‘Hacks’ Star Hannah Einbinder Calls Out Hollywood Over Lack of Support for Palestine, Says Issues Only Get Attention When They “Affect a White Person”

Hannah Einbinder is speaking out about Hollywood’s response to the war in Gaza and the Free Palestine movement, saying she is frustrated by what she sees as silence from people in powerful positions.

The Hacks star made her comments during an appearance on the “Beyond Israelism” podcast, where she discussed her reaction to what she described as a lack of public support from people in the entertainment industry. The discussion was reported from her interview on the podcast.

She said she struggles to understand why some people do not speak up, especially when compared to activists who face serious risks.

She said, “It pisses me off. Because I’m sitting here with [Algerian-Palestinian activist] Mahmoud [Khalil], who has so much to risk and who has risked so much who has sacrificed so much… And I look at these people who have absolutely every privilege imaginable to mankind and they cannot utter a single word. I guess it makes me naive, but I cannot understand it. I really can’t understand it. And I hear people say that they don’t know enough and I — I don’t, it’s like, OK, so what do you do all day?”

Einbinder also spoke about what she sees as uneven attention in Hollywood, saying that certain issues only become important when they involve well-known or privileged figures. She said, “People in Hollywood, unfortunately, need these issues to affect a white person for them to see it as relating to them. Like, they see Jimmy Kimmel getting taken off the air suddenly, they see Stephen Colbert’s show being canceled by CBS, which is owned by the Ellisons, and they go, ‘How could this possibly happen?’ And it’s like, we know how because we saw students and professors and journalists and authors and Palestinian folks be silenced and fired and expelled and imprisoned… it took it happening to these white men for people to be like, ‘Oh my god,’” she continued.

She also addressed the idea of bravery in speaking publicly about political issues. She explained that she does not see her actions as especially brave, saying, “I always resist the idea that what I am doing is in any way brave because I don’t want cowardice to be a metric by which I judge bravery. What I am doing is having eyes and seeing reality and saying what I am seeing. And I think that so many people risk so much more in a tangible sense,” she added.

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