AhlulBayt News Agency: Hollywood’s star-studded actors and actresses have turned this year’s Emmy awards into a center stage for crying out against the Israeli regime’s now-23-month-old war of genocide on the Gaza Strip.
The event was held on Monday, with noted actors Hannah Einbinder and Javier Bardem overtaking others in broadcasting unashamed criticism of the October 2023-present campaign of bloodletting and destruction and those aiding and abetting it.
Others made a statement by wearing items bearing slogans against the genocide and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Einbinder: Jews, Israeli regime two different things
Einbinder used her acceptance speech to cry out, “Free Palestine.”
Backstage, the actress smashed the once-unbreakable taboo among celebrities seeking to appease the regime and its powerful lobby in the United States and other Western states.
She differentiated between the world’s Jewish people and the regime’s illegal, apartheid-driven, and self-admitted efforts at establishing itself as a “state” solely belonging to people of the faith.
She said, “I feel like it is my obligation as a Jewish person” to distinguish Jews from the regime “because our religion and our culture is such an important and longstanding … institution that is really separate” from the regime.
Einbinder was referring to Tel Aviv’s reliance on occupation and aggression to exterminate those standing in the way of its expansionist drive.
“I have friends in Gaza who are working as frontline workers, as doctors, right now in the north of Gaza, to provide care for pregnant women, and [working] for schoolchildren to create schools in the refugee camps,” the actress added.
“It’s an issue that’s really close to my heart for many reasons.”
She also promoted boycotting as an effective tool to create pressure on the powers that be, so they would do their moral and legal duty towards stopping the genocide rather than assisting it.
Bardem: Not afraid of losing jobs over pro-Palestinian stance
Bardem, who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2007 and was also nominated for this year’s Emmys, wore a keffiyeh, a Palestinian headscarf, which serves more to symbolize the right and quest for freedom than simply functioning as a clothing item.
On the red carpet, the actor said he “will never work with some companies now [who] are not condemning the genocide in Gaza.”
“Me not getting jobs is absolutely irrelevant compared to what is going on there (the Gaza Strip),” he added.
Last year, too, he used an Instagram post to lambaste the regime's “crimes against humanity,” and share a video showing an Israeli sniper shooting a Palestinian for fun, beneath which he wrote the Israeli forces “are NAZIS."
Last week, Einbinder and Bardem were among thousands of film industry professionals, who signed the “Film Workers for Palestine” pledge not to work with Israeli film institutions.
Signatories also included filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Boots Riley, and Joshua Oppenheimer; and actors Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Ayo Edebiri, Riz Ahmed, Josh O’Connor, Cynthia Nixon, Julie Christie, Ilana Glazer, Rebecca Hall, and Debra Winger.
The pledge also featured a vow not to work with institutions that are directly complicit in the genocide, with Einbinder saying she was “happy to be a part of” the drive.
Inking the pledge, the signatories wrote, “We answer the call of Palestinian filmmakers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanization, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression.”
Screenwriter David Farr, who is among the signatories, said in a statement of his own that he was "distressed and enraged" by the actions of Israel, which he said "has for decades enforced an apartheid system on the Palestinian people whose land they have taken, and which is now perpetuating genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
At the Emmys, Einbinder, Aimee Lou Wall, Natasha Rothwell, Ruth Negga, and Chris Perfetti wore red Artists4Ceasefire pins, while Megan Stalter held a purse with “Ceasefire!” written on it.
Earlier this month, actors and filmmakers used the premiere of Palestine 36, a historical drama about the Palestinian struggle, from British colonial rule up to the current day, at the Toronto International Film Festival to likewise protest the genocide.
On September 3, a documentary depicting the plight of a Palestinian child, who was martyred last year after Israeli forces struck the car she was hiding in with hundreds of tank shells, drew a 22-minute-long standing ovation, tearful reactions, and waving Palestinian flags.
The avalanche of emotion followed The Voice of Hind Rajab’s premiere at the world-class Venice Film Festival.
The genocide has so far claimed the lives of nearly 64,900 Palestinians, mostly women and children, through incessant bombardment and weaponization of starvation. The onslaught has enjoyed direct and unprecedented US political, military, and intelligence support.
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