Once again, anti-semitism is being cynically\u2014and falsely\u2014\u200b\u200bredefined in the press and broader Discourse as \u201cpointing out uncomfortable facts about the nation state of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
This past weekend, the Israel Crybully Lobby, using a familiar script I\u2019ve detailed before<\/a>, led a smear campaign against actor Mark Ruffalo because he had the temerity and integrity to note that the family vying to control<\/a> not only 60 Minutes and CBS News, but CNN and HBO, is a committed and open supporter of Israel and its genocidal military.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ruffalo is leading<\/a> a broad coalition of antitrust activists, creatives, and filmgoers to oppose the pending Skydance Paramount-Warner Brothers Discovery merger and, in doing so, violated an unwritten rule against noting that the father-son duo behind the merger, David and Larry Ellison, are well-documented and open zionist advocates that not only lobby for and support Israel, but \u201cprivately\u201d donate to their military. A military that\u2014it\u2019s worth noting\u2014Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, B\u2019Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, OxFam, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and dozens of other humanitarian and human rights organizations<\/a> have determined is committing genocide in Gaza. Ruffalo also pointed out<\/a> that the Ellisons\u2019 $400 billion fortune was largely built on military and surveillance technology from Oracle that is used, in part, to surveil, imprison, and kill Palestinians, as well combat opposition to Israel stateside<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Ruffalo simply noted the open and well-documented ideological commitments that the Ellisons themselves have long championed.<\/p>\n Predictably, the Israel Crybully Lobby and its one-note propaganda organs in the nonprofit and media world responded to these comments by accusing Ruffalo of \u201cantisemitism\u201d and engaging in \u201ctropes\u201d\u2014many of which are not, of course, tropes in any traditional sense, but simply Things That Are Awkward To Mention. Paramount Skydance released a whiney and self-indulgent statement<\/a> saying \u201cWe are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked.\u2026 Words like \u2018genocide\u2019 and \u2018apartheid,\u2019 applied to a corporate transaction, aren\u2019t just wrong\u2014they\u2019re a bridge too far.\u201d This statement, and related scandalizing of Ruffalo\u2019s otherwise true and banal comments, were echoed by Hollywood press outlets such as Variety magazine,<\/a> the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, and the Wrap, the latter of which is owned by Sharon Waxman, an open supporter of Israe<\/a>l and its genocide in her own right. Needless to say, the Wrap has been covering<\/a> this like Watergate, with nonstop breathless headlines, even laughably citing<\/a> NATO-funded think tanker Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib as a \u201cLeading Palestinian Activist.\u201d<\/p>\n This campaign failed at shutting up Ruffalo, who defended himself on Twitter\/X, where he received an outpouring of support<\/a>. But more zionist advocacy organizations\u2014always posing as “antisemitism” monitors, such as the Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Creative Community for Peace, and L.A. Jewish Federation\u2014joined the pile-on. All four groups are openly supportive of Israel and its genocidal military and largely exist to smear Israel critics as antisemites regardless of the tone or nature of the criticism.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the “antisemitism scandal\u201d playbook being less and less effective, it\u2019s not stopping the Israel Crybully Lobby from using it to discipline Ruffalo and other actors who dare support basic human rights, or in this case, actors who connect Oracle’s obscene wealth with their intimate involvement in the US and Israeli security state. The whole “antisemitism” and \u201ctrope\u201d charge is even more absurd since, in context, in addition to Ruffalo simply citing Oracle\u2019s Executive Vice-Chair Safra Catz\u2019s own dystopian words<\/a> about their \u201creally profoundly scary technologies,\u201d Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is open in his support for not just Israel as some romantic abstraction, but the IDF itself. In 2024, upon announcing his purchase of Paramount, Ellison\u2019s Skydance issued a dressed-up press release<\/a> in the Jerusalem Post detailing how his burying of Paramount would be good for Israel:<\/p>\n \u201cThese two young men [Ellison being one of the men] love Israel, are connected to their Judaism, have Zionist values, and it\u2019s very encouraging to see that in such successful families, the values are passed on to the younger generations. Both quietly donate quite a bit to the State of Israel and the IDF. It is positive news for the Jewish world that Korff and Ellison are the next generation of global Jewish leadership, connected to Israel and holding Zionist values.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The piece would go on to note that the \u201carticle was written in cooperation with SkyDance\u201d which is another way of saying it\u2019s a touched-up press release issued by Skydance. So here is Ellison using his own company to boast how great his purchase of Paramount would be for Israel (setting aside how funny it is to point out how you \u201cquietly\u201d support a cause in your own company\u2019s press release), thus openly acknowledging that his media properties would reflect Israel\u2019s line. A promise immediately confirmed by Ellison\u2019s first major hire post-Paramount purchase: self-identified \u201czionist fanatic\u201d<\/a> Bari Weiss, who he immediately put in charge of all of CBS News. The family patriarch, Larry Ellison, has even deeper ties to Israel: In addition to being the single largest private donor to the IDF<\/a>, leaked emails revealed<\/a> last year that in 2015 the elder Ellison vetted then-candidate for President Marco Rubio on behalf of the Israel ambassador to the UN.\u00a0<\/p>\n Israel is a nation state, a political entity; zionism is an ideology, a worldview that violently privileges Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. Neither are protected religions, cultures, or identities. Adults have to be able to separate these two things\u2014one being an ethno-religious identity and the other being an ideological choice\u2014when discussing the dispossession, occupation, and mass killing of Palestinians, and how this right-wing worldview dovetails with media ownership, US imperialism, the military state, and free speech suppression in the United States. It is certainly possible to criticize Israel and its supporters while engaging in antisemitic tropes, but Ruffalo did not come remotely close to doing this, and it\u2019s deeply cynical to claim he did without presenting any credible evidence. Instead we just get mindless working of the refs, increasingly hollow pro forma language about \u201ctropes\u201d and “antisemitism,” whining and chauvinist solipsism from deluded rich ideologues high on their own zionist media supply. Ruffalo simply noted the open and well-documented ideological commitments that the Ellisons themselves have long championed. Adults should be able to talk about very rich people\u2019s connections to militaries without everyone reaching for the antisemitism smelling salts. This script\u2014where powerful, wealthy and deeply ideological actors cry and whine and piss and moan about being the victims of racist abuse because someone dares highlight their backing of a nation state and its military\u2014is as dangerous and sleazy as it is tedious and, one can only hope, diminishing in its returns.<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/therealnews.com\/ellison-family-israel-mark-ruffalo-antisemitism-scandal”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/therealnews.com”>The Real News Network<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/therealnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/cropped-TRNN-2021-logomark-square.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/therealnews.com\/?republication-pixel=true&post=346107&ga4=G-7LYS8R7V51″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/therealnews.com\/ellison-family-israel-mark-ruffalo-antisemitism-scandal”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/therealnews.com\/p.js”><\/script>