JOHN ONDRASIK: Hollywood joins history’s shameful betrayals by blacklisting Jewish artists.
Over 3,900 film artists, including some of Hollywood’s most celebrated names, just signed a boycott of Israeli cinema institutions. They claim this is a principled stand. I call it what it is: a cowardly act that feeds antisemitism, punishes Jewish artists, and poisons the very spirit of creativity.
I am not Jewish. I don’t claim that heritage. But I don’t need to be Jewish to see right from wrong. Common sense alone tells us that when you single out the world’s one Jewish state, when you target its filmmakers and artists while ignoring brutal regimes across the globe, you are not standing for justice. You are standing for bigotry dressed up as virtue. You are empowering and legitimizing terrorists.
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To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but, the silence over that by the good people.” Silence in the face of antisemitism is surrender. And surrender from within is the most dangerous betrayal of all.
Hollywood has always prided itself on standing up for the marginalized, the persecuted, the oppressed. But today, that standard is being abandoned. Instead, conformity and cowardice rule the day. It’s easier to boycott Israelis than to challenge fashionable lies. It’s easier to parrot slogans than to defend truth.
This is not just about Israel. This is about the soul of art itself. When you turn creativity into a political weapon, when you punish people not for their talent but for their identity, you kill art. You replace courage with cowardice, imagination with ideology, and beauty with blacklists.
I’m so old, I can remember when Hollywood produced anti-blacklist movies on a regular basis. What changed?
More from Ondrasik:
Many of us have wondered how the Holocaust could ever have happened. We need wonder no longer. It’s shades of 1938. Because if you can’t find the courage to defend Jewish artists and the Jewish state, don’t be surprised when history remembers this as the moment Hollywood lost its conscience, creativity, and credibility. We all know who you are.
Flashback: The Academy Museum ignores Hollywood’s Jewish founders.