The Emmy Awards celebrate good acting, but last night’s ceremony was notable for its demonstration of poor stagecraft. Several Hollywood figures were transparently unconvincing in their role-playing as Person Who Cares About Palestinians.
Take Hannah Einbinder, as generic a personality as Hollywood produces. She won an Emmy for her character on the appropriately titled show Hacks, on which she portrays a fictional person with a sense of humor. It was no doubt exciting for Einbinder to win an award, but the reason her name has gained purchase is because of her acceptance speech, in which she said: “F—k ICE and free Palestine!”
What sounds like a forgettable line was actually a very important point: “Free Palestine” is a seasonal accessory, a literal trend. If you’re a good activist, you’re currently upset at immigration authorities and the Jews. Just as no actor wants to forget to thank someone, no Emmy winner wants to forget to check all the boxes. “Palestine” is not meaningful to Einbinder, but her career is. Thank you, Palestine, for making this day possible. Einbinder looked down and saw only one set of footprints in the sand; “it was then that I carried you,” said Palestine.
Einbinder’s goofy attempt at activism was revealing in one other way. And here is where we have learned to appreciate first-time winners, who have less experience improvising their lines. Einbinder also recently signed a letter declaring her support for a boycott of Israel-connected film institutions. In the press room after her acceptance speech, and with Hacks star Jean Smart standing next to her, Einbinder was asked about her support for that blacklist. She answered: “I feel like it is my obligation as a Jewish person to distinguish Jews from the state of Israel.”
This was telling. Einbinder, perhaps unintentionally, is making something clear: This is not about Israel, it’s about the Jews. Einbinder could be generally antiwar—though she wore a bloody hand pin representing Palestinian armed “resistance,” so she’s probably not bothered by violence—but you’d never know it. She doesn’t talk about principles and strategies of armed conflict; she talks about Jews Who Are Bad People, which she defines as supportive of Israel’s existence.
Genuine antiwar Americans tend to start sentences with “As an American….” Einbinder was telling the press explicitly that she was there to criticize Jews and that all Jews ought to be judged on whether they renounce their fellows, too.
Einbinder is an actress who aspires to be a stage prop.
This is how to understand the general “as a Jew” movement in America. Its purpose is not to influence the geopolitical debate. Its purpose is to influence the discourse on ethnic conflict in a way that bolsters the Jew-baiters and divides non-Jewish Americans against Jewish Americans.
There was no need for Einbinder to so clearly state her true purpose up on that stage, but we should be grateful she did not choose her words more carefully or make us guess what she really meant.
And what of Einbinder’s statement that it is her responsibility to ostracize other Jews? It’s a weird way to live, but if you’re signing McCarthyite blacklist statements—as Einbinder is—I suppose the cat’s already out of the bag.
Is it our responsibility as Jews, as Einbinder suggests, to feed into the societal prejudice that Jews should be considered to hold any opinions or exhibit any behaviors that they do not explicitly disavow? Or that we should respond to the imposition of collective Jewish guilt by reinforcing it?
Obviously not. But again, we should appreciate that there are those such as Einbinder who don’t make much of an effort to obfuscate their ill intentions. Modern society has enough rationalizers.
