A news outlet finally asked one of the biggest questions haunting Hollywood.
“Why Are Jewish Celebrities in Hollywood So Afraid to Talk About Antisemitism?” reads a probing op-ed at The Hollywood Reporter.
The author explores how relatively quiet Jewish personalities have been over the past year-plus. All the while, antisemitism has flourished in ways we haven’t seen in decades.
Remember how Sarah Silverman created “The Great Schlep” in 2008 to help Barack Obama’s presidential campaign? Or, more recently, how she mistakenly saw a swastika in a generic public image and cried foul.
Now, as Jews are literally chased into an attic, she says nothing.
Non-Jewish stars have been equally silent. That’s a bigger question that also needs to be addressed.
Sadly, the author is either afraid to explore the answer or can’t bear to say it.
Here it is. It’s mostly political.
Defending Jewish people isn’t cool in Hollywood. It’s framed as right-leaning and makes stars uncomfortable. President Donald Trump has been a loyal friend to Israel.
Say no more.
Anti-Israel sentiment also has its roots in today’s progressive mindset. And, at times, it has veered uncomfortably close to antisemitism.
Examples?
THR gently attacks Jesse Eisenberg for avoiding antisemitism in his Oscar campaign for “A Real Pain.” The actor wrote, directed and stars in a film about Jewish cousins visiting Poland’s Majdanek death camp and exploring their family roots.
The film gave Eisenberg the perfect opportunity to tackle the subject, one directly aligned with his film.
He preferred not to. Instead, he blasted tech giants like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
Stars routinely “get” political during awards season. It’s far more common when the film’s topics overlap the film in play.
Not Eisenberg. He has actively ducked the topic for the last few weeks, leading THR to expand that to the broader Hollywood community.
In a time when Jewish identity faces threats from so many flanks, very few high-profile people in entertainment — the same people often eager to lend their voice to other causes — seem compelled to come to its defense.
Exactly. But why?
THR has no answers. Try listening to the Oscar night applause (and watch the standing ovation) for the pro-Palestinian documentary “No Other Land” Sunday night.
The filmmakers hammered Israel’s counter-attack against the barbaric Oct. 7 attacks and the relentless cruelty of its Hamas hostage crisis.
More applause. Says it all, no?
The industry overwhelmingly supports the Palestinian cause, as do key components of the Democratic party. Why else did President Joe Biden stand by while protesters trashed universities and harassed Jewish students?
Did we miss his Oval Office address blasting the vile, often violent protests?
Meanwhile, the addled Biden kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign by lying that President Donald Trump embraced neo Nazis “very fine people.” Biden called out so-called Nazis only when it fit his political agenda.
Plus, why would THR mention Elon Musk’s awkward inauguration day gesture, something anyone with a functioning cortex knows wasn’t Nazi-adjacent?
The author is playing politics, too.
The THR essay gives away a game it refuses to acknowledge. It refers to a year’s worth of virulently antisemitic marches on college campuses as merely, “demonstrators waving swastikas at American colleges.”
It was far more than that. The antisemitic chants alone chilled a nation.
Many Hollywood stars did speak out in the weeks following the Oct. 7 attacks. Then, not so slowly, most of those stars stood down. They didn’t demand Hamas release the hostages. They said nothing about the heinous attacks on Jewish students on campuses nationwide.
They ignored how many hostage posters were ripped down by pro-Palestinian thugs.
It’s not for a lack of a bully pulpit.
Awards show after awards show came and went, and not a single celebrity used their podium time to mention antisemitism or slam Hamas for its cruel attacks and hostage tactics.
This 2024 sketch by Michael Rapaport shamed Hollywood for its silence on the hostage crisis remains relevant today.
And, when three Ivy League presidents refused to stand up against thuggish protesters tormented Jews, they were virtually silent.
Again.
“Saturday Night Live” saw that disgusting display and mocked the Republican who held the leaders’ feet to the fire, not the morally warped academics themselves.
No show is as progressive as the modern-day “SNL.”
Democratic Party members, along with their colleagues in the legacy media, refused to stand up to the hate. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) stood virtually alone in relentlessly defending Jews.
Perhaps celebrities suspect speaking out against antisemitism could hurt their careers. Or, more shockingly, they agree to some extent with the attacks.
Why else stay silent? What other explanation makes sense? Stars routinely weigh in on virtually every politically-charged subject of the day.
Why not this?
There are Hollywood exceptions, of course. Rapaport, Debra Messing, Patricia Heaton and John Ondrasik have been speaking out relentlessly on the antisemitic rise across the culture.
Their bravery shames their colleagues.
Near the end of Sunday’s torturously long Oscars ceremony, Best Actor winner Adrien Brody finally took a stand. He called out antisemitism, a key theme in his film “The Brutalist,” but he couched it in a broader attack on racism and “othering.”
Brody deserves enormous credit for saying the word aloud.
He also knew he couldn’t say it solo.