Cannes 2025: 370 Hollywood 'Geniuses' Denounce Israeli "Genocide" 

In a letter dripping with self-righteous indignation, Hollywood luminaries like Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Juliette Binoche, and Guillermo del Toro have affixed their names to a petition condemning what they call a “genocide” in Gaza, unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival last Friday (May 16).

The manifesto has a whopping 370 signatures.

As we have come to expect, these 'legends' decry the film industry’s “silence” and mourns the death of Gaza photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, killed in an Israeli strike.

Yet, in their fervor to champion one cause, these stars have committed an unforgivable sin: a near-total erasure of the October 7, 2023, atrocities and the ongoing nightmare of Israeli hostages still languishing in Hamas’s tunnels. Their selective outrage is disgraceful hypocrisy, but after seeing this type of behavior over and over again, we aren't even surprised anymore.

The petition’s signatories, including Phoenix, Pascal, and del Toro, breeze past October 7th, offering no mention of the 24 hostages still held, many tortured, beaten, and starved in conditions defying humanity.

Do these stars not know the fate of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose severed arm was paraded on video before his execution?

Juliette Binoche, chairing Cannes’ jury, at least acknowledged the hostages in her opening speech on May 13, 2025, but her subsequent signature on this letter undercuts that gesture.

Her emotional tribute to Hassouna, killed in a strike the IDF says targeted a Hamas operative, rings hollow.

The letter’s focus on Hassouna’s death, tragic, yes, ignores the IDF’s claim of a legitimate target, while offering no scrutiny of Hamas’s tactic of embedding operatives among civilians. Binoche, Phoenix, and their cohort wax poetic about “propaganda colonizing our imaginations,” yet they swallow Hamas’s unverified casualty figures, 120 killed Thursday, 50 Friday, per Gaza authorities, without a shred of skepticism.

This isn’t the first time these stars have tipped their hand. Pedro Pascal, as early as December 2023, called for a Gaza ceasefire on Instagram, urging donations but sidestepping Hamas’s role in sparking the war.

Joaquin Phoenix, a serial signatory of pro-Palestinian petitions, joined a 2023 letter to President Biden demanding a ceasefire, alongside Susan Sarandon and Riz Ahmed, who also signed this Cannes manifesto.

Javier Bardem, another original signatory, publicly called for hostage release and a ceasefire in October 2024 but has since doubled down on condemning Israel alone.

What’s wrong with these people?

They wield their platforms to shape narratives, yet they cherry-pick tragedies to fit a fashionable cause. The letter’s sanctimonious tone, claiming a “duty to fight” against “racist, islamophobic, and antisemitic movements”, conveniently ignores Hamas’s antisemitic charter and its October 7 rampage, which targeted Jews for being Jews.

Ralph Fiennes, Mark Ruffalo, and Michael Moore, among others, express “shame” at their industry’s silence on Gaza, but where is their shame for ignoring the raped, the murdered, the still-captive?

This is not about denying Gaza’s pain!

War is brutal, and civilian deaths are heartbreaking. But to label Israel’s actions “genocide” while glossing over Hamas’s deliberate targeting of civilians on October 7 and its ongoing hostage crisis is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. These stars, cloaked in the privilege of Cannes’ red carpet, have chosen a side, and it’s not the side of truth. They’ve traded nuance for dogma, humanity for headlines.

If they truly cared about “losing our sense of humanity,” they’d demand the release of every hostage, condemn Hamas’s terrorism, and mourn all victims, Israeli and Palestinian alike.

Instead, they’ve signed a letter that’s less a cry for justice than a performative betrayal of the very values they claim to uphold.