the Decision of Warner Bros and Paramount- MediaTalks on Facto News

The Warner Bros. studio Discovery stated this Thursday (16) that it will not join a boycott against Israel. The justification is that the action would violate company policies.

Warner responded to a legal document sent to the company’s UK arm.

Indirectly, the position also responds to a letter signed by thousands of members of the film industry – including stars such as Olivia Colman, Javier Barden, Mark Ruffalo and Emma Stone – which demanded the boycott of Israeli institutions, as a form of pressure for the end of the war in Gaza.

Warner’s position, sent to the American magazine Variety, says that the company “is committed to promoting an inclusive and respectful environment for its employees, collaborators and other interested parties”.

“Our policies prohibit any type of discrimination, including discrimination based on race, religion, nationality or ancestry. We believe that a boycott of Israeli film institutions violates our policies.

While we respect the rights of individuals and groups to express their opinions and advocate for causes, we will continue to align our business practices with the requirements of our policies and the law.”

Other studios have already refused to boycott

Warner is not the first studio to take a stance against the boycott of Israel. A few days after the request was published, Paramount responded by stating that it did not agree with the boycott.

In a statement, the studio stated that “the global entertainment industry should encourage artists to tell their stories and share their ideas with audiences around the world.”

“Silencing individual creative artists on the basis of their nationality does not promote better understanding nor advance the cause of peace.”

Signatories of the letter, however, specified that the boycott request does not apply to individuals, but rather to Israeli institutions that collude with the State’s actions in Gaza.

Internally, Paramount employees also mobilized to ask the company to boycott Israeli institutions. Shortly after the studio’s refusal to join this movement, a group of around 30 employees sent a letter to CEO David Ellison.

Anonymously, they criticized the company for aligning itself with a genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. After receiving no responses, they sent a list of demands, which included the donation of US$1 million to a fund to support Palestinian children, the same amount that was donated by the company in 2023 to a humanitarian fund in Israel.

Understand the call for a boycott of Israel

In early September, actors, directors and other professionals from the United States film industry signed a document in which they committed not to work with Israeli institutions and asked film studios to do the same.

The text justified the attitude by stating that Israeli organizations were involved in “genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people” for contributing in some way to the war in the Gaza Strip.

The letter was published by the organization “Cinema Workers for Palestine”. Initially it had 1200 signatures, but the number of supporters quickly multiplied, reaching around 4000.

“In this urgent time of crisis, when many of our governments are allowing the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything in our power to combat complicity in this relentless horror”, says the text.

The movement was inspired by a similar action from the 1980s, which culturally boycotted South Africa, in order to press for the end of the apartheid regime.

The UK legal document was sent, in addition to Warner, to Disney, Apple, Amazon Studios, Netflix, BBC, among others.

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