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Israeli Actors Face a New Bias in Hollywood; But They Are Determined to Keep Fighting
Michael Aloni as Gabriel, Hila Saada as Rosa, and Swell Ariel Or as Luna in a photo from “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” production. Photo: Yes Studios.
“Just being Israeli in Hollywood means that ‘your existence is a political act,’” Swell Ariel Or told me during a recent conversation about her career as an actress. Swell, best known for her starring role in the Netflix hit The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, now faces a reality where casting decisions are no longer based primarily on talent or professionalism, but on her identity as an Israeli.
“If, before October 7, getting a role was 30 percent talent, 20 percent how you look, 20 percent how you sound, and 10 percent based on your previous work — like, that was the whole equation — now I feel like at least half of it is about where you come from and where you stand on the [Middle East] conflict,” she said.
Swell’s experience mirrors what many of us are seeing across creative industries. As an author and editor, I’ve seen the same bias take hold in the literary world. Jewish authors and publishers are being shut out, marginalized, or blacklisted based on their support for Israel or their Jewish identity. Like the author community, Swell’s strategy for overcoming this bias involves creating “more connections with Jews or allies in the industry,” she said.
Or’s new film, Kissufim, directed by Keren Nechmad and now streaming on Netflix, is set in 1977 and follows the lives of young Israeli soldiers and volunteers living on a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip. The film, inspired by Nechmad’s personal connection to the kibbutz through her father, captures a moment of youthful idealism as the characters experience love, friendship, and the challenges of coming of age. Against the backdrop of post-Yom Kippur War Israel, Kissufim explores the tension between the personal and political, highlighting the characters’ struggles with the trauma of war and the hope for peace.
Tragically, many of the current residents of the real-life Kibbutz Kissufim, where much of the movie was shot, were among the victims of the October 7 terrorist attacks. Swell and the film’s cast and crew had worked closely with members of the kibbutz during production, forming bonds with many who later lost their lives. The crew had received security briefings from local residents before filming, some of whom were later killed in the attacks.
Still, Swell believes that Kissufim has the potential to educate US audiences about the idealistic foundations of Israel, particularly through the lens of kibbutzim. She expressed concern that many, especially anti-Israel activists, mistakenly view kibbutzim as “right-wing, illegal settlements, extremists,” when in reality, they are communities of “people of peace” who want to “work the land” and have historically been strong advocates for Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.
The film aims to humanize Israelis by depicting the daily lives of kibbutz residents.
When I first interviewed Swell last year, just after the October 7 attacks, she was starting to use her platform on Instagram to raise awareness about Israel and combat antisemitism. Now, nearly a year later, I asked her how those efforts were going. While she sees some progress, the situation is still tough. “I feel like it’s getting better a little bit,” she said, but quickly added, “It’s not good yet.”
Swell explained that her approach on social media is not about directly confronting or trying to persuade people who hold anti-Israel views. “My goal is not to convince them,” she said. “It’s to make them think about a more complex situation.”
She wants her followers to see the humanity in Israelis and to understand that their experiences are not so different from people around the world.
“What’s the difference between the Nova Festival and Coachella?” she asked, highlighting the similarities between Israeli and American youth cultures to bridge the gap in understanding. She hopes to expand perspectives and dispel myths about Israel, particularly for younger audiences who may have only been exposed to negative portrayals of the country.
Swell also addressed an open letter signed by more than 200 actors and celebrities, including people like Ben Affleck, Jessica Chastain, and Dua Lipa, urging President Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. She noted that while the hostages were mentioned, there was nothing about the horrors of October 7.
What would she like to say to her fellow actors? “I wish I could talk to them, just like have coffee and talk,” she said.
Swell noted that every time she returns to Israel, she disconnects from the Hollywood world to reconnect with her roots. But now that she’s back in Los Angeles, she’s ready to resume the fight against antisemitism in whatever way she can.
As for upcoming projects, Swell is waiting to see where Kissufim takes her career, and whether it opens new doors. She’s also hopeful for potential future seasons of The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, though she didn’t have any concrete updates. “Hopefully, I’ll be back home soon with a project or a next season of something,” she said.
Swell remains determined to pursue her acting career despite the challenges Israeli actors face in Hollywood. “I’m still fighting and going to auditions because I feel like it’s a trend and it’ll pass,” she said. “I think that I believe in the goodness of people.”
I’ve interviewed many authors who were blackballed for their Jewish or Zionist identities. Their solution has been to find allies, build new networks, and most of all, keep writing. Swell is doing the same. Like those authors, she won’t let the haters win.
Howard Lovy is an author and editor based in Michigan who is working on a book on how to fight antisemitism. His novel, “Found and Lost: The Jake and Cait Story,” will be released in 2025 from Vine Leaves Press.
The post Israeli Actors Face a New Bias in Hollywood; But They Are Determined to Keep Fighting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Clinton Adviser Says Harris Not ‘Sufficiently Committed to Israel and Fighting Antisemitism’
US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during an event with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as part of the US-ASEAN Special Summit, in Washington, DC, May 13, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
Doug Schoen, a former adviser under then-US President Bill Clinton, revealed on Tuesday that he is not planning to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris to serve as the next commander-in-chief in the White House, citing her policies toward Israel and combating antisemitism as the main reasons.
During an appearance on Fox News, Schoen said he “cannot” commit to voting for Harris, stating that he is “undecided” on who he will support in the 2024 presidential race. The former Clinton pollster voiced concern about Harris’s unstable positions on Israel and the Middle East.
“At this point I cannot [vote for Harris],” Schoen said. “I would call myself undecided, at this point. But I can’t vote for her, for reasons related to her changing position and also the Middle East as we have talked about before. I do not believe she is sufficiently committed to Israel and fighting antisemitism.”
Schoen has previously criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
In April, Schoen noted that the administration was under immense pressure by the left wing of the Democratic Party to “take a strong stance against the Jewish State.” He argued that the anti-Israel drift of the Democratic Party is “dangerous” and overlooks the Jewish state’s “strategic importance.” He also lamented that US President Joe Biden adopted a more pointed and adversarial “tone” toward America’s closest Middle Eastern ally.
“During this turbulent time in Israel, it is crucial that Biden prioritizes realpolitik over politics. He mustn’t cave to the political pressure he is facing from within his own party to denounce Israel forcefully,” Schoen wrote.
In May, Schoen published an op-ed in the Orange County Register, arguing that the Biden administration’s decision to halt some arms transfers to Israel hamstrung the Jewish state’s ability to eradicate the Hamas terrorist threat from the Gaza Strip. He lambasted the decision as “politically motivated” and argued that it “endangers Israeli lives.”
“By trying to prevent Israel from defeating Hamas, the Biden administration is giving Hamas more aid and support than it is giving Israel,” Schoen wrote.
Schoen’s concerns over the true extent of Harris’s support for Israel has been echoed by other supporters of the Jewish state in the weeks since she has replaced Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket. Though Harris has voiced support for the Jewish state’s right to exist and self-defense, she harbors close ties to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has become increasingly hostile toward the Jewish state. Harris has been under pressure from pro-Palestinian activists to break with the Biden administration by adopting a more adversarial posture toward Israel.
She has also expressed sympathy for far-left narratives that brand Israel as “genocidal.” The vice president has additionally often criticized Israel’s war effort against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Harris also pushed the unsubstantiated narrative that Israel has intentionally withheld aid from the people of Gaza, allegedly triggering a famine.
“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane. And our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid.”
Harris has also expressed sympathy for anti-Israel protesters on US university campuses, saying that they are “showing exactly what the human emotion should be.”
Some indicators suggest that Harris could adopt a more antagonistic approach to the Jewish state than Biden. For example, Harris urged the White House to be more “sympathetic” toward Palestinians and take a “tougher” stance against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a Politico report in December. Then in March, White House aides forced Harris to tone down a speech that was too tough on Israel, according to NBC News.
However, during her speech at the final night of the Democratic National Convention last month, Harris reaffirmed her commitment to ensuring Israel’s security and vowed that her administration would always furnish the Jewish state with the arms necessary to thwart future terrorist threats.
The post Former Clinton Adviser Says Harris Not ‘Sufficiently Committed to Israel and Fighting Antisemitism’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Student Intifada’: Pro-Hamas Groups to Follow 9/11 Anniversary With ‘Day of Action’
Anti-Israel demonstrators clash with New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers during a protest on April 18, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect
National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is planning to follow up the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks with a nationwide “Day of Action” on Thursday, Sept. 12, the group’s latest apparent evocation of Islamist terrorism in its campaigns against Israel and what it has described as the “American empire.”
“Last school year, the Student Movement for Palestine showed the world what we’re capable of,” NSJP said in a post published on X/Twitter last week, referring to the anti-Israel demonstrations which included acts of property destruction, antisemitic assault, and celebrations of terrorists its members perpetrated at colleges and universities across the US. “University repression will not stop us. Draconian speech codes will not stop us. There is only one way out: cut ties with the Zionist entity.”
The tweet featured a picture of a young man, who appeared to be Arab, concealing his face with a keffiyeh, a common practice of pro-Hamas activists who engage in unlawful activity and utter profane and antisemitic remarks at their demonstrations.
Last school year, the Student Movement for Palestine showed the world what we’re capable of.
University repression will not stop us. Draconian speech codes will not stop us.
There is only one way out: cut ties with the Zionist entity. pic.twitter.com/GNf6qVGVjh
— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) September 5, 2024
NSJP has been building up anticipation of its “Day of Action” all month, calling it the continuance of a “student intifada” on Instagram on Sept. 2.
“Our universities have done everything in their power to ignore and redirect our demands for divestment, dodging accountability by suspending and surveilling students. Administrators far and wide have chosen to unleash police violence on students rather than end complicity in the Zionist occupation,” it said. “We will not rest until our universities divest. The Student Intifada continues — until divestment, until arms embargo.”
Meanwhile, the group at Pomona College last week promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories falsely accusing Israel and the US of spreading the Covid-19 virus to commit genocide and maintain “colonial” rule over people of color.
“Pandemics are a tool of the colonizer,” said an SJP pamphlet distributed during a club fair at the school, according to a Jewish students club, Haverim, that acquired a copy the document. “By bomb or by pathogen, these attacks on Palestinian life are man-made, intentional policy choices … The american [sic] state and israeli [sic] settler colony have found a dress rehearsal for more targeted genocides in their construction of today’s eugenicist normalcy wherein everyone is expected to sustain repeated covid infections indefinitely until death.”
Earlier this month, NSJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, publicly discussed its grand strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US in a now-deleted tweet that was posted to X/Twitter.
“Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said last week. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of progressive revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the terror group’s movement to destroy Israel during this year’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it says its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July, US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” However, Haines stopped short of arguing that there a hostile fifth column in the US seeking to subvert it from within, arguing that “Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with our receiving support from a foreign government.”
Nevertheless, Haines confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Student Intifada’: Pro-Hamas Groups to Follow 9/11 Anniversary With ‘Day of Action’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Republican Jewish Coalition Announces $10 Million Anti-Harris Ad Buy in Bid to Bolster Trump Support
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition, holds a kippah in support of former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as he speaks on Day 2 of the Republican National Convention, at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, July 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) announced a $10 million ad buy targeted at the US Jewish community and in favor of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump amid new polling showing he is trailing his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, significantly among Jewish voters.
“This is, by far, the largest and most comprehensive effort ever to turn out the Jewish vote for President Donald J. Trump,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks said in a statement on Monday announcing the ad buy.
“Never before have American Jews felt so unsafe,” Brooks continued. “Never before has antisemitism in the United States been so prevalent. Never before has Israel’s survival been so threatened. Never before has there been a candidate for president [Harris] that embraces and defends the antisemitic, anti-Israel ‘Squad.’”
As a result, the RJC is launching the $10 million ad buy opposing Harris, the incumbent US vice president, that will first air during Tuesday night’s presidential debate between Harris and Trump, who served as president from 2017-2021.
The ad seeks to link Harris with members of a group of progressive lawmakers in the US House colloquially known as the “squad” — including Reps. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It claims the members of the Squad are “antisemitic” and “anti-Israel” and juxtaposes pro-Hamas protesters chanting in favor of an “intifada revolution” with Harris saying she understands the concerns of the protesters.
The message of the ad is summed up in the RJC’s press release, which argues, “Kamala Harris is no ordinary Democrat. She stands with the Squad, not with us.”
The ad buy comes amid newly announced bad polling news for the RJC. On Monday, the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) released polling showing that Harris is leading Trump among Jewish voters by a 47-point margin — 72 percent to 25 percent.
“Trump clearly has animus for the overwhelming majority of American Jews. This poll confirms that the feeling is mutual,” said Halie Soifer, CEO of the JDCA. “The data is clear: Jewish Americans do not want a Trump second term. If we get Jewish voters to the polls, we will win in November.”
Harris’s net favorability was found to be 13 points higher among Jewish voters than US President Joe Biden’s was, rising from +25 to +38.
Meanwhile, when prioritizing issues, only 9 percent of American Jews said Israel is their top issue, putting it 10th out of 12 issue options, according to the poll. Among Reform Jews it is ranked last and among Orthodox Jews it is ranked fourth.
The results contradicted a July poll conducted by pollster Richard Baris showed that Jewish voters prefer Harris over Trump by a narrow margin of 52.7 percent to 45.9 percent.
The post Republican Jewish Coalition Announces $10 Million Anti-Harris Ad Buy in Bid to Bolster Trump Support first appeared on Algemeiner.com.