By Stacy Lee Kong

Content warning: this newsletter contains descriptions of Islamophobia, war and death and mentions of sexual violence.

A note on language before we begin: As I explained in previous newsletters, it’s super important that we take care with our language when discussing Israel and Palestine, because the way we talk about this situation has real consequences for real people. So to be clear, when I critique the Israeli government and military, I am not critiquing all Israelis, much less all Jewish people. I also think it’s important to push back on attempts to cast critique of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as antisemitic; it’s dangerous to conflate Zionism with Judaism, as this list of prominent Jewish writers recently argued. That’s why calling for a ceasefire—which António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, the United Nations General Assembly, 630 NGOs around the world (including Amnesty International, the Malala Fund, Medecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Plan International, Save the Children and War Child), and the Pope, among others, are doing—isn’t antisemitic. Lastly, when I use the words colonization, genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing to describe Israel’s actions, that’s based on the analysis of organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the International Federation for Human Rights, the United Nations, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as academics who study genocide.

Last Friday, Amy Schumer posted a cartoon to her Instagram feed depicting what was clearly meant to be a protest in support of Palestinian liberation. “Yeah yeah totally Cease fire [sic],” she wrote in the caption. “But mind if we get the babies back? Can y’all give that a shout too? And also not to kill all the Jews again? Thanks have the best Friday!” The image itself featured people of various ethnicities holding signs with clearly photoshopped slogans that read, for example, “Throwing Grenades at Kids Hiding in Closets is not Terrorism,” “Beheading is Resistance,” “Proud of our Rapist Martyrs,” “Murdering 1,300 Jews isn’t Antisemitic” and “Gazans Rape Jewish Girls Only in Self Defense.”

I periodically get messages from people who don’t love when I point out the ways politicians, media, celebrities, etc. are actively dehumanizing Palestinian people as a way to manufacture consent for the ongoing genocide, and who try to argue that ‘no one’ is conflating all Palestinian people with members of Hamas, but… well. “Gazans Rape Jewish Girls Only in Self Defense,” apparently (emphasis mine).

I don’t think I even need to bother explaining why this cartoon is Islamophobic and racist, how it incites violence against all Arab people, or how it spreads misinformation. (Though, on that last point: the claim that Hamas beheaded 40 babies still has not been corroborated. Also, allegations of sexual violence against Israeli women and girls largely come from the Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces and their political allies. While rape is horrifically, commonly used as a tool of war, I think it’s important to remember that threats of sexual violence have also long been used as propaganda, which is why we should be relying on journalists to independently verify any claims from politicians, police forces or militaries, especially when those claims contribute to the ongoing characterization of Muslim men as monstrous animals who lack humanity, much less self-control.) Instead, I want to think about the act of posting it.

Celebrities are just as focused on Israel and Palestine as anyone else

In very “celebrities, they’re just like us” news, stars have been as unable to look away from the worsening situation in Gaza as the rest of us, with widely varying results. Many celebrities have been loudly pro-Israel, though none quite as loud as Schumer, whose Instagram posts have “rationalized Israel’s collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza, rejected helpful advice and critical pushback, and abused her influence to punch down and claim victimhood,” as Wajahat Ali wrote for The Daily Beast this week. Sarah Silverman recently shared a post to her IG Stories that defended Israel’s decision to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, which fits the legal definition of collective punishment. That’s by definition a war crime, fyi. (She later deleted it and claimed she had “post[ed] in the stoned fury.”) And in the days following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, 700 “prominent Hollywood figures” including Schumer, Gal Gadot, Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Pine, Mayim Bialik, Michael Douglas, Taika Waititi, Jordan Peele, Debra Messing, Ryan Murphy, Zachary Levi, Sharon Osbourne, George Lopez, Diane Warren, Mark Hamill and Howie Mandel signed an open letter that unequivocally expressed support for Israel, and largely declined to acknowledge Palestinians at all.

More recently, some have been outspoken about their support for a ceasefire—a growing list of celebs, including Drake, Joaquin Phoenix, Cate Blanchett, Jon Stewart, Dua Lipa, Kristen Stewart, Susan Sarandon, Mahershala Ali, Riz Ahmed, Ramy Youssef and Quinta Brunson, have signed an open letter urging U.S. President Joe Biden to call for one. A few have even become passionate proponents of Palestinian liberation, even though that remains a politically unpopular choice. Former Fifth Harmony member Lauren Jauregui has become super vocal on X/Twitter, for example, while Angelina Jolie made the news this week for a very direct Instagram post that described Israel’s two airstrikes on Jabalia refugee camp as the “deliberate bombing of a trapped population who have nowhere to flee.”

“Gaza has been an open-air prison for nearly two decades and is fast becoming a mass grave,” she went on to say. “40% of those killed are innocent children. Whole families are being murdered. While the world watches and with the active support of many governments, millions of Palestinian civilians - children, women, families - are being collectively punished and dehumanized, all while being deprived food, medicine and humanitarian aid against international law.” (My only critique of this statement would be that it is also a tragedy when Palestinian men are killed.)

There are also lots of celebrities who aren’t saying anything (Beyoncé, Rihanna) and at least one who’s making sure to publicly say that she doesn’t want to say anything. That would be Selena Gomez, who has 430 million Instagram followers, making her one of the most-followed people on the app. This week, she posted an IG Story where she said, “I'm sorry if my words will never be enough for everyone or a hashtag. I just can't stand by innocent people getting hurt. That's what makes me sick. I wish I could change the world. But a post won't.” Which, I’ll just say, hasn’t historically been how she approaches humanitarian crises.

I say all this because I think this wide variety of perspectives already shows that celebrities perhaps aren’t the best people to look to as emotional guides or sources of information about Israel’s ongoing occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. (Also: this whole thread.) That’s not to say they don’t have a role to play; I am the record as thinking celebrities can be very useful tools, because they can use their platforms to help amplify worthwhile causes and, more importantly, their actions can help us analyze complex issues and make sense of the world we live in.

Celebrities aren’t moral arbiters; they’re litmus tests

Nowhere is that clearer than Amy Schumer’s IG account. In addition to all of the Islamophobia she’s posted herself, she’s also been harassing people who have called out her racism, such as Black and Indigenous Filipino actor Asia Jackson, who posted on Oct. 27 to say, “It’s so crazy to me how Bella & Gigi had to tiptoe around their statements and then Amy Schumer is like ‘Gazans are rapists’ and will still have a career,” referring to the Hadid sisters’ very careful posts, which made sure to condemn violence against civilians on both sides, vs. Schumer’s violently racist ones.

A few days later, Schumer slid into Jackson’s DMs to ask whether “something I posted about my people being massacred upset you,” and when Jackson replied to say, “the Islamophobia and generalization of Gazan people did,” Schumer went off, accusing Jackson of antisemitism, expressing her fears that someone would “slit [her] son’s throat at school” (a pretty wild thing to say, considering a Palestinian-American six-year-old was stabbed to death by his Islamophobic landlord on Oct. 14) and accusing Jackson of trying to “raise [her] profile and get shine.”

This is in addition to her recent decision to a) conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, a rhetorical merging that progressive Jews have denounced, including in a recent open letter from Jewish writers, and b) align Zionism with Black liberation via a video of a 1967 speech where Martin Luther King Jr. says, “the whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.” That snippet is followed by another clip of him saying, “if my Jewish brothers and sisters said to me amid antisemitism anywhere, 'We don't need your support. We have enough Jewish power to deal with this problem ourselves.' I would still take a stand against antisemitism because it's wrong, it's unjust, and it's evil.” It was… not a great argument, for a variety of reasons: Palestinian and Black liberation movements have long been intertwined, for starters. Furthermore, denouncing antisemitism is not the same as supporting genocide. Also, let’s not forget how often white people use decontextualized MLK quotes to justify inaction. Embarrassingly, Bernice King (King’s daughter) had to very publicly and unequivocally explain this to her.

Of course, Schumer hasn’t taken that video down, nor has she really changed her style of posting, though she has deleted some of her most Islamophobic posts. And why would she? As Ali argues, “Schumer’s posts… illustrate the obscene double standards, lack of accountability, and asymmetry at play when it comes to the dehumanization of Palestinians and Muslims in America. Schumer’s comments help us reflect on who gets a pass for expressing genocidal tendencies. Who is allowed to fail up, while others are censored and permanently punished?” He cites the implicit expectation that Muslims must condemn violent extremism as a prerequisite before their pain can even be considered, as well as the people who have lost their jobs, the students who were doxxed and threatened with professional censure and the business owners who received death threats because they advocated for Palestinian liberation, which has been unfairly and inaccurately characterized as antisemitism. I’d argue, though, that this isn’t just about Islamophobia; it’s also about whiteness. White supremacy is what allows the dehumanization of Palestinians, and Muslims more generally, to flourish in the first place—and Schumer’s status as a white woman also offers her protection. Even though her Jewishness makes her a potential target for antisemitism, her gender and race simultaneously place her in a rarified position in Western society. And she knows it—which is why she doesn’t worry about facing potential career or reputational consequences for saying horrible, violent, Islamophobic things. I mean… her past racism hasn’t hurt her any, right?

Similarly, Gomez’s refusal to be perceived as ‘taking a side,’ doesn’t tell us anything meaningful about her deeply-held beliefs on land rights, human rights or liberation. Instead, we should really just take her Story as an indicator of her brand’s comfort with controversy; her past support of Ukraine was because Ukrainian freedom was a politically popular cause. And all the celebrities who suddenly feel comfortable enough to publicly empathize with Palestinians? Who knows what they think privately. I’d challenge us to think of their new statements less as ‘proof’ of their goodness or badness and more as a reflection of shifting public opinion, especially among young people and people who belong to marginalized groups. That is, their audiences. The celebrities aren’t actually the story—they’re the barometer.

(This is not a defence, btw. The fact that these people dole out their support and influence selectively based on how it will impact their brands is gross and demonstrates a lack of both moral consistency and intellectual honesty.)

Don’t get me wrong—I understand our desire to frame celebrity responses as ‘good’ or ‘bad’

I think there might be something psychologically comforting about being able to impose order on an extremely disorderly situation, even if only in our minds: this is good; this is bad. So, Schumer’s unequivocal support of Israel’s actions look worse the longer this goes on, as does her reliance on Islamophobia and her attacks on people who criticize her use of language and spread of misinformation. Gomez’s response highlights the inherent hypocrisy of her public brand, which is authentic, approachable, caring and principled. Meanwhile, Jolie’s post reads as ‘good’ because it’s honest, resolute and reflects many of our feelings. (I’d also argue that her two decades of real humanitarian work, especially with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees gives her credibility that most other celebrities don’t have.)

Even that is really about the nature of celebrity, though. The reason we even care about stars is because we think of them as proxies for ourselves. That’s how fandom works: we love people who are like us, or who we want to be like. And while that can start with more superficial traits (funny, good actor, can hit whistle notes), the most powerful fandom is based on our sense of self; we need our very favourites to reflect our identities and values—and we take it personally when they disappoint us. This isn’t new. The Old Hollywood star system that reigned from the 1920s to the 1960s was all about studios creating celebrities by scouting promising young people and crafting a marketable image for them… and then maintaining ironclad control over that image for as long possible, via morality clauses, not to mention rules about their appearance, weight, what kinds of work they could do and even who they (appeared to be) romantically involved with. But, as our societal values have shifted, so have our expectations of celebrities.

Stay with me here, but isn’t this all kind of like the way “are you a feminist” became the must-ask question for female celebrities in the early 2010s? The actual words don’t illuminate much about celebs’ personal beliefs, much less their political behaviour. As we’ve seen in the years since, plenty of people can espouse progressive beliefs and still undermine progressive movements, uphold economic inequality and allegedly commit labour violations. So, with a few exceptions, celeb responses to that question often told us more about what they thought their fans wanted to hear. I mean, as recently as 2014, celebrity publicist Howard Bragman told the Washington Post that he advises clients to “avoid labels of any kind. It’s better to focus on what you believe in, rather than defining yourself as a feminist or not a feminist.” The following year, The Atlantic listed celebs who’d distanced themselves from the word, including Marion Cotillard, Shailene Woodley, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson and Lady Gaga. But by 2018, feminism had become mainstream enough that The Independent was lauding Gaga’s “passionate feminist speech” at ELLE’s Women in Hollywood event. The speech touched on her desire to “resist the standards of Hollywood” through fashion—something she’d been doing her entire career, for the record. What had changed was feminism’s marketability, not her beliefs.

So, to answer my own question from the headline of this newsletter: it’s not that I think there’s no value to celebrity statements on this topic. Obviously, people like Jolie, Gomez and Schumer have the influence to point their fans’ attention in this direction, for better or for worse. It’s just that what they say is not necessarily consistent with what they do, and to me, neither of those things is as revealing as how we perceive them.

And Did You Hear About…

Walmart’s Mean Girls-themed Black Friday ad, which I regret to report is… kind of great?

This Vanity Fair exposé on the dark underbelly of Bravo’s Real Housewives universe. 

North West’s first solo cover—and unbylined cover story, which 🤔—for ID, which I think we can all agree is probably the last thing this already extremely famous 10-year-old needs.

This lovely tribute to Matthew Perry, and my personal favourite role of his: Alex Whitman in the underrated 90s romcom Fools Rush In.

Food influencer Keith Lee’s very dramatic Atlanta food tour.

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