Actress Hannah Einbinder's recent defense of Mark Ruffalo's controversial statements about Israel has reignited a painful question for many in the Jewish community: at what point does criticism of Israel cross into antisemitism --- and why are some Jewish public figures so quick to stand beside those who make that crossing?
The truth is that it's easy when you're sitting in an air-conditioned villa in Los Angeles. Easy to wrap self-hatred in hollow slogans about "Palestinian liberation" and preach morality to gleaming cameras. Easy to ignore the festering antisemitism around you when you believe money and status will protect you. But history, which Einbinder and her "enlightened Jewish" friends refuse to learn, already proved otherwise. In the 1930s in Europe, Jews who assimilated, erased their identity, tried to prove they were "part of the mainstream," ended up on the same trains to extermination. Antisemitic hatred doesn't stop to check how much you've kissed your enemies' hands.
"Never Again" is not an empty slogan for award show speeches. It's an existential commandment written in blood, and it's exactly what happened to us on October 7th. When hordes of murderers invaded homes, burned them, raped, and massacred the elderly, infants, and entire families, we received the cruelest reminder since the Holocaust: Jews cannot depend on the mercy of others. The Jewish people's connection to the land of Israel, going back to God's promise to our father Abraham, is not a subject for political debate in studios. It is our only lifeline.
Maybe only when they understand there, in that disconnected Hollywood bubble, that Jewish fate reaches all of us, only then will they wake up. The State of Israel is not a privilege or fashionable target for criticism. It is the only fortress of the Jewish people. And whoever tries to distance themselves from it for a few more rounds of applause in Los Angeles hasn't learned a thing from history.
We have no other country.
