What To Know
- Mark Ruffalo strongly rejected Paramount’s accusation that his criticism of their planned merger and ties to Israel was antisemitic.
- Ruffalo highlighted concerns about Oracle’s involvement in supplying technology to the Israeli military and warned about the potential dangers of consolidating media and technology power.
- Paramount responded by condemning the use of terms like “genocide” and “apartheid” in the merger debate.
Mark Ruffalo is taking Paramount to task, saying the media corporation is being “fundamentally dishonest” for deeming his anti-merger criticism as antisemitic.
“The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” the Task star wrote on X on Saturday, August 22. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel. To be clear, my views come from my own political convictions and should never be interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people, for whom I have deep love and respect. Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.”
The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue…
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 22, 2026
In an Instagram post on Friday, Ruffalo shared a video clip of Oracle executive vice chair Safra Catz speaking about the company, which was cofounded by Larry Ellison, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, per Variety. Specifically, Catz discussed Oracle’s efforts to aid Israel’s side in the Gaza War, which has killed 73,000 Palestinians, the magazine reports.
“There’s a few things that we did that I really can’t talk about to advance the agenda for the Israeli military,” Catz said in the clip, according to Variety. “But we have some really profoundly scary technology at Oracle and we wanted to make sure that it was available for the effort.”
Ruffalo called out those comments in his Instagram post on Friday. “These ‘really profoundly scary technologies’ will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you,” he said. “Look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
He also said that Larry Ellison is an oligarch — and that oligarchs “are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance.”
A Paramount rep issued a response, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” the rep stated, per THR. “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. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”
In his X clapback on Saturday, Ruffalo continued speaking out about the Ellisons, Oracle, and Paramount’s planned merger with Warner Bros.
“This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country. Scrutinizing the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary,” he wrote. “The $111 billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public.”