A little over a week ago, Hulk actor and Israel-hater Mark Ruffalo apologized for suggesting Israel is committing genocide. While many got excited over Ruffalo’s supposed seeing the light, halleluyah!, I cautioned people not to get too excited.
I don’t like being that guy who tells people told you so, but…
The article he has retweeted is replete with malicious lies – like Israel brutalizes palestinian Arabs, Israel is an “apartheid” regime, and Israeli security measures at the airport are just there to treat palestinian Arabs badly. It is also full of oft-used retorts of antisemites, including “My xxxx is older than the state of Israel”, “But we are semites too!”, and “accusations of antisemitism are just being used to silence us from speaking the truth about Israel.”
To be Palestinian is to be perpetually gaslit. Each and every day, choices are made that all but ensure that the imbalance of power and continued oppression lives in perpetuity. From the nearly $4 billion per year handed over from the United States government to the Israeli government with no humanitarian strings attached to the propaganda machine of the Netanyahu regime – the Israeli government has no motivation to stop oppressing and brutalizing my people.
This situation isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s only 73 years old. My dad is older than the state of Israel. He was in his first year of life during the British Mandate, when the British government supported “a national home” for Jewish people, leading to the creation of Israel.
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The problem, in part, lies in the inability or refusal to separate true antisemitism from the legitimate critiques of the oppressive Israeli regimes that have reigned over Palestinians, carrying out human rights abuses that would not be justified in almost any other circumstance.
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Let’s start with the fact that Palestinians, and Arabs, are actually Semitic people. So the attack itself is not even accurate.
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The accusations of antisemitism began immediately – an intentional tactic to distract from the truth. Even Jewish people who dare to speak out against this oppression are being attacked and labeled antisemitic. Meanwhile, Jewish settlers, bolstered by the Israeli government, are forcibly displacing Palestinian families from their homes. These details are conveniently forgotten while claiming Israel’s “right to defend itself.”
The bottom line is standing up for Palestinians isn’t the same as antisemitism. Arabs are Semites too, and ethnic persecution is ethnic persecution.
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When I fly to Tel Aviv, my U.S. passport is literally useless. I have been detained for hours on end. My family doesn’t know when to pick me up because my release is based on the whim of that particular day’s security agents. I have been strip searched. My bags and electronics have been ripped apart and scanned and then scanned again and again.
The security agents shuffle me from office to office and ask me absurd questions like when was my grandfather born? What was my great grandmother’s maiden name? Why don’t I speak Hebrew?
This entire process is meant to anger and intimidate and remind me that I’m not equal.
That Ruffalo would see fit to retweet this lie-ridden article that can only serve to increase hatred of the Jewish people while undermining very real incidences of Jew-hatred – at a time where Jews are being attacked all over the place – speaks a lot to Ruffalo’s faulty moral compass and lack of character. Bear in mind also he received antisemitic comments and tweets in response to his “apology” tweet
yet still retweeted an article that sweeps such real antisemitism under the carpet.
In essence, Ruffalo apologized for just one of the numerous lies about Israel he disseminates. Rumors of true soul-searching have been greatly exaggerated.
