What do you do when you demand a ceasefire -- and Donald Trump actually gets one? If you're a normal human being with a decent moral compass, you celebrate the freedom of 20 hostages, the pause in an armed conflict, and at least stop punishing one of the parties to the conflict.
Of course, if you demanded a ceasefire but really wanted something else, you have to recalculate your professed goals while still demanding capitulation. That's the position that 5,000 celebrities and other Hollywood elites face, now that the "ceasefire" failed to become "the destruction of Israel" and the death of the Joooos. The Hollywood Reporter checked in on the Tinseltown blacklist of Jewish filmmakers, and discovered that it will continue even with the ceasefire these blacklisters demanded:
Since its launch in September, the Film Workers for Palestine (FWP) campaign has attracted more than 5,000 signatories, including actors and directors such as Emma Stone, Olivia Colman, Yorgos Lanthimos, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton and Ayo Edebiri, who have pledged not to work with Israeli film institutions “implicated in genocide and apartheid.” Supporters say the boycott is a form of nonviolent protest and not discriminatory because it targets institutions, not individuals.
Like other cultural boycotts of Israel, the Film Workers for Palestine pledge and the proposed Eurovision ban are premised on the idea that certain Israeli institutions have been complicit in Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Hamas and other groups led the terrorist attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages and sparking the Gaza war. UN investigators last month determined that Israel’s military response — which has killed more than 68,000 people in Gaza and has involved the blocking of aid and the destruction of schools, hospitals and a fertility clinic — was carried out with the “intent to destroy the Palestinians” in the territory and meets the legal definition of “genocide.” Israel is also fighting allegations at the International Court of Justice of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel has denied the claims.
Film Workers for Palestine, at least, has no plans to stop its campaign. “We share in the relief of Palestinians in Gaza that Israel’s relentless slaughter may be coming to an end,” a FWP spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter, responding via email. “However, its genocide continues, since Israel has systematically destroyed the necessary conditions for sustaining life. Hospitals, basic services, water treatment and food production have been utterly decimated, which means the genocide will not end with a ceasefire, nor does this ceasefire bring about justice or accountability.”
So what do they want? "From the river to the sea," clearly:
The boycott, the spokesperson added, “would only cease to be relevant once Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid in Palestine has been dismantled and the necessary conditions to sustain life have been restored, as required by international law.”
In other words, they don't want a ceasefire. They want Hamas to conquer Israel. Five thousand American celebrities rooted for the side that slaughtered 1200 Israelis in an unprovoked, planned massacre, pillage, and mass rape and torture, not to mention the kidnapping of 250 men, women, and children. And now they're blacklisting Jews over their politics, a remarkable action given the self-congratulatory storytelling Hollywood routinely indulges over the blacklists of the 1950s over communism.
John Ondrasik has seen this all along, and has become one of the entertainment industry's most outspoken critics. Yesterday, John and I discussed the joy of seeing the hostages return, and what will come next in his long support for them and their families. John has sharp criticism for Hollywood and the music industry for their silence and/or outright support for terrorism. We also talk about the roots of the radicalism.
Here are a couple of lightly edited excerpts from the AI-generated transcript:
Ed: First off, what does that tell you about where this industry is at the entertainment industry broadly, I guess you can say? And secondly, is there any hope that this that people are going to actually reset their moral compass back into the proper direction here? Because it looks pretty bleak to me. I mean, God bless Mayim Bialik and David Schwimmer. And I'm sorry, I forget the other couple people -- well, Patricia Heaton's been great, right? Should definitely not forget Patricia Heaton. But I mean, everybody else is either radio silent or actively antagonistic towards this. And it's discouraging to know that this is where, you know, the entertainment elite are.
Ed: I think it's just an overt hostility, not just to Jews. I think it's part, I think it's really a big part of it. But also to the idea of Western civilization existing, and not even outside normal European slash North American context, but just existing at all. And I think Israel is, what's a good way of putting it, basically, that scapegoat isn't quite the right analogy here, quite the right term for it. But Israel is just the target, because Israel is Western civilization in the middle of a region that just simply, it hasn't spread much in recent centuries.
John: You're right. It's been going on for decades. Look, the people that Israel typically hate America. It's Marxism. It's anti-Semitism. It's wokeism. And, you know, it becomes so insane that you have, like, queers for Palestine, you know, who would be tortured and raped.
Ed: Oh, yeah. Adam and I used to have conversations about that. I'll tell you that for sure.
John: But the thing is, it would be kind of funny if it was just a little niche, but it's not. You know, Kamala Harris would not meet with Netanyahu when he came here. You know, Anthony Blinken said if Hamas, if Israel doesn't change their ways, they'll become indistinguishable from Hamas. Basically, a third of the Democratic Party on the Hill voted to stop sending weapons to Israel. So you're exactly right.
Israel has to be the demon to the Middle East because Because if they're not, then their people will look at their leaders in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in many of these states where the people live below the poverty line. So you have to have Israel to blame everything on, or their whole kind of system collapses. Now, we may be seeing a change in that with President Trump. There may be some leaders who understand we want a better life for our people.
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There's much more in the podcast below, so be sure to watch or listen to all of it. We also discuss John's upcoming Five for Fighting tour with the string quartet, and his wife Carla's book, Stop Trying! We will talk more after his tour, when some of the dust settles and we can see whether Israel and the US have transformed the region -- despite the anti-Semitic elites in Hollywood.
The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!
Editor's Note: Donald Trump is America's Peace Time President. Support and follow our latest reporting on the president's historic trip to the Middle East, and the aftermath in the region and here at home.
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