Jason Isaacs has revealed that he has been called a “Zionist baby killer” and “Zionazi” simply for wearing a yellow ribbon pin, the symbol of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Isaacs, who is Jewish, explained that he feels a personal responsibility to advocate for those still in captivity after his meetings with their families, but admitted he understands why many other stars have chosen not to do so publicly.
Speaking to New York Magazine at his London home, he said: “I always wear it if I’m on a red carpet and a press line.
"I wear the hostage pin because there are innocent people who were taken from their homes. Most of them are peace activists who lived in border communities where they were ferrying sick kids to hospitals and working with people from Gaza constantly.
"There are Holocaust survivors, there are children who were taken, there are people being starved and tortured and raped who have no access to the Red Cross.
"People are rightfully talking and thinking about all the civilians that are in danger everywhere else. But those people in tunnels, it’s now 600 days they’ve been there, they’ve been forgotten entirely.”
The White Lotus star recalled that, after he wore the pin once, a hostage’s family got in touch to thank him, adding: “I now am aware that they are watching me and that it matters to them. If my son or sister or daughter or father was being kept in a tunnel somewhere and weighed 25 kilos now, or may have been strangled or shot, and it felt important to me that some actors somewhere wore the yellow hostage pin, then who am I to not wear it?”
But, asked why more major names had not followed suit, he admitted he could sympathise with the decision to keep their advocacy out of the public eye.
"Just for wearing it, I’ve been called a Zionist baby killer, a Zionazi,” he explained, adding: “Even a yellow hostage pin for innocents is deemed political, which it isn’t.”
Indeed, Isaacs was keen not to mix his advocacy for hostages with the fraught debate over the Gaza War more generally.
He also urged anyone considering to weigh in on the matter not to neglect the complexity of the issue in favour of slogans and talking points, saying: “Where I am is either a full magazine or no comment about it, because two or three sentences in a profile are not enough to deal with the issues.
"So when it comes to more nuanced arguments about Netanyahu and the right-wing lunatics in the cabinet, or whether the IDF is or isn’t doing things, or this new Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is or isn’t handing out food correctly, or whether Hamas’s press releases should be printed as fact, and whether there aren’t journalists in there — there are so many complicated arguments.
"It isn’t a place to dip one’s toe or to have a simple quote on it. What I wish for everybody, obviously, is peace. Who doesn’t? I don’t know anybody, apart from the extremists on all sides, who want either continued war or tension.”
