Hollywood stars Cynthia Nixon and Morgan Spector were on Capitol Hill this week to push members of Congress to support the Block the Bombs Act – a bill that would stop the US from sending offensive weapons to Israel.
The Hollywood stars were joined by Columbia student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, a deportation target of the Trump administration, and Adil Husain, a Texas doctor who recently served in Gaza.
I followed the group around Capitol Hill as they had personal meetings with Reps. Emily Randall (Wash.) and LaMonica McIver (N.J.), both of whom have not signed onto the bill, as well as Texas Rep. Greg Casar and Pennsylvania Reps. Summer Lee and Mary Gay Scanlon, who, alongside 43 other Democratic members, have signed onto the measure. They also hosted a press conference and a legislative briefing with several other members of Congress.
Zeteo contributor Cynthia Nixon reflected on how, in the past, Israel and Palestine may have been seen as a “third rail” in politics, but that’s no longer the case. “[T]he vast majority of Americans really believe that our funding of bombs and weapons and of an apartheid state is wrong. And so, I think that we're here on the Hill, because our leaders haven't caught up with where the people are.”
Along with the American public, the film industry is also increasingly speaking out against the genocide. More than 4,000 film workers, including Nixon and Spector, as well as Ava DuVernay, Ayo Edebiri, Brian Cox, Josh O'Connor, Mark Ruffalo, Olivia Colman, Tilda Swinton, and Javier Bardem, have signed a historic pledge to boycott Israeli film institutions complicit in Israel’s genocide and apartheid of the Palestinian people.
“I felt it was important to take a position, especially as somebody in my industry, because it was clearly dangerous…People were being told, ‘You can't talk about this,’” Spector said.
Meanwhile, Khalil told me that he had seen no concrete action since he last visited Congress in July, even as conditions severely worsen in Gaza.
Israeli forces have killed more than 64,000 people in the enclave. This week, Israel, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warned hundreds of thousands in Gaza City to leave (to where is unclear), bombed Qatar, allegedly twice struck a flotilla carrying hundreds of international volunteers seeking to deliver aid to Gaza, and announced “there will be no Palestinian state.”
“There's no excuse whatsoever for that inaction,” Khalil said.
Paid subscribers can watch the full video to get a look inside Cynthia Nixon, Morgan Spector, Mahmoud Khalil, and Dr. Adil Husain’s day on Capitol Hill.
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Liam Mann contributed to this reporting.
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