Jewish Leaders Condemn Mark Ruffalo Over 1 Instagram Post as Paramount Merger Fight Deepens
Updated
Updated · Jewish Insider · Aug 24
Jewish Leaders Condemn Mark Ruffalo Over 1 Instagram Post as Paramount Merger Fight Deepens
3 articles · Updated · Jewish Insider · Aug 24
Summary
Rabbi Noah Farkas and several Jewish organizations on Monday denounced Mark Ruffalo’s Instagram comments about Larry and David Ellison, Oracle and Paramount as antisemitic rhetoric rather than legitimate criticism of the merger.
Ruffalo had called Larry Ellison a “classic oligarch” and accused the Ellisons and Oracle executive Safra Catz of backing destructive forces, tying the pending Paramount deal to Israel, “genocide” and “apartheid.”
Paramount said Friday that invoking antisemitic tropes in a business dispute was “a bridge too far,” while Ruffalo rejected the accusation as dishonest and said Jewish friends and colleagues shaped his activism and humanism.
Farkas also pressed California Attorney General Rob Bonta to clarify his earlier “Mark, I hear you” remark, after Bonta canceled settlement talks with Paramount on Sunday over what he called bad-faith conduct.
The backlash widened as the ADL, Simon Wiesenthal Center and Creative Community for Peace warned Ruffalo’s language could endanger Jews, while J Street and the Nexus Project argued criticism of a corporation or Israel is not inherently antisemitic.