{"id":602799,"date":"2026-09-01T17:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/602799\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T17:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T17:22:08","slug":"todd-haynes-and-wallace-shawn-among-signatories-of-letter-backing-mark-ruffalo-amid-antisemitism-charge-mark-ruffalo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/602799\/","title":{"rendered":"Todd Haynes and Wallace Shawn among signatories of letter backing Mark Ruffalo amid antisemitism charge | Mark Ruffalo"},"content":{"rendered":"

A collective of more than 170 prominent Jewish artists \u2013 including Todd Haynes<\/a>, Joel Coen<\/a>, Miranda July<\/a>, Hannah Einbinder<\/a>, Wallace Shawn<\/a> and Naomi Klein<\/a> \u2013 have signed an open letter supporting Mark Ruffalo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The actor had been accused<\/a> of invoking antisemitic tropes after he criticized Paramount Skydance, the media company owned by David Ellison, a Donald Trump ally. Ruffalo had spoken out about the $111bn merger<\/a> with Warner Bros Discovery (WBD).<\/p>\n

In a statement posted to social media last week, the actor had highlighted the links between Paramount Skydance, poised to become one of the biggest media conglomerates in the US pending a court decision<\/a>, and Oracle, the technology company owned by Ellison\u2019s father, Larry, that has long supplied software to the Israel Defense Forces and government. Paramount responded to Ruffalo, saying it was \u201ctroubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute\u201d.<\/p>\n

The letter<\/a>, titled \u201cEnough!\u201d, dismisses the accusation against Ruffalo as part of an \u201coutrageous smear campaign\u201d and calls for the end to \u201cthe 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\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCalling Mark Ruffalo<\/a> antisemitic because he is questioning a massive corporate merger is not only absurd \u2013 it\u2019s a dangerous way to shut down legitimate criticism,\u201d Ilana Glazer, the former Broad City star, said in an additional statement.<\/p>\n

In his original post, Ruffalo shared a video of Safra Catz, former Oracle CEO and the current executive vice-chair, describing the \u201creally profoundly scary technology\u201d the company provided to Israel after the 7 October attack by Hamas in 2023. The actor accused Larry Ellison \u2013 who is worth an estimated $189bn and agreed to personally backstop $40.4bn in equity financing to help Paramount Skydance acquire WBD \u2013 of \u201cusing [Oracle] to fund his son David\u2019s Warner Bros<\/a> acquisition\u201d and linked the software deals with the IDF to the merger that would unite two of the remaining five legacy studios in Hollywood, as well as a host of networks and news operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese \u2018really profoundly scary technologies\u2019 will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you,\u201d Ruffalo wrote.<\/p>\n

Ruffalo urged his followers to oppose the merger, which he claimed would be \u201ccatastrophic\u201d for the entertainment industry. In a separate statement after Paramount\u2019s response, Ruffalo said: \u201cCriticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people,\u201d Ruffalo wrote. \u201cThis critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter, whose signatories include Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers, affirmed Ruffalo\u2019s argument against the $111bn merger that already secured approval<\/a> from the Trump administration in June: \u201cThe 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<\/a>). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it will do all this and more as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination,\u201d the letter continues, \u201ca project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter cited the Trump-brokered sale of TikTok<\/a> by the Chinese company ByteDance to US investors including Oracle<\/a>; Larry Ellison\u2019s reported $350m in personal funding of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change amid the former prime minister\u2019s ultimately unsuccessful bid<\/a>, backed by Jared Kushner, to occupy a key position<\/a> on Trump\u2019s transitional board of peace for Gaza; and Oracle executives\u2019 public backing of Israel\u2019s military strikes in Gaza, \u201cwhich has become an open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies\u201d celebrated by Catz and other Oracle officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cPointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism,\u201d the letter said. \u201cIt is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A collective of more than 170 prominent Jewish artists \u2013 including Todd Haynes, Joel Coen, Miranda July, Hannah…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-602799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}