When Our Own Voices Hurt the Most

Hollywood — and the wider entertainment world — has been busy.

We have our regulars: Javier Bardem, Mark Ruffalo and Macklemore.

Bardem has called what is happening in Gaza genocide. Ruffalo has repeatedly used the same accusation against Israel. Macklemore has made “Free Palestine” central to his activism.

They are entitled to their views.

I am equally entitled to find much of this rhetoric hateful, vile and profoundly disturbing.

But as upsetting as it is when celebrities use enormous platforms to condemn Israel, something else makes my blood boil in an entirely different way:

When the rhetoric comes from Jews themselves.

Disagreement from the outside is one thing.

Watching Jews lend their identity and voice to the loudest condemnations of the Jewish state — while antisemitism is surging and October 7 remains an open wound — hits differently.

Adam Brody is the latest example.

In a recent interview, he said:

“Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine.”

Brody acknowledged that he had discussed his views privately but had largely avoided speaking publicly until now.

Then there is Hannah Einbinder, who on September 24 was among those arrested during a Jewish Voice for Peace demonstration outside the United Nations protesting Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s actions in Gaza.

And this is not limited to Hollywood.

Brad Lander has become one of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s most prominent Jewish political allies. Mamdani endorsed Lander’s congressional campaign while highlighting their shared opposition to AIPAC.

That alliance troubles me because of Mamdani’s posture toward Israel.

During his mayoral campaign, Mamdani repeatedly promised that he would seek Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest pursuant to the International Criminal Court warrant if the Israeli prime minister entered New York.

There was one rather important question:

Could the mayor of New York legally do it?

Only after taking office did Mamdani direct his team to review the applicable law. His administration concluded that New York City did not have the authority to execute the ICC warrant. Mamdani then urged the federal government to act instead.

That sequence bothers me.

The legal question should have come before the political promise, not after it.

Whatever anyone thinks about Netanyahu — and Israelis themselves argue fiercely about him — I find it extraordinary that pursuing the possible arrest of Israel’s elected prime minister became an issue for the mayor of New York.

What a chutzpah!

But there is another part of this that troubles me even more.

What about the Jews who actually live in the city you govern?

Through August 2026, confirmed anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City were up 8 percent year over year and accounted for 53.9 percent of all confirmed hate crimes — even though Jewish New Yorkers make up roughly 10 percent of the city’s population.

That does not mean Mamdani caused those crimes. I am not making that claim.

But it does mean the environment in which a mayor chooses his words matters.

A mayor is not simply a commentator on international affairs. He has constituents — including Jewish New Yorkers living amid an extraordinary level of antisemitic hostility.

Before casting your political net across an international conflict, shouldn’t you consider how your rhetoric may land among the people you were elected to serve?

To be fair, Mamdani’s administration has also continued the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and this month unveiled a citywide strategy including additional hate-crime prevention funding, synagogue security and Holocaust education. Those actions deserve acknowledgment.

But they do not erase my question about the rhetoric.

Words from City Hall carry weight.

And I find it painful watching a prominent Jewish ally such as Brad Lander stand so closely beside Mamdani on these issues.

Brody, Einbinder and Lander are entitled to their positions.

But they do not speak for the Jewish people.

American Jewish opinion is considerably more nuanced than some of its loudest representatives suggest.

A September 2026 Jewish Electorate Institute poll found that 86 percent of American Jews identify as pro-Israel, with 65 percent describing themselves as pro-Israel while also critical of some or many Israeli government policies.

That distinction matters.

You can love Israel and criticize its government.

You can care deeply about Palestinian suffering without accepting every accusation made against Israel.

You can challenge your people without abandoning them.

Yet when prominent Jews invoke their Jewishness as a credential for condemning Israel while showing far less urgency when Jews themselves need defending, I find that disconnect profoundly painful.

Some will object to the expression “self-hating Jew.”

I understand why.

I cannot know what is inside Adam Brody’s, Hannah Einbinder’s or Brad Lander’s heart, and I will not pretend otherwise.

Perhaps they sincerely believe their positions express Jewish morality.

But sometimes I wonder whether publicly distancing oneself from Israel also brings social acceptance — the comfort of saying:

I’m Jewish, but I’m not one of those Jews.

Maybe being the Jew willing to condemn other Jews earns applause or credibility in certain rooms.

I cannot know anyone’s motivation.

I can only tell you what it looks like from where I stand.

And to me, this is what Jewish self-hatred can look like.

Before you say “genocide,” have you done the work?

One of the gravest accusations imaginable has become almost casual:

Genocide.

A word that should demand extraordinary evidence, context and care now appears on protest signs, social feeds and celebrity platforms as though nothing remains to examine.

If your microphone reaches millions, shouldn’t you have a responsibility to understand the evidence before making that accusation?

Understand October 7.

Understand Hamas.

Understand the realities of fighting an armed organization operating inside a densely populated civilian environment and through an enormous underground tunnel network.

Examine Israel’s evacuation warnings and civilian-harm mitigation measures — and examine allegations that those measures were insufficient or failed in particular operations.

Read Israeli sources.

Read Palestinian sources.

Read military experts.

Read Israel’s critics and those who challenge them.

Serious accusations require serious research.

Hamas did not exist in a vacuum

Another uncomfortable reality too often disappears from the conversation:

Hamas has had meaningful support among Palestinians.

That does not mean every Palestinian supports Hamas.

They clearly do not.

The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research’s August 2026 polling showed Hamas losing substantial support and increasing Palestinian preference for negotiations. But the same survey found that 72 percent opposed Hamas disarming before a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

That is complicated.

Good.

Reality is complicated.

Palestinians do not all think alike.

Israelis do not all think alike.

Jews certainly do not all think alike.

But pretending Hamas has operated without a meaningful Palestinian constituency is no more honest than pretending every Palestinian supports Hamas.

Serious discussion requires confronting facts that make everyone uncomfortable.

What have the courts actually decided?

The same care should apply to international law.

South Africa’s genocide case against Israel remains before the International Court of Justice.

The court has issued provisional measures. Those measures were not a final judgment determining that Israel committed genocide.

The International Criminal Court is a different institution altogether. Its warrant against Netanyahu concerns alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity — not a judicial determination that Israel committed genocide.

That does not mean every Israeli military action was lawful.

It means we should describe what the courts have actually decided — no more and no less.

Seeing isn’t always believing anymore

This war is being fought not only with weapons, but through photographs, videos, algorithms and social media.

A devastating image can circle the world before anyone asks:

Is it real?

Sometimes, it isn’t.

Fact-checkers have documented AI-generated imagery and falsely contextualized material circulated as though it documented actual events in Gaza.

That matters.

But it does not mean Palestinian suffering is fake.

Palestinian children have suffered and died during this war.

They have.

It means that in the age of artificial intelligence, seeing something horrifying is not the same as knowing that it happened exactly as presented.

Images can be generated.

Old photographs recycled.

Videos miscaptioned.

Statistics stripped of context.

Emotion travels faster than verification.

What happened to journalism?

And that is precisely why journalism matters.

Its obligations should be basic:

Check the claim.

Scrutinize the source.

Verify the image.

Challenge the number.

Seek the other side.

Then publish.

Journalism has never been perfect. Bias, sensationalism and mistakes existed long before social media.

But too often today it feels reversed:

Publish first. Let the headline travel. Let the outrage explode. Correct it later.

And corrections rarely travel as far as accusations.

When the subject is war — civilians dying, soldiers fighting, hostages taken and accusations of terrorism, war crimes and genocide — getting the story right should matter more than getting the story first.

That responsibility does not end with journalists.

Public figures who amplify those stories to millions of people carry responsibility too.

A microphone should come with an obligation to know what you are amplifying.

Then I look at other Jews

Because there was another choice after October 7.

Jerry Seinfeld showed up.

He travelled to Israel, met released hostages and hostage families and visited Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities devastated on October 7.

Michael Rapaport showed up.

He travelled to Israel and used his platform repeatedly to advocate for the hostages and speak against antisemitism.

Debra Messing used her voice too. She travelled to Israel after October 7 as part of a group of public figures who met hostage families and visited communities affected by the massacre.

Tovah Feldshuh publicly advocated for Israeli and Jewish victims as well.

And here the contrast becomes almost impossible for me to ignore.

Tovah Feldshuh is Adam Brody’s co-star on Nobody Wants This.

More than that:

She plays his mother.

Brody plays Noah, a rabbi. Feldshuh plays Bina, his deeply Jewish mother.

I have no idea what conversations they have privately, and I would never pretend to.

But publicly, the contrast is striking.

One used her platform after October 7 to draw attention to Jewish and Israeli victims.

The other has now used his to accuse Israel of genocide.

Same show.

Same Jewish story on screen.

Very different choices about what to do with a microphone off screen.

Seinfeld, Rapaport, Feldshuh and Messing are different people with different approaches.

But one basic instinct united them:

When their people were hurting, they stood beside them.

That is what I am asking for.

Not blind allegiance.

Not silence.

Not unquestioning support for an Israeli government.

Just the willingness to say:

These are my people too.

They built the microphone

There is an irony in all of this that Hollywood should understand better than almost anywhere else.

The American studio system was built in significant part by Jewish immigrants and their children:

Adolph Zukor.

Carl Laemmle.

Louis B. Mayer.

William Fox.

Harry Cohn.

The Warner brothers.

Jews who knew what it meant to be outsiders helped create one of the world’s most powerful storytelling industries.

That Jewish imprint did not end with the studio founders.

Stan Lee — born Stanley Martin Lieber to Jewish immigrants from Romania — became one of the central creative forces behind Marvel. His stories repeatedly explored outsiders, difference and belonging.

There is something almost painfully appropriate about that history.

Jews helped shape the stories America told itself about courage, prejudice, outsiders and standing up when something was wrong.

They found a voice.

They built the microphone.

And generations later, I find myself asking why some Jews holding that microphone find their Jewish voice most forcefully when condemning Israel.

Where was that urgency when Jews needed defending?

Where was the outrage when hostages were dragged into Gaza?

Where was the insistence that Jewish women be believed?

Where was that voice as antisemitism surged?

Why does Jewish identity sometimes become something to announce proudly before condemning Israel, yet become more complicated when standing publicly beside Jews is unpopular?

History should have taught us something

No, I am not saying that America in 2026 is Nazi Germany.

It isn’t.

Nor am I calling critics of Israel Nazis.

That would cheapen the Holocaust rather than learn from it.

But history left us a lesson.

Under the Nuremberg Laws, Nazi Germany did not define Jewishness simply by religious practice. People who had assimilated, stopped practicing Judaism or whose families had converted to Christianity could still be classified and persecuted as Jews because of their ancestry.

Assimilation did not necessarily protect you.

Distancing yourself from other Jews did not necessarily change how an antisemite saw you.

To those determined to hate Jews:

A Jew was a Jew.

That is not a prediction about today.

It is a warning from yesterday.

As October 7 nears

I hope Adam Brody, Hannah Einbinder, Brad Lander and other Jewish public figures who have lent powerful voices to condemning Israel use this anniversary to stop and look again.

Not necessarily to agree with me.

Not to abandon every political belief they hold.

But to remember.

Remember the innocent families murdered inside their homes.

Remember the innocent young people running for their lives from the Nova festival.

Remember those dragged across the border into Gaza.

Remember the innocent children.

Remember the innocent elderly.

Remember a Jewish world waking up to a horror we are still carrying.

And remember what followed:

The rationalizations.

The denial.

The antisemitism.

The rush by some to explain away the murder of Jews before all their bodies had even been identified.

Then ask yourself:

What is my voice contributing to now?

You can disagree with Israel.

You can oppose Netanyahu.

You can demand investigations and accountability.

You can believe Israeli leaders have made terrible decisions.

But before lending your name and Jewish identity to the gravest accusations against the Jewish state, look again.

Look at the evidence.

Look at Hamas.

Look at Palestinian public opinion.

Look at Israel’s conduct — the failures as well as the precautions.

Ask what has been left out.

And look at the Jews standing beside you.

Because ultimately, for me, this is not about Netanyahu.

It is not about Democrats or Republicans.

It is not really about Hollywood.

It is not even only about Israel.

It is about achdut.

הנה מה טוב ומה נעים שבת אחים גם יחד

How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.

I believe Hashem takes joy in seeing His children stand together — not in watching us turn against one another.

But achdut does not mean uniformity.

We have a beautiful Jewish expression:

שבעים פנים לתורה — Shiv’im panim laTorah — the Torah has seventy faces.

Different interpretations.

Different perspectives.

How Jewish is that?

We were never expected to become identical.

We do not have to vote alike, think alike or agree about Netanyahu, the war or Israeli policy.

We can argue fiercely.

We can challenge one another.

We can demand better from one another.

But seventy faces to the Torah does not mean seventy different peoples.

We are still one.

You can be angry with your brother without forgetting that he is your brother.

You can argue with your sister without deciding that she is no longer your sister.

There are too few of us to forget that.

So as October 7 approaches, this is what I ask of every Jew with a microphone — whether it reaches ten people or ten million:

Look again.

Research again.

Remember again.

And whatever conclusions you reach, never forget who we are to one another.

Hashem did not ask us to become identical.

But surely we can remember that we belong to one another.

United we stand. Divided we fall.