On Saturday, Hannah Einbinder was honored by the Human Rights Campaign for her contributions to LGBTQ+ representation, both on- and offscreen. Einbinder, who stars as a bisexual comedy writer on Hacks, has received wide acclaim for her role, and for her activism on LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, and Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Einbinder used her acceptance speech for the Visibility Award to speak out against the ongoing violence.
“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,” Einbinder said. “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.”
Einbinder emphasized that her condemnation of Israel’s violence isn’t in spite of her own Jewish identity, but because of it. She recalled her time Hebrew school in which she learned 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.
“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,” she continued. “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.”
Einbinder then took direct aim at the Trump administration’s dehumanization of Palestinian rights protestors in the U.S., specifically that of Mahmoud Khalil. Earlier this month, the Columbia University graduate was arrested and detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in front of his wife, who is eight months pregnant. During Khalil’s time as a grad student at the university, he was a visible pro-Palestine activist and a leading figure in organizing student encampments to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza and Columbia’s ties to Israel. Khalil served as a key negotiator with the university during the encampment protests last spring, which drew horrific police violence sanctioned by the university. Since his arrest, Khalil, who holds a green card granting him permanent residency in the U.S., has been held at the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center. He currently faces deportation.
“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,” Einbinder said. “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.
“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,” Einbinder concluded. “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 is one of only a few celebrities to use their platform—literally and figuratively—to speak candidly on the daily horrors being perpetrated in Gaza, and in the U.S. under the Trump administration. Award show season—a time when a disproportionately high amount of attention is paid to famous actors—passed with little attention called to either, save for No Other Land c0-director Basel Adra’s call for the end of “ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people” while accepting the award for Best Documentary. And in February, when she was honored at the Berlin Film Festival, Tilda Swinton also decried the violence and denounced Trump’s recent boasts that he’d bulldoze Gaza.
“The inhumane is being perpetrated on our watch,” Swinton said. “I’m here to name it without hesitation or doubt in my mind, and to lend my unwavering solidarity to all those who recognize the unacceptable complacency of our greed-addicted governments who make nice with planet wreckers and war criminals, wherever they come from.”
Good on Einbinder (and all else who have of late) for speaking out, when so many of their colleagues won’t publicly do the same.
GET JEZEBEL RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
