More than 20 stars from Marvel's cinematic film productions have signed a petition calling on the UN and world governments to work toward the release of Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti.
Among the stars are Hollywood actors Cate Blanchett ("Thor: Ragnarok"), Benedict Cumberbatch ("Dr. Strange"), Don Cheadle ("Iron Man"), and Mark Ruffalo ("Spider-Man: Brand New Day," "The Hulk"), who have joined a list of roughly 200 artists supporting the campaign to free the convicted murderer held in an Israeli prison, an initiative founded by his family.
67-year-old Barghouti, perceived by some, including in Hollywood, as "Palestinian Mandela," was convicted by Israel of terrorist organization membership and dozens of murder counts for ordering deadly attacks, with courts convicting him of five charges in 2004 and imposing five life sentences plus 40 years for his involvement in the Fatah terrorist organization.
The court found Barghouti accountable for a June 2001 attack in Ma'ale Adumim that resulted in the death of Greek monk Tsibouktsakis Germanus, a January 2002 kidnapping and murder of American citizen Yoela Hen, a March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv's Seafood Market restaurant that killed three individuals, Eli Dahan, Yosef Habi, and Salim Barakat, and a car bombing in Jerusalem.
In their statement, the Marvel actors wrote that they are calling for Barghouti's release out of concern for "violent mistreatment and denial of legal rights while imprisoned."
This statement comes after Ruffalo, known for his anti-Israel views, sharply attacked Paramount over the company's $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The 58-year-old Oscar-nominated actor posted on Instagram that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison is bankrolling his son David Ellison's bid to acquire Warner Bros, and in the same post, tied that funding directly to Oracle's military technology contracts with Israel.
Rufallo posted a years-old clip of an Oracle executive addressing technology the company supplied to the Israeli military. The actor has been a vocal critic both of Paramount's pending Warner Bros takeover and of Israel's Gaza war against Hamas, launched after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
"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 wrote. "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."
Rufallo's use of "genocide" and "apartheid" to characterize the corporate transaction drew a sharp rebuke from Paramount, which said the words amounted to antisemitism and insisted it tolerates no form of prejudice.
"We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute," Paramount said in a statement. "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."
Rufallo dismissed the antisemitism charge as "appalling and fundamentally dishonest."
