Celebrity Dopes, Dismantled

[Craving even more FPM content? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more. Click here to sign up.]

Michael Kaplan, a writer for television and movies, has taken note here of a recent anti-Israel letter signed by assorted denizens, both the famous and the unknown, of Hollywood: “Do Uninformed Hollywood Celebrities Realize They Are Hurting Chances of a Gaza ‘Ceasefire’?,” by Michael Kaplan, Algemeiner, September 19, 2024:

Recently, a letter was addressed to the Hollywood actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, signed by hundreds of Hollywood actors (along with, for some reason, many who are not actors), demanding that the union’s leadership call for “a permanent ceasefire” in the war in Gaza.

A“permanent ceasefire” at this point means an end to the war in Gaza. That, in turn, would mean that, though badly bloodied, Hamas will not have been thoroughly dismantled. It would still be able to regroup its scattered forces, about half the number that the terror group possessed before the war in Gaza began after its October 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis. It would be able to attract new recruits, impressed with the terror group’s ability to “still be standing” despite everything thrown at it over almost a year by the mighty IDF. Arabs elsewhere, similarly impressed, will likely send funds to support Hamas. And Israel’s war aim of destroying Hamas will not have been achieved.

The letter also demanded that SAG-AFTRA, “condemn our industry’s McCarthyist repression of members who acknowledge Palestinian suffering.”

What “McCarthyist repression” do the writers of these letters mean? Have people been fired from Hollywood jobs just for “acknowledging Palestinian suffering”? None that I know of. A very few claim they were not hired for jobs because of their anti-Israel views. Such views go far beyond “acknowledging Palestinian suffering,” which everyone, including people in Israel, are perfectly ready to recognize. But how would one either prove or disprove that? Has Mark Ruffalo himself suffered professionally in any way because of his extreme anti-Israel views — or was he simply judged not right for a part he thinks he deserved? Susan Sarandon, it’s true, was dropped as a client by the United Talent Agency after her remark at a pro-Palestinian rally in New York where she appeared to say that Jews in the U.S. who are fearful because of a sharp rise in antisemitism “are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.” To many Jews, that sounded less like “I sympathize with you” and more like “You had it coming.”

And Sarandon’s belief that Muslims in this country have to endure a wave of “Islamophobia” — that is, an “irrational hatred or fear” — is simply false. Those who have a fear or hatred of Islam are not being irrational. Just look at the nearly 46,000 terror attacks committed by Muslims around the world since September 11, 2001. Or look at the Qur’an, that teaches Muslims that they are “the best of peoples” and “non-Muslims are the most vile of created beings.” Or look at Muhammad’s remark in a famous hadith, that “I have been made victorious through terror.” Might all that prompt a rational fear or hatred of Islam?

The letter itself is comprised largely of slanderous lies about Israel’s conduct of the war, just as one would expect from the likes of the usual suspects who signed it — Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Susan Sarandon, Cynthia Nixon.

I could go on at length to dispute their claims, pointing out that fighting a war that the enemy started and in which many civilians tragically die — as they do in *all* major wars — is not what the word “genocide” means.

“Genocide” means the deliberate mass killing of an ethnic, religious, or racial group, with the intention of wiping out all of its members. Is that what the IDF is doing in Gaza? No, it is not. The IDF makes colossal efforts to minimize civilian casualties. It does this by warning civilians to leave areas, and buildings, about to be targeted. In Gaza, by March, the IDF had already dropped nine million leaflets (containing maps showing routes to safe zones), sent fifteen million text massages, and made sixteen million robocalls, all to warn civilians away from danger. In addition, Israeli pilots frequently abort airstrikes if they detect too many civilians near the intended target. Genocide? Of course not.

But what about those “41,000” (the figure Hamas invokes as of September 2024) dead Gazans? Hamas wants the world to believe these were all civilians killed by the IDF. A figure of 41,000 killed does not sound like “genocide” to me. And besides, 41,000 is the figure supplied by Hamas, which has a long record of exaggeration. Consider Hamas’ claim that “500 civilians were killed at Al-Ahli Hospital by an Israeli rocket,” which later had to be reduced to “about 50 civilian deaths,” and they had in fact been killed not by the IDF, but by a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that misfired and fell inside Gaza. Or remember the similar claim of a “Jenin massacre” that supposedly left 500 dead civilians, a claim which had to be revised downward to 52, at least 45 of whom were combatants.

Let’s accept, for the sake of argument, that there really have been 41,000 deaths in Gaza since October 7. How many of those were “innocent civilians” killed by the IDF? The IDF says it has killed 18,000 Hamas fighters. Furthermore, every month, on average, 800 people in Gaza die of natural causes — diseases, accidents, etc. Over the past 11 months, 8800 civilians have thus died of those natural causes. Since the Gaza war began 11 months ago, the number of civilians killed can be calculated as follows: there have been 41,000 total dead, of whom 18,000 were Hamas members, and 8800 who died from natural causes, leaving a total of 14,200 civilian deaths due to actions by the IDF.

That brings us to another key figure: the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths. The UN has said that in all the wars fought since 1945, that ratio has stood at 9:1. In Afghanistan the Americans did much better, with a ratio of 4:1, and better still in Iraq, with a ratio of 3:1. But in the Gaza War, the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths achieved by the IDF was 14,200:18,000, or less than one civilian death for every combatant death. This is an unheard-of achievement. It is one reason why British Colonel Richard Kemp called the IDF “the most moral army in the world,” and why West Point Professor John Spencer said that “Israel has implemented more precautions to prevent civilian harm than any military in history — above and beyond what international law requires.” Any comment on that, Mark Ruffalo? What about you, Susan Sarandon? What is the matter — cat got your tongue?