A information outlet lastly requested one of many greatest questions haunting Hollywood.
“Why Are Jewish Celebrities in Hollywood So Afraid to Discuss About Antisemitism?” reads a probing op-ed at The Hollywood Reporter.
The writer explores how comparatively quiet Jewish personalities have been over the previous year-plus. All of the whereas, antisemitism has flourished in methods we haven’t seen in many years.
Bear in mind how Sarah Silverman created “The Nice Schlep” in 2008 to assist Barack Obama’s presidential marketing campaign? Or, extra just lately, how she mistakenly noticed a swastika in a generic public picture and cried foul.
Now, as Jews are actually chased into an attic, she says nothing.
Non-Jewish stars have been equally silent. That’s an even bigger query that additionally must be addressed.
Sadly, the writer is both afraid to discover the reply or can’t bear to say it.
Right here it’s. It’s principally political.
Defending Jewish folks isn’t cool in Hollywood. It’s framed as right-leaning and makes stars uncomfortable. President Donald Trump has been a loyal pal to Israel.
Say no extra.
Anti-Israel sentiment additionally has its roots in immediately’s progressive mindset. And, at instances, it has veered uncomfortably near antisemitism.
Examples?
THR gently assaults Jesse Eisenberg for avoiding antisemitism in his Oscar marketing campaign for “A Actual Ache.” The actor wrote, directed and stars in a movie about Jewish cousins visiting Poland’s Majdanek loss of life camp and exploring their household roots.
The movie gave Eisenberg the proper alternative to deal with the topic, one instantly aligned along with his movie.
He most popular to not. As an alternative, he blasted tech giants like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Stars routinely “get” political throughout awards season. It’s much more frequent when the movie’s matters overlap the movie in play.
Not Eisenberg. He has actively ducked the subject for the previous couple of weeks, main THR to increase that to the broader Hollywood neighborhood.
In a time when Jewish id faces threats from so many flanks, only a few high-profile folks in leisure — the identical folks usually desperate to lend their voice to different causes — appear compelled to return to its protection.
Precisely. However why?
THR has no solutions. Strive listening to the Oscar night time applause (and watch the standing ovation) for the pro-Palestinian documentary “No Different Land” Sunday night time.
The filmmakers hammered Israel’s counter-attack towards the barbaric Oct. 7 assaults and the relentless cruelty of its Hamas hostage disaster.
Extra applause. Says all of it, no?
The trade overwhelmingly helps the Palestinian trigger, as do key parts of the Democratic social gathering. Why else did President Joe Biden stand by whereas protesters trashed universities and harassed Jewish college students?
Did we miss his Oval Workplace handle blasting the vile, usually violent protests?
In the meantime, the addled Biden kicked off his 2020 presidential marketing campaign by mendacity that President Donald Trump embraced neo Nazis “very high-quality folks.” Biden known as out so-called Nazis solely when it match his political agenda.
Plus, why would THR point out Elon Musk’s awkward inauguration day gesture, one thing anybody with a functioning cortex is aware of wasn’t Nazi-adjacent?
The writer is taking part in politics, too.
The THR essay provides away a recreation it refuses to acknowledge. It refers to a 12 months’s price of virulently antisemitic marches on school campuses as merely, “demonstrators waving swastikas at American schools.”
It was way over that. The antisemitic chants alone chilled a nation.
Many Hollywood stars did converse out within the weeks following the Oct. 7 assaults. Then, not so slowly, most of these stars stood down. They didn’t demand Hamas launch the hostages. They mentioned nothing concerning the heinous assaults on Jewish college students on campuses nationwide.
They ignored what number of hostage posters had been ripped down by pro-Palestinian thugs.
It’s not for an absence of a bully pulpit.
Awards present after awards present got here and went, and never a single celeb used their podium time to say antisemitism or slam Hamas for its merciless assaults and hostage ways.
This 2024 sketch by Michael Rapaport shamed Hollywood for its silence on the hostage disaster stays related immediately.
And, when three Ivy League presidents refused to face up towards thuggish protesters tormented Jews, they had been nearly silent.
Once more.
“Saturday Evening Dwell” noticed that disgusting show and mocked the Republican who held the leaders’ toes to the fireplace, not the morally warped lecturers themselves.
No present is as progressive because the modern-day “SNL.”
Democratic Social gathering members, together with their colleagues within the legacy media, refused to face as much as the hate. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) stood nearly alone in relentlessly defending Jews.
Maybe celebrities suspect talking out towards antisemitism may damage their careers. Or, extra shockingly, they comply with some extent with the assaults.
Why else keep silent? What different rationalization is sensible? Stars routinely weigh in on nearly each politically-charged topic of the day.
Why not this?
There are Hollywood exceptions, after all. Rapaport, Debra Messing, Patricia Heaton and John Ondrasik have been talking out relentlessly on the antisemitic rise throughout the tradition.
Their bravery shames their colleagues.
Close to the top of Sunday’s torturously lengthy Oscars ceremony, Finest Actor winner Adrien Brody lastly took a stand. He known as out antisemitism, a key theme in his movie “The Brutalist,” however he couched it in a broader assault on racism and “othering.”
Brody deserves huge credit score for saying the phrase aloud.
He additionally knew he couldn’t say it solo.