Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Susan Sarandon: ‘Don’t let anyone tell you it started on Oct 7, 2023’

The Academy Award-winning actress apologized for a recent antisemitic comment.

Susan Sarandon
Susan Sarandon at the Hotel Excelsior in Venice, Italy in 2017. Credit: Matteo Chinellato/Shutterstock.

On Jan. 15, many noted somberly that it was the 100th day that Hamas terrorists were holding hostages in Gaza. Academy Award-winning actress Susan Sarandon—no stranger to antisemitic comments—had a different message in mind that day.

“Don’t let anyone tell you it started on Oct. 7, 2023,” Sarandon posted on social media to more than 870,000 followers. She listed 21 “massacres” that she appeared to blame on Jews, from 1937 to 2021, and the “Gaza genocide 2023,” which she called “still ongoing.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what some of the listed items meant, including Jerusalem “massacres” in 1937, 1947 and 1967.

In December, the 77-year-old actress said that Jews “are getting a taste of what it feels like to be Muslim” in the war against Hamas. She later said her “phrasing was a terrible mistake, as it implies until recently Jews have been strangers to persecution when the opposite is true.”

More recently, she supported South Africa’s accusation of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The next phase of Mideast security will be determined not only by Iran’s decline, but by whether the U.S. strengthens an Israel-led Abraham Security Alliance, or elevates Turkey as its preferred regional partner.
The Israeli premier linked Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric to the stabbing of a Jewish person days later, and warned that an Iranian attack on Israel would trigger a “very forceful” response.
Any deal with the U.S. must include an “absolute, unconditional” end to the fighting in Lebanon, he reiterated.
Despite what appears to be close coordination, there are concerns that cooperation between Israel and the U.S. needs to be strengthened.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his armed forces struck targets in the Caspian Sea, including military cargo shipments involving Iran.
The Religious Zionism Party held its internal primaries ahead of the Oct. 27 national elections.