Mark Ruffalo uses Jewish group to deflect – Latest News
The headlines asserting Mark Ruffalo’s newest line of protection in opposition to claims of antisemitism have been hanging.
More than 170 Jewish artists had rallied across the actor, denouncing an “outrageous smear campaign” and rejecting accusations that his rhetoric in regards to the Ellison household and the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger trafficked in antisemitic themes.
Read the names and the letter itself, and a completely different image emerges.
There are recognizable Hollywood figures among the many signatories, together with Joel Coen, Tony Kushner, Hannah Einbinder, Ilana Glazer and others. Of the 177 signatories, fewer than half are leisure figures. The checklist additionally accommodates a important assortment of anti-Israel teachers, political organizers, anti-Zionist activists and rabbis whose anti-Israel activism long predates this controversy.
The headlines asserting Mark Ruffalo’s newest line of protection in opposition to claims of antisemitism have been hanging. Getty Images for SiriusXM
Many have deep connections to the extremist antizionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
Rebecca Vilkomerson spent a decade as JVP’s government director. Phyllis Bennis has served on its board. Rabbi Alissa Wise held senior management roles there. Rabbis David Mivasair and Linda Holtzman have served on its Rabbinical Council. Other signatories embody longtime BDS advocates and anti-Zionist activists comparable to Sarah Schulman, Udi Aloni and Naomi Klein.
That context adjustments how the letter needs to be understood.
It reads much less like an natural rebellion of Hollywood’s Jewish group and more just like the mobilization of an established anti-Israel activist community round a superstar whose rhetoric has more and more converged with its own.
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JVP describes itself because the world’s largest progressive anti-Zionist Jewish group. Its document tells us what that politics has meant in observe.
On Oct. 7, 2023, whereas Israelis have been nonetheless being massacred, raped, and kidnapped and the size of the Hamas bloodbath was nonetheless coming into view, JVP blamed “Israeli apartheid and occupation” and US complicity as “the source of all this violence.”
Four days later, it accused Israel of launching a “genocidal war” and referred to as on Americans to stop the “imminent genocide” of Palestinians.
JVP organized protests at Sen. Chuck Schumer’s home, and along with IfNotNow, one other radical group, they organized a protest inside the US Capitol. Hundreds have been arrested. All of this earlier than Israel’s main ground offensive started.
Mark Ruffalo attends the UK Gala Screening of “Crime 101” at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on Wednesday, January 28, 2026, in London, England. Dave Benett/WireImage
Then got here the campuses.
During the 2024 encampment motion, JVP mentioned its scholar chapters helped arrange a minimum of 47 encampments across the nation. It celebrated encampments at more than 100 campuses as “liberated zones” and “popular universities for Gaza.”
Columbia suspended its JVP and Students for Justice in Palestine chapters in November 2023 for repeated violations of college occasion insurance policies.
This is the unconventional political ecosystem closely represented amongst Ruffalo’s defenders on this letter.
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It additionally represents a very small ideological present within American Jewry.
A 2025 national survey commissioned by Jewish Federations of North America discovered that solely 7% of American Jews recognized as anti-Zionist, whereas 88% mentioned Israel has the precise to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.
The overwhelming majority of American Jews assist the continued existence of a Jewish state. Yet the Ruffalo letter uses Jewish identification to make a small ideological minority seem more consultant than it’s.
The letter barely engages with the substance of the accusations in opposition to Ruffalo. Instead, in a sleight of hand, it replaces scrutiny of his phrases with a debate about Israel and Gaza.
Mark Ruffalo attends the 83rd Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, in Beverly Hills, California. CBS through Getty Images
But the difficulty was all the time Ruffalo’s rhetoric.
He fused the Jewish State, Jewish executives, immense wealth, media possession, “profoundly scary technology” and warnings about concentrated energy into a single ominous narrative suggesting that the machinery being assembled by these people might sometime be “used on you.”
Antisemitic conspiracy theories have long portrayed Jews as utilizing wealth, hidden affect and control over media or establishments to manipulate society from behind the scenes. Ruffalo’s language is wearing up to date political phrases, however the construction of the conspiracy is painfully acquainted.
Ruffalo could sincerely consider that he’s standing up for Palestinians. So could many of the people defending him. Sincerity doesn’t render false claims true or inflammatory rhetoric innocent.
An individual can consider he’s advocating for Palestinians whereas spreading falsehoods, embracing excessive claims and contributing to a climate through which hatred towards Jews turns into more and more normalized. Both might be true.
Perhaps probably the most exceptional line within the open letter is its declaration that the “tired playbook” of raising antisemitism has “run its course.”
Antisemitism doesn’t stop to exist when acknowledging it interferes with a most popular political narrative. And it doesn’t obtain a ethical exemption as a result of a group of Jewish artists and activists is keen to defend it.
Calling each criticism of Israel antisemitic could be improper. Calling each accusation of antisemitism a “smear” is simply as intellectually dishonest.
The headlines say Jews in Hollywood rallied to Mark Ruffalo. The names, the historical past and the politics inform a far more revealing story.
Ari Ingel is government director on the Creative Community for Peace.
