Recently, more than 4,000 film industry workers — including Olivia Colman, Elliot Page, Javier Bardem, Aimee Lou Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Juliet Stevenson, Riz Ahmed, Ayo Edebiri, Tilda Swinton, Ava DuVernay, Adam McKay, Josh O’Connor, Brian Cox and Emma Stone — signed a pledge promising not to work with film institutions or governments that are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, B’Tselem בצלם, Jewish Voice for Peace and most genocide scholars agree. It is now indisputable that Israel is guilty of the crime of genocide.

But like a chorus of braying donkeys, Liev Schreiber, Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing and a long list of holocaust deniers claimed this pledge was antisemitic. They also said it was a form of “collective punishment,” which is rich coming from a group that has ignored or applauded Israel’s decades-long collective punishment of the Palestinians.

Mayim Bialik is perhaps one of the most well known “celebrities” on the list. The former sitcom star and gameshow host infamously endorsed a children’s book entitled “Under Rockets Glow” where a young girl is indoctrinated to believe she is the victim and not the daughter of colonizers. A more apt name might have been “Baby’s First Genocide.”

Debra Messing is another. The former sitcom star embarrassed herself long before the genocide started by attacking progressive Democratic Black women for daring to challenge the conservative slant of the party. After Israel began its campaign of annihilation, she flew to the country on a “birthright” trip where she filmed herself blubbering over IDF soldiers as they prepared to carry out the Final Solution.

Some may find these criticisms too harsh. But there can be no forgiveness for celebrities who choose, even now, to support and defend genocide. None. As they shill for a regime that burns, bombs and starves hundreds of thousands of children, they deserve nothing less than our scorn and contempt.

Kenn Orfanos, September 2025