Jewish Hollywood’s Jewish Problem

The 97th annual Academy Awards took place on Sunday night. A bit of mystery was added to all the pageantry. Long before statues were handed out, the anticipation was eclipsed by the glamorous parade of designer finery—not the tuxes, dresses and gowns, but one added accessory: a Red Hand pin worn specially for the red carpet.

With an auditorium filled with so many wardrobe aficionados, a discretely worn, harmless-looking pin made both a political and fashion statement at the same time.

What political statement, specifically? For both Palestinians and Israelis, the pin represents the bloody hands of a terrorist who in 2000, in the West Bank, carved up two IDF soldiers and then gleefully displayed his handiwork from an open window to a cheering horde. Eventually imprisoned, but not before explaining: “We were in a craze to see blood. . .. I saw that my hands were drenched with blood, . . . so I went over to the window, and I waved my hands at the people . . ..”

Eleven years later, he, along with October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, was set free in a hostage-prisoner exchange.

Gracing the red carpet while wearing a Red Hand pin is a celebration of savagery. Noble intentions could never be demonstrated with such a ghoulish symbol. The people who actually live and die in the region know better—even if you don’t.

Guy Pearce somehow got the message. Nominated for Best Supporting Actor, he wore a white dove-shaped pin embossed with, “Free Palestine.” He had his facts wrong (Gaza was free), but at least he wasn’t rejoicing in Jewish blood.

Who would wish to wear such a red badge of dishonor on Tinseltown’s biggest night, anyway?

On the same day that three of the four members of the Bibas family were laid to rest in Israel, a group calling itself Artists4Ceasefire entreated Hollywood’s elite to wear Red Hand pins at the Academy Awards.

Artists4Ceasefire? Currently there is a ceasefire; and there was a ceasefire on October 6, 2023. Minor details, along with the terrorist strike on October 7, itself.

Artists4Ceasefire purports to have 550 members. Some, sporting their Red Hand pins, came dressed to kill at last year’s Academy Awards: Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell, Ramy Youssef, Ava DuVernay, Nicola Coughlan, Ayo Edebiri and Mark Ruffalo. As many as 400 signed a letter to President Biden, ostensibly to express their human rights bona fides, but ultimately throwing their support behind Hamas and against the notion that Jewish lives should matter.

Some of those signers included Jennifer Lopez, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Gigi and Bella Hadid, Bradley Cooper, Pedro Pascal, Angelina Jolie, Leana Headey, John Cusack, Viggo Mortenson, Kirsten Dunst, Kristen Stewart, Selena Gomez, Dua Lipa, Alfonso Cuaron, Cate Blanchett, Channing Tatum, Oscar Isaac, Brian Cox, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams.

Several Jews could not resist adding their names: Drake, Jon Stewart, Joaquim Phoenix, Ilana Glazer, Mandy Patinkin and Andrew Garfield.

A smaller group of signatories called for an arms embargo against Israel. They included Ariana Grande, Mahershala Ali, Cynthia Nixon, Stewart, Glazer and, of course, Ruffalo.

Ruffalo is the reigning Hollywood antisemite-in-chief. (Cusack and Mortensen kick themselves every day for losing the title. Expect both to mount a coup to regain the crown.)

The good news is that a pro-Jewish Hollywood activist group has materialized. Niftily named “the Brigade,” it consists of 700 filmmakers, producers, agents, managers, publicists, executives, actors and actresses. The group responded to Artists4Ceasefire’s call to wear Red Hand pins at the Oscars with a statement that read, “That pin is no symbol of peace. It is the emblem of Jewish bloodshed.”

Why should such an obvious statement ever need to be made—in Los Angeles, of all places? It is, after all, a company town conceived by Jewish immigrants who entered the silent film business early and soon outgrew the sound stages of Astoria, Queens. They hightailed it for Hollywood with the promise of cheap land—and to avoid lawsuits from Thomas Edison, who invented the first movie camera. The mountains and deserts of Los Angeles became the backlot for a burgeoning American cultural export—a shtetl for cinephiles.

Nearly all of the original studio chiefs in Hollywood were Jews. Many had changed their names to hide their Jewishness. What’s more, they specialized in the Saturday matinee fare of cowboy westerns, even though none of them knew how to ride a horse.

They wanted the film industry to replicate the model of melting-pot assimilation—the world they came from and excelled at.

But it came with the price of whitewashing their own identities. When the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in 2021, with a mandate of maximum inclusivity, the original founders of the film industry, inexplicably, found themselves left out of the permanent installation.

Jewish Hollywood always had a Jewish problem—the secret handshake of not calling attention to itself. Self-reference was believed to be bad for business. In the 1930s, Germany was Hollywood’s second largest market. For that reason alone, movies that might offend Adolf Hitler were simply not made.

Jewish Hollywood always had a Jewish problem—the secret handshake of not calling attention to itself. Self-reference was believed to be bad for business. In the 1930s, Germany was Hollywood’s second largest market. For that reason alone, movies that might offend Adolf Hitler were simply not made.

Charlie Chaplin, a philosemite of the first order, stood alone in taking on the great dictator with his first talkie, “The Great Dictator” (1940). All those powerful Jewish men were outshone by the Little Tramp.

The Academy Awards have been politicized against Israel before. Back in 1978, Vanessa Redgrave received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress and promptly excoriated Israel as “Zionist hoodlums.” Many shouted her down.

At last year’s ceremony, Jonathan Glazer accepted the Oscar for “The Zone of Interest” by refuting his Jewishness and denouncing Israel for exploiting the Holocaust to mistreat Palestinians. This time, many in the audience applauded.

Which raises the question: Who, exactly, is among this Brigade willing to buck the politically correct Santa Ana winds and defy the sartorial Red Hand pins of antisemites? Are any of them superstar celebrities? The bold-face names that comprise Artists4Ceasefire are well known. But are Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand among the Brigade?

I seriously doubt it.

When Adrien Brody, who is Jewish, accepted his Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Actor for “The Brutalist,” in which he portrayed a Holocaust survivor, he somehow managed to avoid mentioning the Holocaust, or that his character was even Jewish. (At the Oscars, in an incoherently self-indulgent speech, he blurted out antisemitism and racism as a generalized afterthought.)

For an industry still powered by Jews and obsessed with the making of superhero movies, the Oscar for Jewish Cowardice continues to have far too many nominees.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Israel’s Just War in Gaza.”