Hollywood superstar Mark Ruffalo is being smeared as antisemitic because he opposes Israel’s genocide. What he is saying is supported by most Americans, most people in the West – and most people on earth – and all of that is linked to why he is being smeared.
The Emmy Award-winning actor, known for playing the Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as well as films such as Spotlight, Foxcatcher and The Kids Are All Right, is being smeared because he opposes the $111bn merger of Paramount Skydance with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Why Ruffalo opposes the merger
Now, there are lots of reasons he’s opposing the merger. He opposes it on media concentration grounds – this new company will account for over a quarter of wide-release theatrical distribution in the US, and it would mean three distributors account for three quarters of wide-release films, while four would control 86%. California and 11 other states are suing to stop the merger. It also means CBS News and CNN, as well as Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., HBO and multiple other television networks, would be in the same group.
He opposes it because it will mean huge job losses, because it will be saddled with around $79bn worth of net debt, and because investment partners include the sovereign wealth funds of dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
He opposes it because the family who own Paramount – David Ellison and his father Larry Ellison – are close to the Trump regime. Trump has described Larry Ellison as “a friend of mine”, and since they took over CBS News, the channel has shifted its coverage to become more favourable to the Trump administration.
But he has another very strong reason to oppose it – and that is because Paramount Skydance is run by a family who are not just ideologically vehemently pro-Israel, but who have actual profound links to Israel.
Oracle’s relationship with Israel is longstanding to say the least. Its technology has been supplied across the Israeli state, including to military, government and police. That relationship formed the context for a clip circulated by Ruffalo on Instagram – footage of Oracle executive vice-chair Safra Catz, who also sits on Paramount’s board, discussing technology Oracle offered Israel after 7 October.
On his Instagram story, Ruffalo shared a video of Safra Catz, an Israeli who serves as former Oracle CEO and now as executive vice-chair – and who is also a director on the board of Paramount since its merger with Skydance Media.
Amongst other things, in the video she boasts of Oracle offering “really profoundly scary technology” to Israel as it committed genocide from October 2023 onwards. A state which a consensus of genocide scholars, NGOs like Amnesty International and Médecins Sans Frontières, and a UN independent commission say is committing genocide – and here she is, boasting of offering up “really profoundly scary technology” to support what she would claim is a military offensive, but is a genocide.
Ruffalo then posted the following:
“This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition.
These ‘really profoundly scary technologies’ will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you. Look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.
There is an old saying. ‘The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.’
From one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world. Why has Trump pushed this illegal merger through?
Larry Ellison will own most of ‘Para Bros’. Larry is a classic Oligarch. They are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance.
We have a chance to stop this. There are 12 state Attorneys General suing to block this merger. It will be catastrophic for our film industry.
There will be a loss of 4500 direct film making jobs and the loss of another 10k ancillary jobs. Merger like this are almost always bad for workers, consumers, and the industry they tend to dominate. It’s a classic antitrust case.
It will hike up the cost of cable and flatten out competition. This means less choice for our audiences. It also concentrates an enormous amount of creative control to companies that say and do things like this strange woman from Oracle.”
Paramount then released a statement which included the following:
“We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong – they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind – and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”
Where is the antisemitism?
This is a lie. There was nothing antisemitic here – we’ll come on to that more.
Now two so-called “prominent Jewish advocacy groups”, as Variety put it, have accused Ruffalo of spreading “antisemitic tropes”. That is the Simon Wiesenthal Center and something called the Creative Community for Peace.
The CEO of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said:
“Words matter, and so does the willingness to draw a line when legitimate debate gives way to antisemitic tropes.
“We commend Paramount for speaking clearly and refusing to allow prejudice to masquerade as political or corporate criticism. At a time when antisemitism is too often minimized, rationalized, or repackaged in more socially acceptable language, this kind of moral clarity matters.”
The cheek of these people using “moral clarity” to smear opponents of an ongoing genocide.
What the Simon Wiesenthal Center calls antisemitism
Want to hear more about what the Simon Wiesenthal Center thinks is antisemitic?
In 2016, they had their list of the Worst Global Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Incidents. Guess what was at number one? The UN’s treatment of Israel, with particular emphasis on the Obama administration abstaining on a UN Security Council resolution condemning illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
That was above the white supremacist neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who attended a gathering featuring Nazi salutes, where Spencer questioned whether Jews were even people.
And in 2011 they issued a statement opposing Israel returning to its pre-1967 borders – that is, before the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory – with a press release with the headline “Israel Should Reject a Return to 1967 ‘Auschwitz’ Borders”. Let’s not mince our words here. These people are absurd extremists as well as apologists for terrible crimes.
The Ellisons and Israel
Let’s just go through the facts about the Ellisons and their relationship with Israel.
In 2014 Larry Ellison gave $10m to Friends of the IDF. In 2017, he gave another $16.6m.
That’s what we know publicly.
In 2024, a Jerusalem Post article wrote about David Ellison taking over Paramount, saying it was a “groundbreaking strategic move reshaping the US media market”. They quote a source familiar with the details, who says:
“This is the next generation of global Jewish leadership. These two young men love Israel, are connected to their Judaism, have Zionist values, and it’s 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.”
And what gives that source credence is that at the bottom of the article it says: “This article was written in cooperation with SkyDance.”
Was it indeed.
In 2014, Larry Ellison told Israel’s Channel 10: “We love our country of Israel and we’ll do everything we can to support the country of Israel.”
Larry Ellison’s first wife described him as “an ardent Zionist” and, according to New York Magazine, “remembered him taking a week off work to watch coverage of the Six-Day War in 1967.” It also noted that Larry Ellison is close to Benjamin Netanyahu, who it says vacationed on his Hawaiian island in 2021.
It further goes on to say:
“David once joined Larry on a trip to Israel and posted a photo to Instagram from a dinner with the prime minister. ‘I am very grateful for everything he has done and continues to do for the nation of Israel! #bibinetanyahu,’ David wrote. After October 7, David declared that ‘Skydance stands with Israel,’ and the Ellisons’ support for the country goes part of the way to explaining the hiring of Weiss.”
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Larry Ellison even offered Netanyahu membership on the board of Oracle in 2021.
As Drop Site News reported, in 2015 Israel’s then ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, asked Ellison whether Marco Rubio had “passed your scrutiny” and whether they had discussed Israel. Ellison replied that the meeting went well and that “Marco will be a great friend for Israel.” Ellison subsequently hosted a Rubio fundraiser and put $5m into a super PAC supporting him.
And as for Safra Catz, the subject of the Ruffalo video, she wrote the following in an email to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak in 2015:
“We have all been horrified by the growth of the BDS movement in college campuses and have concluded that we have to fight this battle before the kids even get to college. We believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel in the American culture. That means getting the message to the American people in a way they can consume it.”
Need I go on?
These are unbelievably rich pro-Israel activists with direct, extensive links to Israel and to Netanyahu himself. They are going to wield massive power over US media and entertainment - indeed they already do. That is a fact, and it is not antisemitic to say this. It is not an attack on Jewish people to state the facts about these specific very wealthy and very powerful individuals.
Ruffalo hits back
Now Ruffalo fired back with the following statement, which is worth reading in full:
It so far has 161,000 reposts, 856,000 likes and has been seen nearly 30 million times.
The attempt to equate Israel with Jewish people
So in that context, what about this post by Jonathan Greenblatt, who heads the Anti-Defamation League, which routinely equates opposition to Israel’s crimes with antisemitism:
“Sickening”? What qualifies as “sickening” in anything Ruffalo says? Let’s be clear about what’s sickening: Israel wiping Gaza from the earth, slaughtering about 1 in 20 of its inhabitants by direct violence, and destroying its hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and universities.
Note how Greenblat doesn’t even say Israel, he says “the Jewish state” in order to promote the agenda of equating Israel with Jewish people. There is no antisemitic rhetoric in what Ruffalo said at all at all, and neither are there baseless claims about Israel’s monstrous crimes.
What is antisemitic is equating Jewish people with the crimes of Israel. The polling finds that 61% of Jewish Americans think Israel has committed war crimes, while 39% think it has committed genocide – rising to 50% among younger Jewish Americans.
Read what Hannah Einbinder - an Emmy-award winning Jewish American actor - had to say:
The truth is Ruffalo is being smeared because he opposes the genocide, backing a ceasefire way back in October 2023.
Then came another smear
Here’s this example from Hadley Freeman, a columnist at The Times. She posted a picture of Mark Ruffalo wearing the Artists4Ceasefire badge, and wrote:
What on earth is she talking about?
Back in March 2024, even pro-Israel propagandist website IsraellyCool wrote a post entitled: “A Plea to My Fellow Israel Advocates: Leave The Fake News Sharing to Our Adversaries”.
“While I think these celebrities are absolutely wrong in calling for a ceasefire, the claim that the red pin symbol derives from the Ramallah lynching is not based in fact.
“Artists4Ceasefire explain the symbol as such:
“The Artists4Ceasefire enamel pin is composed of a red background to symbolize the urgency of the call to save lives. The orange hand conveys the beautiful community of people from all backgrounds that have come together in support of centering our shared humanity. The heart being cradled in the center of the hand is an invitation for us to lead with our hearts, always, to lead with love. When we lead with love, we understand that all of our fellow beings deserve to be loved and protected.
“True, the pin design is reminiscent of the bloodied hands, and pointing that out as an irony is absolutely valid and useful. But to state as fact something that is based on resemblance alone – and does not seem logical – is an own goal.”
When I corrected Hadley Freeman’s outrageous smear, she blocked me on X and posted: “Wow, an OJ pile on. What is this, 2019?”
In other words, she accused me of being a bully after I corrected her for smearing Mark Ruffalo for opposing genocide.
She has since deleted her original tweet, but with no correction.
The new McCarthyism
The truth is: this is just the latest example of the biggest attack on free speech since McCarthyism.
Across the Western world, people have been smeared, deplatformed, sacked, arrested, violently assaulted by the state, imprisoned and deported for opposing Israel’s genocide.
Yet public opinion has decisively shifted against Israel. These two facts are linked. The strategy is straightforward: use fear to prevent public opinion from being acted on.
But you can only turn the world upside down for so long.
The world needs many more activist humans of integrity like Mark Ruffalo.
I am from Vancouver,Canada and i want to say here in Canada all the Israeli Supporters in Montreal are upset now that a Motion is been debated for Montreal to cut ties with Israel. They say it is Antisemitism. To Hell with Israeli Supporters in Montreal. I hope the Motion to cut Ties with Israel gets passed !