Mark Ruffalo attends “Crime 101” European Gala Screening at Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London, England, UK, Jan. 28, 2026. Photo: James Warren/Famous Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

Mark Ruffalo has triggered a fresh antisemitism backlash after Paramount accused the Hollywood star of invoking anti-Jewish tropes in his attack on the company’s proposed Warner Bros takeover. 

The unusually blunt rebuke came after Ruffalo, a longtime opponent of the $111 billion deal, linked Paramount chief David Ellison and his billionaire father Larry Ellison to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, accusing their companies of helping power what he called a “genocide” and “apartheid system.” He shared an old clip of former Oracle chief Safra Catz discussing the company’s technology used by Israel’s military, warning that it could eventually be incorporated into the combined media giant and “one day be used against you.”

Ruffalo also attacked the elder Ellison personally and portrayed the proposed merger as part of a broader concentration of corporate power. “Larry Ellison will own most of Para Bros,” he said. “Larry is a classic Oligarch. They are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance. We have a chance to stop this.”

Paramount said in its response that it was “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute.”

“Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe,” the company said. 

Ruffalo’s critique “exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction,” Paramount added. 

Ruffalo fired back Saturday, calling Paramount’s accusation “appalling and fundamentally dishonest” and arguing that criticism of Israel, military contracts, and the business interests of the Ellison family should not be conflated with antisemitism. He said he had “deep love and respect” for Jewish people and insisted his objections were directed at government policy and corporate power. 

The clash with Paramount is the latest in a series of increasingly incendiary comments by Ruffalo over Israel. In recent months, he has called for boycotts and sanctions against the country, accused it of genocide and apartheid, and said he had ended friendships with some Jewish actors who continued to support Israel, saying, “I can’t relate to them anymore.”

Ruffalo was among more than 20 actors with Marvel ties who joined the “Freedom for Marwan” campaign calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti, the jailed Fatah leader convicted by an Israeli court of involvement in terrorist attacks that killed five people. The signatories also included Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Ian McKellen, Tilda Swinton, and Don Cheadle, and urged the United Nations and governments around the world to press Israel to release him. 

Israeli writer and activist Hen Mazzig responded to Ruffalo in a video on X, saying there were legitimate reasons to oppose the merger, including the prospect of fewer studios, fewer jobs, and too much power concentrated in a single company. “All of it is fair,” he said.

“But Ruffalo led with the fact that Ellison’s father founded Oracle. And after October 7th, someone said that the company would help Israel. A Jewish family, a company his father runs, a colleague who supports Israel after the worst massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, and that’s the reason to block a movie studio deal in the mind of Ruffalo.”

Mazzig also pointed to Ruffalo’s response on the day of the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack, when the actor expressed his “horror” over what was unfolding between the Israeli government and Hamas and said he was praying for innocent people in Gaza.

“Over 1,200 Jews slaughtered and the word he cannot bring himself to say is Israelis,” Mazzig said.

Ruffalo has previously portrayed accusations of antisemitism over his anti-Israel activism as part of a system designed to suppress criticism of the country and restrict free speech. In a September 2025 interview with Mehdi Hasan, he described it as “hasbara” and “part of that system of oppressing thought, free speech, the need to know, knowledge.”

“That’s a system that’s been developed by Israel,” he said.

Ruffalo had briefly walked back anti-Israel rhetoric in 2021 after facing criticism for accusing Israel of genocide during fighting with Hamas. At the time, he called the claim “not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful” and said such rhetoric was being used “to justify antisemitism here & abroad.” He has since repeatedly returned to the genocide accusation in his public comments about Israel.  

Jewish groups condemned Ruffalo’s remarks on the Paramount merger. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt called his posts “cynical and sickening” and said he should oppose the merger “on the merits” without “engaging in antisemitic rhetoric.” 

“Introducing the Jewish state out of the blue when it’s entirely unrelated, making baseless claims about Israel, and then trying to avoid accountability by essentially claiming that ‘some of my best friends are Jewish’ is gaslighting 101,” he wrote on X. 

The posts by Mark Ruffalo over the past 48 hours are cynical and sickening.

Oppose the Paramount merger on the merits, find arguments grounded in facts, and draw on what you know about the industry without engaging in antisemitic rhetoric.

Introducing the Jewish state out of… https://t.co/GYCZYJB9BC

— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) August 23, 2026

The Simon Wiesenthal Center also accused Ruffalo of dragging Israel into a corporate dispute that it said had nothing to do with the country. CEO Jim Berk called that “a textbook case of obsession and demonization,” and said antisemitism was increasingly being “repackaged in more socially acceptable language.”

Creative Community for Peace, an organization comprised of pro-Israel members of the entertainment industry, went further, calling on Hollywood to stop working with Ruffalo until he retracts his remarks and apologizes. 

“Mark Ruffalo’s rhetoric has increasingly crossed the line from criticism of Israel into extremist and antisemitic messaging,” the group’s executive director Ari Ingel said.

Ruffalo’s opposition to the proposal “fuses hostility toward Israel and Zionism with Jewish-associated wealth, media ownership, oligarchic power and ominous warnings about concentrated control into a single narrative,” he added. 

“Those echoes are impossible to ignore. Hollywood should not accept this kind of rhetoric from anyone. Mark Ruffalo should retract these remarks and apologize, and nobody in Hollywood should platform him until he does.”