These celebrities are going to the wall for Israel. They’re not Jewish
RECOGNITION OF THE MORAL IMPERATIVE DRIVING FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM
On a warm night at the plaza in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, hundreds wave Israeli flags and posters of loved ones in captivity as American singer-songwriter John Ondrasik performs his song OK, a stirring requiem he composed after Oct. 7.
This is Hostages Square, a gathering place for family members, friends and supporters of the 133 hostages still languishing in Gaza, and a scene of weekly rallies. Ondrasik, who performs as Five for Fighting, was visiting Israel for the first time in April with his son as a show of solidarity.
OK’S melancholic lyrics include sound bites from New York Mayor Eric Adams’s Oct. 10 speech in support of Israel and the Jewish people: “We are not all right ... when we see grandmothers being pulled away and children shot in front of their families. We are not all right when right here in the city of New York you have those who celebrate, at the same time when the devastation is taking place.”
“We are not OK,” Ondrasik said in an Instagram-posted interview conducted by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an organization advocating for the hostages’ release. “Something’s really broken in the world ... to see the whole world kind of in this state of moral paralyzation for whatever reason, trying to find some context for these evil acts, that made me very angry, and very scared.”
At a time when many celebrities are silent or hostile toward Israel, Ondrasik is among a number of non-jewish personalities showing support for Israel and the Jewish people.
In the days after Oct. 7, Justin Bieber posted “Praying for Israel” on his Instagram story. Madonna expressed sorrow and shared a video with her 19.3 million followers, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson shared a reel with his 397 million followers supporting Israel and deploring Hamas’s atrocities.
Former NBA all-star Kareem Abdul-jabbar regularly shares his pro-israel Substack posts with his 1.1 million Instagram followers. The bestselling author, social activist and 2022 winner of Canada’s Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center’s first Ally Against Anti-semitism award has reflected on the Israel-hamas conflict and why he finds antisemitism to be “especially heinous.”
Following the Al-ahli hospital airstrike in Gaza in late October when Hamas blamed Israel for what was later determined to be its own misfired rocket, Abdul-jabbar posted, “Who was actually responsible for the deaths and destruction? I don’t know for certain. No one does ... I certainly don’t believe Hamas. They lost all credibility when they invaded Israel, took hostages, and set the mass violence in motion.”
Dr. Phil Mcgraw has used his talk show and social media platforms to condemn Hamas and antisemitism on college campuses and in corporate America. He lit a Hanukkah menorah in honour of the hostages.
“I know for sure the atrocities and ensuing celebrations committed by Hamas are inexcusable and unjustifiable ... Israel is our friend and ally,” Dr. Phil told his 1.2 million Instagram followers. “They don’t need us to just be their friend in good times. They need us to be their friend in bad times. To be their friend when it is easier not to be ... This is a really great time to show Israel and the world who we are.”
Dr. Phil decried “a disturbing degree of ivy-covered intellectual rot” at universities, which he believes are failing miserably at shaping and educating young minds.
He was among the first to publicly condemn university leadership for “not only indulging, but actually endorsing sanctioned student organizations holding celebrations for murders” and highly criticized the administrations for coddling student protesters instead of teaching them to think critically.
Following the December congressional testimonies of Harvard’s, MIT’S and University of Pennsylvania’s presidents, who insisted on contextualizing campus calls for the genocide of Jews, Dr. Phil called for their immediate resignation and rejected their manipulating semantics.
“I’ll give you some context,” he told Claudine Gay, Sally Kornbluth and Liz Magill on Instagram. “While you were intellectually selling out, bringing shame to your institutions and this country, I was working with the Israeli consulate viewing the highly restricted footage of Oct. 7 from actual body cams of terrorists themselves, victims’ cellphones recovered from their dead, tortured, raped, desecrated bodies, as well as raw CCTV footage and other sources.”
The first episode of Dr. Phil Primetime that aired on his new network, Merit Street Media, featured Mosab Hassan Yousef, the disowned son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef. After defecting to Israel in 1997, Mosab worked undercover for Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency before relocating to the U.S. in 2007.
In the episode, entitled, Tainted Teachings: Indoctrinated to Hate, Mosab exposed the indoctrination of Palestinian children against Israel at Gaza schools, and faced off against University of Michigan anti-israel activists “Salma” and “Zaynab,” who refused to condemn the murder of innocents by Hamas, asserting that the events were complex and require historical context.
Dr. Phil joined in with his own condemnation of the two: “When I ask you if what happened on October 7 is something you condemn, and you say, ‘Well, you have to look at that by looking at hundreds of years of conflict, no, you don’t. No, you don’t. That’s either right or it’s wrong. It was wrong. And I don’t need 100 years of conflict to know it was wrong. When somebody comes over a fence and goes into someone’s house and burns their infant in its crib, I don’t give a damn why they did it. It’s wrong.”
Patricia Heaton, Emmy Award-winning star of Everybody Loves Raymond, The Middle, and Carol’s Second Act, has regularly shared hostages’ pictures with her 299,000 Instagram followers, and declared her love for Israel.
In addition to marking red-headed hostage Kfir Bibas’ first birthday in captivity with a candle-adorned cupcake, Heaton participated in November’s March for Israel on Capitol Hill where she draped herself in an Israeli flag. She donated her time and new book to one lucky bidder at an Artists Against Antisemitism auction that raised money for Project Shema, an organization that trains Jewish community members to combat antisemitism. Most recently, she spoke at a Columbia University rally organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
On Giving Tuesday, Heaton encouraged her Instagram followers to support Israeli organizations that assist young victims of terror, after having already entreated their support for the Jewish community prior to Thanksgiving.
“Have you ever thought, gee, if I were a German during World War Two, I hope I would be that person who would stand up for my Jewish neighbours? Well, guess what — we have that opportunity today,” Heaton highlighted in an Instagram reel. “Right now the Jewish people are being slaughtered by terrorists as we speak. Below I’ve listed some links where you can financially donate to aid in their struggle ... if you can’t afford that, and it’s totally understandable in the economy that we’re in, reach out to your Jewish friends. Tell them you support them. If you don’t know any Jewish friends, call your local synagogue, ask if there’s anything you can do to support them. And if you’re active on social media, please stand up for Israel.”
Entrepreneur and reality TV star Caroline D’amore visited Israel in December with the goal of drawing her own conclusions about the conflict. The founder and CEO of Pizza Girl Inc., which manufactures organic pizza sauces, among other products, toured the Nova music festival site where she broke down on camera before her 141,000 Instagram followers. She also visited the Kibbutz Kfar Azza home of a young, engaged couple who were murdered on their couch by Hamas, visited an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) base in Israel’s south, and met with members of Zaka, Israel’s leading non-governmental rescue and recovery organization.
The pink-haired D’amore regularly supports Jewish students confronting antisemitism on campus, and, like Dr. Phil, watched the same graphic footage of Oct. 7 released by the IDF.
“When I first watched the 47-minute video I didn’t wish seeing that upon anybody — not being able to sleep at night, imagining it was you, your family or kids,” said D’amore in an Instagram reel. “I now feel every kid on every college campus unfortunately needs to see this video because without it you do not have the whole picture ... I believe the majority of you are good people and when you see this video, you will absolutely agree that Israel has been on the frontlines defending us from what I saw. Without Israel, that will happen to all of us.”
In December, D’amore addressed Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People on Parliament Hill.
“When I received thousands upon thousands of messages of gratitude, I realized it’s because there’s not enough non-jewish people speaking up,” she said.
“I’m proud to stand up for the Jewish community against terrorism and online bullying,” she added. “I’m here to inspire other people — non-jewish people — to do the same thing. Thank you guys. Sending you all so much love. I love each and every one of you and I will never shut up.”
Ondrasik, the platinum-selling singer, said many in the music industry fear the potential backlash of standing with Israel. Doing so, he said, could compromise both their concerts and personal safety.
”I’ve gotten a little sense of what it’s like to be Jewish in the last couple of months,” he reflected. “But what I say to them is, ‘Those are the same arguments people used in 1938 before the Holocaust’ ... If everybody spoke up and had moral courage or clarity, this war wouldn’t be happening.”