Paramount has responded with an aggressive pushback today to a pledge signed by more than 4,000 Hollywood actors and other professionals—including Oscar winners Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, and Olivia Colman—calling for a boycott of large swathes of the Israeli film industry. Organized by Film Workers For Palestine, the pledge targets no named individuals, but calls for a boycott of film festivals, production companies, theaters, and broadcasters viewed as “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
In its response (per Variety), Paramount executives condemned the boycott. “At Paramount, we believe in the power of storytelling to connect and inspire people, promote mutual understanding, and preserve the moments, ideas, and events that shape the world we share. This is our creative mission,” the company’s chief communications officer, Melissa Zukerman, said in a statement.
We do not agree with recent efforts to boycott Israeli filmmakers. Silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace. The global entertainment industry should be encouraging artists to tell their stories and share their ideas with audiences throughout the world. We need more engagement and communication—not less.
The pledge was originally published on Monday, when it already featured signatures from folks like Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Adam McKay, Yorgos Lanthimos, Tilda Swinton, Melissa Barrera, Ayo Edebiri, Javier Bardem, and more than a thousand others. Since then, even more have added their names to the pledge, which specifically cites as its model boycotts employed against South African apartheid in the 1980s; new signatories included Stone and Phoenix, as well as Rooney Mara, Andrew Garfield, and The Zone Of Interest director Jonathan Glazer. (You can see the full list of signatories here.)
In its FAQ about the pledge, Film Workers For Palestine names a few specific groups that it’s targeting for what it views as “operating in Israel’s system of apartheid, and therefore benefiting from it,” while having “never endorsed the full, internationally-recognized rights of the Palestinian people.” But it also calls on actors and other film professionals to do their own research on groups they work with, while citing sources from Amnesty International and the United Nations on whether Israel’s actions in Gaza line up with international definitions of apartheid or genocide.
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