Over 1,200 Hollywood celebrities sign pledge boycotting Israeli institutions over Gaza war

More than 1,200 celebrities from Hollywood including notable Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy and Palme d’Or winners like Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo have signed a pledge refusing to work with Israeli institutions and companies implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

The list of celebrities which have signed the pledge include prominent names such as filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Adam McKay, Boots Riley, Emma Seligman, Joshua Oppenheimer and Mike Leigh, and actors like Ayo Edebiri, Lily Gladstone, Hannah Einbinder, Peter Sarsgaard, Aimee Lou Wood, Paapa Essiedu, Gael Garcia Bernal, Riz Ahmed, Melissa Barrera, Cynthia Nixon, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, Joe Alwyn and Josh O’Connor.

The pledge statement was published by the organisation Film Workers for Palestine which unites film workers to "stand for an end to genocide, and for a free Palestine." The pledge includes not complying with the "whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them." "As filmmakers, actors, film industry workers, and institutions, we recognize the power of cinema to shape perceptions. In this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror," the statement read.

"Standing for equality, justice, and freedom for all people is a profound moral duty that none of us can ignore. So too, we must speak out now against the harm done to the Palestinian people," it added.

The pledge further requested the international film industry to stand against racism and dehumanisation and to do "everything humanly possible" to end the complicity in the oppression of the Palestinian people.

In 2024, a similar pledge was signed by over 7000 authors and book workers to boycott "complicit" Israeli publishing houses. Some of the signatories included winners of the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Giller Prize, MacArthur Fellowship, Miles Franklin Award, and National Book Award, including three winners, Percival Everett, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha, and Shifa Saltagi Safadi. Other authors included Khaled Hosseini, Piper Kerman and Ling Ma.