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Jewish actress Hannah Einbinder, star of the TV drama Hacks, used the stage she was given at the Human Rights Campaign’s LGBTQ+ awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday to speak out sharply against "Israel’s massacre in Gaza."
Einbinder, who identifies as bisexual and was awarded a special recognition for "expanding LGBTQ+ representation on and off screen," told the audience: "As a queer person, as a Jewish person and as an American, I am horrified by the Israeli government’s massacre of well over 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza. I am ashamed and infuriated that this mass murder is funded by our American tax dollars. It should not be controversial to say that we should all be against murdering civilians."
Emotional and speaking with a trembling voice, she continued: "My condemnation of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is not despite of what I learned in Hebrew school but because of it. I love being Jewish and I am so proud of my tradition. I was taught that central to being a Jew is asking questions, being inquisitive, arguing, wrestling with opposing points of view, questioning my own beliefs in order to keep learning and growing into a better human being, a better citizen of the world."
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Einbinder said there's a reason why she questions the Israeli government's actions: "I see it as antithetical to our deepest Jewish traditions to fall in line and not question the actions of a state enacting atrocities in our name. Israel’s actions are not in the name of Jewish safety and it is the very conflation of Israel’s actions with the Jewish people that continues to endanger Jews."
In her speech, she also referenced Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate recently arrested for his campus protest activities and now facing deportation. She commented that President Donald Trump poses a greater threat to Jews than Khalil does.
“Mahmoud Khalil standing alongside both Palestinians and many Jewish students, calling for the Israeli army to stop dropping bombs on his homeland, does not make me feel unsafe,” she added. “Elon Musk and Steve Bannon heiling Hitler does. Donald Trump calling a group of white nationalists with Tiki torches shouting, ‘Jews will not replace us’ ‘very fine people’ does”
She concluded her speech with a call to action against "Our struggles for liberation will be won by loudly opposing the corporations who fuel the destruction of our planet and the institutions that fuel mass death of our fellow human beings. Visibility is a responsibility. Those of us who have a platform must use our voices to ensure that speaking out is not outlawed altogether."
Einbinder (29) is the daughter of Laraine Newman, one of the original cast members of Saturday Night Live. Her career took off with her role in HBO's Hacks, for which she won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy this year and was nominated three times for the Emmys and Golden Globes. In 2024, she released her first stand-up special, Hannah Einbinder: Everything Must Go, also airing on HBO Max.
Einbinder has previously spoken publicly against antisemitism in Hollywood, particularly when it hit close to home with Dave Chappelle’s controversial monologue on Saturday Night Live in 2022.
At the time, Einbinder accused Chappelle of weaving sophisticated antisemitism into his speech: "Yes, Chappelle’s monologue was rife with antisemitism," she wrote on Instagram. "He did it skillfully. He used a brilliant technique: two truths and one lie." Einbinder argued that Chappelle managed to embed antisemitic rhetoric by mixing it with great jokes, making it harder for the audience to identify the problematic messages.