Hannahc episode of Zeteo’s “Beyond Israelism” podcast was released in full on May 12 and features the “Hacks” Emmy winner calling out Hollywood’s overall silence on the war in Gaza.
“It pisses me off. Because I’m sitting here with [Algerian-Palestinian activist] Mahmoud [Khalil], who has so much to risk and who has risked so much who has sacrificed so much… And I look at these people who have absolutely every privilege imaginable to mankind and they cannot utter a single word,” Einbinder said. “I guess it makes me naive, but I cannot understand it. I really can’t understand it. And I hear people say that they don’t know enough and I — I don’t, it’s like, OK, so what do you do all day?”
Einbinder regularly stands up for Palestine in press interviews and went viral at the Emmys when she used her acceptance speech to say “Free Palestine.”
“I always resist the idea that what I am doing is in any way brave because I don’t want cowardice to be a metric by which I judge bravery,” Einbinder said. “What I am doing is having eyes and seeing reality and saying what I am seeing. And I think that so many people risk so much more in a tangible sense.”
Einbinder observed that Hollywood is mostly silent when it comes standing up for Palestine but is incredibly vocal when it comes to defending free speech under the Trump administration.
“People in Hollywood, unfortunately, need these issues to affect a white person for them to see it as relating to them,” she noted. “Like, they see Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air suddenly, they see Stephen Colbert’s show being canceled by CBS, which is owned by the Ellisons, and they go, ‘How could this possibly happen?’ And it’s like, we know how because we saw students and professors and journalists and authors and Palestinian folks be silenced and fired and expelled and imprisoned… it took it happening to these white men for people to be like, ‘Oh my god.’”
Einbinder is gearing up to attend the Cannes Film Festival as the star of “Teenage Sex and Death and Camp Miasma,” which is premiering in the Un Certain Regard section. Fellow festival attendee Pedro Almodóvar, whose new movie “Bitter Christmas” debuts in competition, also recently called out Hollywood for its silence on Gaza. The filmmaker noted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times how apolotical the Oscars were this year.
“You know, I’m not really blaming anyone in particular, but it was quite notable watching the Oscar telecast where there were not many protests against the war or against Trump,” Almodóvar said. “Maybe he wasn’t the only one, but the only real example I can remember came from a European, a friend of mine, Javier Bardem, who did directly say, “Free Palestine.’”
“People are obviously very frightened,” the director continued. “The U.S. is not a democracy right now. Some people say it’s maybe an imperfect democracy, but I really don’t think the U.S. is a democracy right now. The heartbreaking and ironic thing is that democracy has given rise, through the proper, right voting mechanism, to this kind of totalitarian regime. And it’s both a paradox and it’s also incredibly sad.”
Listen to Einbender’s full podcast episode here.
