A group of Paramount Pictures workers, calling themselves Paramount Employees of Conscience, has responded strongly and angrily to the effort by management at the Ellison-owned studio to slander opponents of the Gaza genocide organized in Film Workers for Palestine. The Employees of Conscience accuses studio executives in an open letter of lining up with genocide and investing in pro-Israeli propaganda while helping to suppress Palestinian filmmakers.

Film Workers for Palestine issued an open letter, signed by more than 4,000 writer-directors, actors and others, in early September pledging 

not to screen films, appear at or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions—including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies—that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.

Expressing the horror felt by vast numbers around the globe, those making the pledge included “Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, César, Goya, and Peabody Award winners.”

A September press release from Film Workers for Palestine explained:

Actors Olivia Colman, Ayo Edebiri, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed, Tilda Swinton, and Javier Bardem, as well as writer-directors Yorgos Lanthimos, Ava DuVernay, Asif Kapadia, Emma Seligman, Boots Riley, Adam McKay, and Joshua Oppenheimer, say: “in this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.”

In response, alone among Hollywood studios, Paramount issued a hypocritical and lying statement opposing the boycott. As the WSWS recently noted, the August 2025 merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media 

was engineered by Larry Ellison, the second-wealthiest person in the world and founder of Oracle, along with his son David Ellison and former Paramount chair Shari Redstone. The merger unites broadcast, film, television and digital platforms under one of the most politically right-wing conglomerates in the world. The Ellisons and Redstone are both major contributors to the Republican Party and pro-Israel organizations.

In Paramount’s statement responding to the Film Workers’ anti-genocide call, the studio leadership piously declared that “we believe in the power of storytelling to connect and inspire people, promote mutual understanding, and preserve the moments, ideas, and events that shape the world we share.” Continuing along the same lines, the Paramount statement asserted that the studio did not “agree with recent efforts to boycott Israeli filmmakers. Silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace. The global entertainment industry should be encouraging artists to tell their stories and share their ideas with audiences throughout the world. We need more engagement and communication—not less.”

This was all rubbish, of course, intended to throw dust in the public’s eyes. The Ellisons and company are zealously dedicated to suppressing the truth about the mass murder in Gaza, the role of American imperialism in that world-historical crime and their own support for the homicidal Israeli regime.

The answering letter from the Paramount Employees of Conscience explains that as a group, including “employees from every business unit within the enterprise and across all levels of seniority, we firmly reject the leadership team’s condemnation of the Film Workers for Palestine Pledge.”

The Paramount workers, addressing management while remaining anonymous for obvious reasons, go on to insist that

the statement made by Paramount leadership does not represent the employees of this company. In condemning the [Israeli boycott] Pledge, you are aligning yourselves with systems of apartheid, occupation, and what Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Holocaust scholars, independent experts commissioned by the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, and countless other organizations, including Israeli institutions like B’Tselem, have recognized as a genocide in Gaza and of the Palestinian people.

The workers refuse the effort “to have our labor used to endorse complicity in the brutalization and erasure of an entire population.”

They continue:

As the parent company of a massive news organization in CBS, it is incredibly telling that Paramount chooses to say nothing as hundreds of journalists are targeted and murdered with impunity in Gaza while simultaneously publicly chastising film workers for choosing whom they would like to work with based on shared values.

The Employees of Conscience demolish the claims by Ellison-Paramount that “we believe in the power of storytelling to connect and inspire people, promote mutual understanding, and preserve the moments, ideas, and events that shape the world we share.” The open letter asks how can a company with this supposed mission

actively ignore, suppress, and silence internal calls for years to champion stories that shed a light on the reality that marginalized and excluded communities, particularly Palestinians, face every day?

They point out that efforts to interest the company in films such as No Other Land and It’s Bisan From Gaza And I’m Still Alive fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, Paramount invested budgets and resources in pro-Zionist propaganda films, such as We Will Dance Again, The Children of October 7 and as1one.

The Paramount employees refute the claim that the Film Workers for Palestine boycott is aimed at “silencing individual creative artists.” They commend Javier Bardem for explaining on the Emmy awards red carpet, as we cited in the WSWS:

Film Workers for Palestine do not target any individuals based on identity. The targets are those film companies and institutions that are complicit and are white-washing or justifying the genocide and its apartheid regime. We do stand with those who are helping and being supportive of the oppressed people.

The letter from the Paramount Employees of Conscience concludes convincingly by asking:

When a powerful media conglomerate attempts to intimidate film workers for exercising their freedom of expression to condemn war crimes in this manner—who is really doing the silencing?