Dershowitz Bashes Cynthia Nixon For Backing Israelis Who Boycott Settlements
![](https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/970x/center/images/cropped/gettyimages-508280596-1520365683.jpg)
Image by Getty Images
Cynthia Nixon, the actress who announced her campaign for New York governor on Monday, is already facing attacks from pro-Israel activists over her support for a petition backing Israeli artists who were refusing to perform in the West Bank settlement of Ariel.
Lawyer and Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz launched a preemptive strike against Nixon on Friday, claiming that she had “collaborated with Israel haters.”
“Do not support her bigotry,” Dershowitz wrote.
Yet according to a 2010 report in the Forward on the petition Nixon signed, Nixon was in the company of a large number of prominent Jewish and Israeli actors. Other signatories of the petition included Theodore Bikel, Stephen Sondheim, and Mandy Patinkin. Israeli artists who signed a parallel petition refusing to perform in Ariel included many of the country’s most prominent writers, including A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and David Grossman, according to a contemporary article in Ynet.
Though Nixon is not Jewish, both of her children are. In 2013 she hosted an event for T’ruah, a leftist rabbinic human rights organization.
Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at [email protected] or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis.
A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren
![](https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Jodi-Headshot.jpg)
We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.
With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.
— Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief