News Release

Hollywood Actor Invokes Cultural Boycott of Israel, Risks Netflix Lawsuit, California Law Reprisal

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In 2019, the Hollywood Reporter wrote: “David Clennon, an Emmy-winning U.S. actor with more than four decades of work across film and TV, has revealed that he turned down an audition for a new Netflix series from the makers of hit Israeli show ‘Fauda’ because of his support for Palestinian rights.”

Now, Clennon has escalated the issue, providing spoilers to undermine the Netflix series, risking lawsuits.

He is working with Jewish Voice for Peace/Los Angeles in calling on viewers to boycott “Apartheid TV,” especially in its most recent incarnation, Netflix’s “Hit and Run,” a U.S./Israeli co-production.

“Hit and Run’s” Israeli partners were behind the series “Fauda,” a Netflix commercial success, which was based on the premise that Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land is necessary and justified. “Fauda” was, Clennon notes, “widely criticized for its racist portrayal of Palestinians, and for its message that Palestinian resistance to occupation is illegitimate.”

The call by Clennon and Jewish Voice for Peace marks the opening of a new front in the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel: Hollywood.

Clennon just wrote a piece revealing narrative plot points in the “Hit and Run” series, in order “to encourage viewers to focus on the racism and violence inherent in Israeli domination of Palestine.”

He hopes that the revelation of plot twists will “undermine the suspense which the creators of this U.S./Israeli series are trying to build, in order to keep viewers engaged.” Clennon’s new piece is entitled, “For Justice in Palestine, Boycott Netflix’s Apartheid TV: ‘Hit and Run.’

Clennon is aware that his revelations, also known as “spoilers,” could leave him “vulnerable to lawsuits by Netflix, as well as by the U.S. and Israeli producers of the series.”

He also states that any film or television company that might hire him in the future “could be punished under California’s anti-BDS law, AB2844.”

Working with Clennon is the Jewish Voice for Peace/LA Education and Visibility Committee which has organized online boycott-awareness programs, and, before the pandemic, multiple street demonstrations and vigils.

Available for a limited number of interviews:

DAVID CLENNON, djjc123@earthlink.net

  The actor David Clennon has also written about how various media images are manipulated. Earlier this year, he wrote the pieces “Hollywood’s New Blackface” and “How Hollywood Neuters the 60s: Sorkin’s ‘Trial of the Chicago 7’ Sentences American Radicalism to Oblivion.”