Adam Brody: From Hot Rabbi to Hot Seat
It seems the producers of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This have gotten one thing correct: truly, nobody does want this. As a Jewish viewer, I was excited to watch the show, yet my enthusiasm turned to wariness within the first few episodes. The show’s depiction of Jews, and Jewish women in particular, did not sit right with me or many other Jewish viewers. It chose to lean into derogatory stereotypes of Jewish women, portraying them as catty, vapid, and controlling in contrast to the fun-loving, easygoing “shiksa.” Despite the criticism, the show pressed on, led by Adam Brody, who plays Noah, the “hot rabbi.” And it was none other than Brody himself who landed the show back in the hot seat just weeks before the premiere of its third season, joining a growing list of Hollywood celebrities publicly condemning Israel.
In a recent interview with GQ, Brody made his opinion on the Israel-Gaza war public, condemning Israel for what he has characterized as “genocide.” The actor, known for his many roles in which he plays the “nice Jewish boy” character, nonchalantly said, “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide.” This was part of a longer statement about the conflict, which included a call to “free Palestine.” But what rings louder than his words is what he chose to leave out. His comment makes no mention of Hamas or its horrifyingly brutal attack on October 7th, or of the thousands of Israelis who were killed, injured, or taken hostage that day.
Just a quick breakdown of the term genocide, which, although used constantly, is rarely used with an understanding of its legal meaning. Under the Genocide Convention, the crime requires both certain prohibited acts and the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. That distinction matters: civilian casualties, however tragic, do not automatically establish genocidal intent.
Consider the scale of destruction in Gaza. According to UN satellite assessments, approximately 82% of structures in the Strip had sustained damage as of June 16, 2026, with approximately two-thirds of those structures destroyed. Yet, even using the approximately 3.2% fatality figure cited in this article, and the estimate that 35.2% of those fatalities were Hamas members, the resulting proportion of fatalities who were not identified as Hamas members would be approximately 2% of Gaza’s population. The disparity between the destruction of infrastructure and the proportion of the population killed raises an important question: if Israel’s objective were to destroy the Palestinian population, why does the pattern of destruction not correspond to the mass killing of that population?
Israel has stated that its military objective is to dismantle Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for the October 7 attack, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. The scale and pattern of destruction in Gaza are consistent with a campaign focused on destroying military capabilities and infrastructure while seeking to limit civilian casualties. These figures alone cannot establish intent, but they are difficult to reconcile with the claim that the objective of the campaign was to destroy the Palestinian population. Civilian deaths are an incredibly tragic reality of war, particularly in an extraordinarily densely populated area where Hamas has embedded itself within civilian infrastructure.
Beyond his misunderstanding of what constitutes genocide, Brody’s comments also reflect the increasingly simplistic way in which this war is discussed in Hollywood. In the same interview, Brody spoke about the dwindling willingness of celebrities to engage in political advocacy, arguing that people felt safer criticizing the Trump administration’s policies during its first term than they do now. Yet when it comes to Israel, he reduces an extraordinarily complex war to a single, inflammatory legal accusation. His statement does not acknowledge Hamas, October 7th, the Israeli victims, or the context in which the war began.
That matters because Brody is not simply another Hollywood actor commenting on a distant geopolitical conflict. He is the face of a show marketed around Jewish identity, playing a character whose Jewishness is central to the story. For Jewish viewers who watched the show hoping to see their identity represented with warmth and nuance, it is difficult to separate that representation from the public image of the actor at its center. Jewish audiences are entitled to ask for more than a celebrity sound bite about a conflict that has cost Israelis and Palestinians so much. When a complicated history is reduced to a fashionable slogan, Israelis and Jews are stripped of their suffering, and the Palestinian people are stripped of their agency.
