More than 170 Jewish entertainment figures, including Hannah Einbinder and filmmaker Joel Coen, have signed an open letter defending actor Mark Ruffalo against accusations that he invoked antisemitic tropes while attacking the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
The dispute began Aug. 21, when Mr. Ruffalo used his Instagram Story to lambaste Paramount’s Ellison family over the deal, tying Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison — who is helping bankroll his son David Ellison’s $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery — to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Mr. Ruffalo shared a clip of Oracle executive and Paramount board member Safra Catz describing “really profoundly scary technologies” and wrote that the war was “a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
A Paramount spokesperson responded that the company was “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” adding that words like “genocide” and “apartheid,” applied to a corporate deal, “cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.”
Mr. Ruffalo pushed back on social media, calling the accusation “appalling and fundamentally dishonest” and arguing that criticizing an “Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it” is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. Actor John Cusack quickly voiced support, while the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jim Berk said Paramount was right to draw “a line when legitimate debate gives way to antisemitic tropes.”
The new letter, titled “Enough!” and signed by Mr. Coen, Todd Haynes, Ilana Glazer, Tony Kushner and dozens of rabbis and academics, argues the opposite: that “pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism.”
The flare-up is not the first time Paramount has raised the issue. Company executives have argued since June that antisemitism is fueling some opposition to the merger, pointing to the Ellisons’ Jewish faith and Larry Ellison’s ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The merger itself remains held up by an antitrust lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general, with the companies barred from closing until five days after a court ruling or June 1, 2027.
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