While accepting an award from a major Jewish group on Wednesday night, the media executive Ari Emanuel condemned Israel’s conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for his leadership since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, a conspicuous statement from one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures.
Those remarks by Emanuel drew both applause and boos, as well as some departures from the gala. On Thursday, the group, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that the timing of the comments — while Emanuel was receiving the highest honor it bestows — was not appropriate.
“Netanyahu doesn’t want a peaceful solution,” Emanuel said at the gala, according to a transcript of his remarks provided by the entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, where he is the chief executive. “And it’s become clear that getting to a political solution and Netanyahu remaining in power are irreconcilable paths.”
Emanuel also said of Netanyahu: “As for his responsibilities to keep the people of the state of Israel and Jews across the globe safe, he has obviously failed spectacularly. But he has succeeded wildly in using division to stay in power.”
Later in his remarks, Emanuel added, “For the good of Israel, he should go.”
Emanuel’s commentary about Netanyahu came in the concluding section of his speech. A video shows some attendees getting up and leaving.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center was honoring Emanuel, the superagent satirized by Jeremy Piven in the HBO show “Entourage,” with its Humanitarian Award at a gala in Beverly Hills. The organization administers the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and describes its mission as “fighting antisemitism, defending the State of Israel and teaching the lessons of the Holocaust.”
“While our membership, like the Jewish community at large, contains a healthy range of opinions, the Center’s gala is not a platform for personal political opinions,” Erik Simon, a spokesman for the center, said in a statement.
Prominent leaders in both the United States and Israel have questioned the political endgame after bombings and incursions into Gaza that have killed more than 35,000 people and displaced many more. The country has been responding to the October attack in which Hamas killed 1,200 people and abducted 240.
Emanuel began his speech by noting that his family had adopted its surname in honor of an uncle, Emanuel Auerbach, who was killed during a protest in Jerusalem in 1933. As a child, Emanuel said, he repeatedly visited Israel with his family.
“This is a painful and crucial moment for all of us who are Jews and who love Israel,” he said. “It is not a moment to stay silent.”
He defended Israel’s war as “justified” and condemned a popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea,” as genocidal.
But Emanuel also stood up for his right to speak out as an American Jew.
“It is up to the Israeli people to choose their own leaders,” he said. “Israel is a democracy. But as Jews, we have a stake in this. We also have a responsibility to speak out. We are called to ‘repair the world’ — ‘tikkun olam.’ And, as Elie Wiesel said, ‘Sometimes we must interfere.’”
Nicole Sperling contributed reporting.
