On Friday, August 21, Mark Ruffalo posted an Instagram video of Oracle executive vice chair Safra Catz speaking at the Israeli-American Council summit. In the clip, Catz describes technology Oracle had supplied to the Israeli military as "really profoundly scary technologies." Ruffalo added: "This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros. acquisition."
The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, backed by David Ellison’s Skydance, has gained momentum in recent months. Ruffalo’s post reframed the deal as something beyond a business transaction. He warned that technologies developed for military use would become part of “one of the largest media conglomerates in the world” and projected the merger would eliminate 4,500 direct filmmaking jobs along with 10,000 more in ancillary roles. He described Larry Ellison as “a classic Oligarch” who is “crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power.”
Paramount’s response was quick and blunt. A studio spokesperson said the company is “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute” and that applying words like “genocide” and “apartheid” to a corporate transaction “aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe.”
Ruffalo rejected the framing immediately. “The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” he wrote on X, according to Variety. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.”
The exchange arrived weeks after all three major U.S. theater chains endorsed the merger. Ruffalo’s job-loss figures have not been independently sourced, and the line from Oracle’s defense contracts to Paramount’s content is a long one. But the studio’s decision to answer a labor and geopolitical argument with an antisemitism charge chose escalation over engagement. That choice will outlast the news cycle.
