Mark Ruffalo picked a fight with the company trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and on August 21 that fight turned into an accusation of antisemitism. Ten days later, more than 170 Jewish artists, writers, filmmakers, and academics answered with an open letter of their own, titled simply “Enough!”
Ruffalo has spent months warning Hollywood that Paramount Skydance’s proposed $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery would concentrate an enormous amount of media power in the hands of CEO David Ellison and his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison. On August 21, he escalated that warning, posting a statement drawing a direct line between the Ellison family, Oracle’s decades-long technology partnership with the Israel Defense Forces, and Israel’s conduct in Gaza. He described the family as “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world” and called the system they’re part of “built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
Paramount responded by accusing Ruffalo of invoking antisemitic tropes.
The response from more than 170 Jewish artists, writers, and thinkers doesn’t hedge. Published in its entirety by Literary Hub, the letter reads:
“Enough!”
“We are Jewish artists, writers, creative professionals, faith leaders and thinkers who have, in response to the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo, a simple message to share with the world: Enough! Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.
“The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies. Yes, it will destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods. Yes, it will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media (witness the gutting of CBS News). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.
“But it will do all this and more as part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting, and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors. We all saw this after their Trump-brokered takeover of TikTok, a takeover they openly proclaimed was in large part motivated by their desire to boost pro-Israel propaganda. Larry Ellison personally, with his astonishing $350 million in funding and pledges to the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been Blair’s major backer as Blair assumes an influential role in the Trump-concocted ‘Board of Peace’ takeover of Gaza, a territory which has become an open-air laboratory for AI-driven killing and control technologies like the ones celebrated by former Oracle CEO (and current Oracle and Paramount board member) Safra Catz.
“The AI road to WarnerMount runs through Gaza, and Ellison has often let us know the Orwellian world he has in store for us as he consolidates control over what we watch and how we watch it, knowing that as we watch he and his corrupt cohort will always be watching us: ‘Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting.’
“Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism. It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty. According to a recent Washington Post poll, 61% of American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza; and four in ten even agree that these crimes amount to genocide. Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too? Or that we don’t see the connection between, on the one hand, the criminal impunities that have led the US and Israel into unending disaster and, on the other, the oligarchic powerplays of the Musks, Ellisons, Thiels and others who are working to dismantle our democracy?
“But the virulence and falseness of the slanders they direct towards their critics is evidence of the increasing weakness of their position, based as it is on innuendos. Today, more and more people of conscience are joining together, to loudly and univocally proclaim: The time is over for spurious charges of antisemitism to be trotted out in the defense of war, oligarchy, and, now, AI domination. That tired playbook has run its course.
“We stand proudly with Mark Ruffalo, and with all decent people who are bravely rising and speaking truth to power.”
The list runs well past 170 names. Among the most recognizable: Joel Coen, Todd Haynes, Tony Kushner, Ilana Glazer, Hannah Einbinder, Joaquin Phoenix, Wallace Shawn, Gina Gershon, Debra Winger, Rosanna Arquette, Zach Woods, Kate Berlant, Sarah Sherman, Naomi Klein, Ayelet Waldman, Miranda July, Molly Crabapple, Larry Charles, James Schamus, Jonathan Lethem, Peter Beinart, and Frances Fisher, alongside dozens of rabbis, academics, filmmakers, and journalists, including several Israeli signatories: Einat Weizman, Udi Aloni, Itamar Ziegler, and Rachel Leah Jones.
Ilana Glazer added a separate statement alongside her signature: “Calling Mark Ruffalo antisemitic because he is questioning a massive corporate merger is not only absurd, it’s a dangerous way to shut down legitimate criticism. Mark has consistently spoken out against antisemitism while also standing up for Palestinian rights and dignity for all people. It’s an American’s right to debate media consolidation and the dangers of monopolized corporate power without weaponizing antisemitism to bully people into silence.”
This letter arrives roughly a month after a separate open letter, signed by more than 1,000 Hollywood figures including Yorgos Lanthimos, David Fincher, and Denis Villeneuve, expressed “unequivocal opposition” to the Paramount-WBD deal on different grounds, competition and creative consolidation, showing the merger is now drawing organized public opposition on two distinct fronts simultaneously.
Neither Paramount nor the Ellison family has issued a new statement responding directly to the letter as of this writing.
Does a corporate accusation of antisemitism survive being answered by 170 Jewish artists calling it exactly that?
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