Noah Schnapp believes his views on Israel and Gaza have been misunderstood. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images

By PJ Grisar January 17, 2024

Since November, actor Noah Schnapp, a star of the Netflix series Stranger Things, has come under fire

The actor has come under fire for a video in which he posed with others holding who held “Zionism is sexy” and “Hamas is ISIS”’stickers,” with many even accusing him of being a “supporter of genocide” or a “Nazi Zionist.”

Now Schnapp, 19, has taken to TikTok to clarify his position on the ongoing conflict.

“I feel like my thoughts and beliefs have been so far misconstrued from anything even close to what I believe,” Schnapp said. “I only want peace and safety and security for all innocent people affected by this conflict.”

Schnapp, who is Jewish and had his bar mitzvah in Israel, went on to say that he has been having open discussions with friends from Palestinian backgrounds, and that one of his major takeaways is that people on either side of the war have common ground.

“We all hope for the same thing,” said Schnapp, “that being those innocent people still held hostage in Gaza to be returned to their families, and equally hope for an end to the loss of innocent life in Palestine, so many of those people being women and children.”

Schnapp has often been a target of controversy over his perceived support for Israel — even when not speaking about the war. Last month, when a cast photo for the upcoming final season of Stranger Things was posted to X (formerly Twitter), many commenters called for a boycott, with one user writing, in a tweet liked 79,000 times, “BIG reminder that brett gelman (murray), noah schnapp (will), cara (mike’s mom), shawn levy (producer) and duffers (creators of the show. they signed the letter in support of Israel) are ALL zionists. u should be 1000% BOYCOTTING STRANGER THINGS.”

In his TikTok video, Schnapp said that “anyone with any ounce of humanity would hope for an end to the hostility on both sides.”

“I just hope to one day see these two groups be able to live harmoniously together in that region,” Schnapp said, “and I hope for 2024 online to see people be a little more compassionate and recognize that we’re all human — regardless of our race, of our ethnicity, of our background, of our country of birth, of even our sexuality, of anything. We’re all human and we’re all the same.”

At press time the video had over 500,000 likes. Schnapp’s co-star Brett Gelman, who has been a vocal supporter of Israel on his social throughout the war, told TMZ that he didn’t think there was anything Schnapp had to apologize for.

Gelman said that he wasn’t aware of the apology, but that he “saw nothing wrong with the original thing that he said.”

“He held up a sticker that said ‘Zionism is sexy’ and he said ‘Hamas is ISIS,’” Gelman continued. “Hamas is a terrorist organization and Zionism is the belief that Israel should exist, and that’s sexy to me.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that there was more than one video of Noah Schnapp with “Zionism is sexy” and “Hamas is ISIS” stickers and that those in the video were his friends. There is one video and the nature of Schnapp’s relationship with others in the video wasn’t clear from the video. 

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