Jewish Voice for Peace vs. Susan Sarandon (and Alan Dershowitz)
The New York Post’s Page Six reports:
Susan Sarandon outraged the Jewish Voice for Peace group when she crossed its picket line to attend a cocktail party last month in the new Madison Avenue jewelry store of Lev Leviev, a diamond-dealing real-estate mogul who owns the former New York Times building and the Apthorp building on the Upper West Side.
Now the California-based grass-roots organization has sent the star a letter asking her to “publicly sever ties” with the jeweler, whom the group is boycotting because he supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank. But Sarandon’s rep denies she’s allied with the high-end gem dealer.
The picketers, who were there for the Leviev store launch in mid-November, stood on the sidewalk with Palestinian flags, shouting, “You’re glitz, you’re glam, you’re building on Palestinian land,” and, “Occupation is a drag, just say no to your gift bag.” A source told Page Six that Sarandon marched in and “tried not to notice the yells outside.”
Page Six got a reply from Sarandon’s rep:
…Sarandon’s representative questioned whether the actress attending one Leviev event amounted to “ties,” and added, “She has no ties to any jewelry company.”
I can understand JVP’s doggedness on the Sarandon front. When you’re a far-left group, and you’ve lost Susan Sarandon, you know you’re in trouble.
But Sarandon isn’t the only celeb who’s tangled up with this issue. Ubiquitous pro-Israel pugilist Alan Dershowitz suddenly appeared on the scene of another protest outside the Leviev store, strode inside and emerged with a shopping bag with which he proceeded to taunt the demonstrators. The scene was captured on video:
The snarky Hollywood gossip blog Defamer has an amusing take on the Sarandon brouhaha. Citing the Page Six piece, Defamer offered up the following analysis:
You read right: the Jews opposing “settlements” weren’t lawyers, they were pro-Palestinian protesters. These “Jews,” whose payos were suspiciously affixed with duct tape, chanted “Sorry ‘bout those charging tanks! Sorry that we run all banks!” and “What do want? Pogroms! When do we want them? Now!” at the Bull Durham star in an effort to bring peace to the Hamas-led region.
In addition to the issue of Israeli settlements (which are the central complaint of the protesters), the anti-Leviev camp has raised a number of other issues about the company’s ethics, which are noted in the Post article.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
