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Mark Ruffalo has fired back at Paramount after the company slammed the actor as “antisemitic” for accusing David and Larry Ellison of “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world.”
“The accusation
that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” Ruffalo wrote on X Saturday morning. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel. To be clear, my views come from my own political convictions and should never be interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people, for whom I have deep love and respect. Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.”
On Saturday, the actor posted a clip of a Paramount board member, Safra Catz, outlining “really profoundly scary technologies” that Oracle used to help the Israeli military after the Oct. 7 terror attack. Ruffalo likened the elder Ellison to a “classic oligarch” and warned of the consequences if Paramount and Warner Bros. are allowed to merge.
“This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country,” Ruffalo added. “Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary. The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public.”
After Ruffalo’s initial post, a spokesperson for Paramountsaid in a statementthat the company is “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.”
