Dershowitz Bashes Cynthia Nixon For Backing Israelis Who Boycott Settlements
Image by Getty Images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis March 19, 2018
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.
Why I became the Forward’s Editor-in-Chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
