in their Prada slacks? Almost none. The silence is deafening.
Instead, what we hear is “Israel is committing genocide.” A word that once carried the weight of Auschwitz and Rwanda is now tossed around like confetti at an afterparty. But Israel, a country the size of Rhode Island, is not committing genocide. It is not going door to door to erase a people. It is fighting Hamas, a group that explicitly states in its charter that Jews should be exterminated, a group that uses its own civilians as human shields, a group whose idea of diplomacy is a rocket. Yet the narrative has been flipped, and suddenly Israel is the villain in a Marvel movie with no origin story.
Hollywood thrives on origin stories. Yet very few of its loudest voices seem to know Israel’s. They chant “From the river to the sea” without bothering to Google what river, what sea, or what exactly happens in the space between them. Spoiler: it’s not coexistence. It’s the eradication of Jews, and not just Jews, anyone not Muslim. Free Palestine, as the slogan is wielded, is not about liberation but elimination. This isn’t an interpretation. It’s the literal definition of the words as used by the groups who coined them. Jerry Seinfeld knows this. Debra Messing knows this. Michael Rapaport screams it into his phone daily. But too many others, the Dua Lipas, the Hannah Einbinders, the Jennifer Lawrences, the Javier Bardem’s either don’t know or don’t care. It’s probably both.
The irony is excruciating. LGBTQ activists chant slogans supporting groups that, if given power, would strip their rights and, in many cases, their lives. Feminists side with regimes where women can’t drive, can’t speak, can’t exist without permission. It’s as if logic itself has packed its bags and left Los Angeles.
And so I find myself in an absurd position. One day discussing the finer points of Jim Carrey’s performance in Me, Myself, and Irene, the next defending my own existence as a Jew. I never thought I’d have to do this in 2025. I thought we’d moved past it. Nazis and terrorists were supposed to be the villains, the shorthand for evil. Instead, they’ve become, in certain circles, the misunderstood rebels in a poorly written screenplay.
I’ve lost friends over this. I’ve walked out of concerts. I’ve sat in film festivals where Israeli submissions were barred, as if culture itself could be boycotted into silence. It’s exhausting. It’s maddening. And it’s happening in real time.
Maybe if Israel had ended this war decisively two years ago, we’d already be in the messy process of healing. Maybe the hostages would be home. Maybe the slogans would have lost their appeal. But we’re not there. We’re still in the middle act, and Hollywood, of all places, has cast itself in a role I can’t forgive, that of the self-satisfied chorus, shouting lines they don’t understand.
I’d love nothing more than to go back to arguing whether the latest Conjuring film was scary enough or debating the cultural significance of Howard the Duck. But silence is complicity, and I’ve been complicit too long. So here I am, in print, saying the thing I never wanted to say, Hollywood has failed us. And it hurts, not just because I believed in its illusions, but because I believed in its heart.
One Response
Fabulous! You have spoken true words and so proud of for you to do that. Your ancestors that were killed by Hitler are standing up for you and thanking you for what you believe. Your words are strong and hope people listen!