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The radical group Mark Ruffalo is relying on to deflect antisemitism claims

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The headlines announcing Mark Ruffalo’s latest line of defense against claims of antisemitism were striking.

More than 170 Jewish artists had rallied around the actor, denouncing an “outrageous smear campaign” and rejecting accusations that his rhetoric about the Ellison family and the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger trafficked in antisemitic themes.

Read the names and the letter itself, and a different picture emerges.

There are recognizable Hollywood figures among the signatories, including Joel Coen, Tony Kushner, Hannah Einbinder, Ilana Glazer and others. Of the 177 signatories, fewer than half are entertainment figures. The list also contains a significant collection of anti-Israel academics, political organizers, anti-Zionist activists and rabbis whose anti-Israel activism long predates this controversy. 

Many have deep connections to the extremist antizionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

Rebecca Vilkomerson spent a decade as JVP’s executive director. Phyllis Bennis has served on its board. Rabbi Alissa Wise held senior leadership roles there. Rabbis David Mivasair and Linda Holtzman have served on its Rabbinical Council. Other signatories include longtime BDS advocates and anti-Zionist activists such as Sarah Schulman, Udi Aloni and Naomi Klein. 

That context changes how the letter should be understood.

It reads less like an organic uprising of Hollywood’s Jewish community and more like the mobilization of an established anti-Israel activist network around a celebrity whose rhetoric has increasingly converged with its own.

JVP describes itself as the world’s largest progressive........

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