(RNS) — In America in the 2020s, our most influential foreign-policy commentators are not sitting at the Brookings Institution or writing sober essays in Foreign Affairs. They are filming TikToks in their kitchens and posting selfies from Malibu. They are accepting awards while delivering half-informed geopolitical sermons.
So, when I saw the latest celebrity crusade — that more than 200 cultural figures signed a letter to free the imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti — I should not have been surprised. And yet, I was. My reaction was disbelief mixed with nausea.
From their soulful pleas, you would think that Barghouti is, as my friend and teacher Peter Himmelman put it, Nelson Mandela. No way. Himmelman captured the absurdity perfectly in his Substack:
Most people now chanting Barghouti’s name have only the vaguest idea who he is. They imagine a Palestinian Mandela imprisoned for his beliefs. The reality is different. Barghouti was one of the principal leaders of the Second Intifada, the violent campaign that deliberately targeted Israeli civilians in cafés, buses, and quiet streets. I remember that period not as a distant headline but as something my family and I lived through. We were in Israel during the bus bombings of the early 2000s. We heard the sirens at all hours, felt the acute unease that settled over daily life, and saw people, like ourselves, rattled by the constant fear of the next explosion. Those memories stay with you. So when people speak of Barghouti as a misunderstood visionary, I recall those days and wonder what exactly they think he did.
He continues: “It’s a stirring comparison until you ask the only questions that matter: What murders of innocent civilians did Mandela plot? What innocent blood did he shed?”
For the record, Barghouti has denied the charges that led to his imprisonment. He is a charismatic Palestinian leader who has long supported a two-state solution. He was once a rival to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and might still be the only credible successor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Celebrities whose influence dwarfs their expertise are embracing a fantasy hero of their own creation. Many are the same celebrities who wore the button with the red hand symbol. They should be ashamed.
On Oct. 12, 2000, just weeks after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, two Israeli army reservists, Yosef Avrahami and Vadim Norzhich, mistakenly entered the West Bank city of Ramallah after taking a wrong turn near a checkpoint. Both were unarmed, in civilian clothing, and off duty. Palestinian police detained them and brought them to the local police station. As word spread that Israelis were inside the building, a crowd gathered, quickly growing into a violent mob that forced its way in. The reservists were beaten to death, and one of the bodies was later thrown from a second-story window.
The incident became internationally known because a member of the mob was photographed leaning out of the police-station window, his hands covered in blood, gesturing triumphantly toward the crowd below. The image circulated worldwide within hours and became one of the most enduring symbols of the violence of that period.
That’s the original meaning of “red hands.” And now a similar image has become a fashion accessory. Barghouti was convicted on charges related to involvement in deadly attacks during the same intifada. It’s “terrorist chic.”
The cultural elite have been doing this kind of activism since composer Leonard Bernstein hosted his famous soirée for the Black Panthers, which writer Tom Wolfe immortalized as “radical chic.”
Now, it’s all about anti-Zionist chic. Celebrities align themselves with a movement that is neither capable of nor interested in debating the fine points of Zionist ideology or even Israeli policy. This is not the anti-Zionism of some classical Reform Jews in the 1940s, or of Satmar Jews, who reject Zionism because the Messiah has not come.
Those are intellectual moves, while this movement is dangerous. Consider that line in “If I Were a Rich Man” from “Fiddler on the Roof”: “When you’re rich, they think you really know.” Similarly, when you’re famous, they think you really know. Many young people don’t read books or articles. They live on TikTok and Instagram and the pap that comes from influencers and celebrities.
Consider some of the signatories to the “Free Barghouti” letter: Mark Ruffalo, Sir Ian McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch, Annie Lennox, Sting and Paul Simon.
Is this the same Paul Simon whose music shaped my adolescence? The man who, along with Art Garfunkel, supplied the tunes that helped me learn guitar? This is also the man who, 50 years ago, penned “Silent Eyes,” a haunting love song to Jerusalem. Its lyrics now feel prophetic:
And we shall all be called as witnesses
Each and every one
To stand before the eyes of God
And speak what was done.
Simon was right — we will be called as witnesses. But witnessing requires telling the whole truth — not only the part that flatters your politics. When we “speak what was done,” we must include what is still being done to Israelis, to Jews, to our dignity, to our story.
If we want to counter Hollywood’s moral confusion, we need moral clarity — and a counterforce of celebrity voices that refuse to bow to intellectual fashion.
It exists. In the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, Creative Community for Peace published an open letter condemning Hamas and expressing solidarity with Israel and the hostages. More than 2,000 entertainment-industry professionals signed on, including Gal Gadot, Amy Schumer, Mayim Bialik, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Pine, Debra Messing, Michael Douglas and Liev Schreiber.
Truth has a stubborn resilience. It survives smear campaigns, misinformation and the seductive pull of shallow narratives.
The Jewish people have been misunderstood, caricatured, defamed, romanticized and written off. But we have never surrendered our story to people who know nothing about us. We will not do so now.
History will not remember who signed which letter. It will remember who stood in moral clarity when clarity was unfashionable. It will remember who spoke truth when truth was costly.
And when we are called as witnesses, may we have the courage to say not what was popular, not what was easy, but what was true.
