I wanted to come on here and make a post about Noah Schnapp because people in the fandom have been taking very divisive stances on him (and reasonably!) in and I just want to open up a couple of points that people ignore when they are trying to defend him. I hope this post is as accessible and introductory as it can be as I know a lot of the people in the fandom are very young. I also insist that you read the ENTIRE POST before engaging in any way or I will simply respond by telling you to reread the post.
I want to start off by saying I am the same age as Noah, and he's been practically raised in Hollywood, and so the people he's surrounded by and his PR teams are definitely going to be in spheres where political engagement isn't encouraged where it will conflict with his career. One of the major things we've seen in the Israel-Palestine conflict is that celebrities are totally disengaged and will not take a stance unlike with other social issues because it threatens their careers to do so, as much of the infrastructure of Hollywood is directly entwined with Israel - a lot of Hollywood is owned by Zionists and the power at the top overwhelmingly supports Israel, which is why supporters of Palestine have experienced as much disenfranchisement as they have. Additionally, state tactics of Israel to pinkwash, rebrand and propagandise are essentially linked to Hollywood, including using Arab racialisation to villainise characters for decades now in films.
This is particularly true for celebrities that refer to the Israel-Palestine conflict explicitly as an apartheid and a genocide, who are often labeled as anti-semitic. This is part of the weaponisation of the Holocaust, which has been used by Israel to make people uncomfortable picking sides lest they be labeled an anti-semite, which more subtly functions to equate Zionism with Judaism. This tactic also equates pro-Palestinian movements as anti-Zionist and therefore anti-Semitic, which has then been used to shut down these movements and sentiments online and in institutions. The problem with this is that it is not antisemitic to be an antizionist, but because of the internet's harsh political environment there becomes an extreme polarisation and accusation between different expressions of beliefs, where either sides of the argument massively demonise and estrange each other by becoming very radicalised by questionable evidence that exists in an echo chamber, particularly on twitter, and then regurgitate misinformation about the unforgivable actions on either side of the conflict so as to morally shun one side in order to excuse the other. This detracts from the point at the heart of the conflict that Israel is a state and Hamas is the terror organisation that they are attacking, and that Palestine is the subject of this state-sanctioned mass violence and dehumanisation.
I want to emphasize that I am not trying to personally criticise Noah Schnapp, I think he is a child star who is undeniably in a position of vulnerability and control, and I think people are being reductive when they don't understand that the path he is on and the spaces he's in have predisposed him to falling into the traps he has in the way he defended his actions when he was photographed in proximity to the "zionism is sexy" stickers.
I think we are living in a new age of media manipulation as well as moral condemnation, where when people, and particularly celebrities, do things that reflect their ignorances or maybe disagreeable politics, people tend to really jump at broiling them for it - it's where cancel culture comes from, and it's absolutely rife on Tumblr because a lot of the community on here are autistic or OCD in a way that gives them black or white thinking about morality in politics and doesn't lend a lot of space to nuance when it comes to political behaviour. Equally PR teams respond to this by keeping their celebrities as politically neutral and uninvolved as possible. And we've seen that what this means for Israel-Palestine is a total withdrawal from commentary by major celebrities because people are generally uneducated enough about Palestine to not really know what is right or wrong, but want things to progress as comfortably and similarly as usual so that they aren't too affected by it, and this includes celebrities. While a few celebrities have shown vocal and unwavering support to either side, most have avoided moral shunning by emphasizing that they want everyone on either side to remain safe, and that they only want peace.
The problem with this type of rhetorical argument is the same reason that political disengagement from the BLM movement in a similar manner, of saying "all lives matter", was harmful. Because it equates both sides of a conflict that is borne from systematic inequality. By saying "all lives matter", because the statement is so simplifying, one resolves that the goals of the BLM movement are for the acknowledgement of Black lives as equals and seeks to rectify this with declaratives, rather than understanding that BLM represents the need to rectify the systemic disenfranchisement and disempowerment of Black people that is entrenched within the state. Similarly, often when celebrities talk about Palestine, their stance is such that they just want peace on all sides. By not picking a side in Israel-Palestine, one automatically sides with Israel, the more powerful aggressor.
In both of these cases, the issue is that mass resistance is necessary for change in a social movement - by saying "all lives matter" or "I support peace" in an uneven conflict, one is ignoring and even negating the nature of the conflict. In the case of Palestine, celebrities often say "I want both sides to stop the violence", which implies that the actions of Hamas are not reactionary defensive acts of a small terrorist organisation in comparison to the sanctioned violence of a state backed by global powers. By saying they "just want peace" actors are trying to morally absolve themselves from taking a side in a situation where it is necessary to oppose the actions of an aggressor that has much more power and is acting of its own free volition when using violence (whereas Hamas is acting in defense of the occupation of Palestine). The typical argument that is made in rebuttal against this is that Israel's invasion of Palestine was a retaliation against the attacks on October 7th, but these are reductive claims about the history of the Israeli occupation and do not take into account that the extent of the destruction in Palestine, particularly that of civilian deaths and targeting hospitals, cannot be explained away as an attempt to remove the terrorist threat. And because a massive amount of media organisations are owned by Zionists, a different narrativisation of what's going on has been favoured in public discourse.
This is similar to what happened when Elon Musk Hitler saluted on live television, and everyone rushed in to defend him, claiming that it wasn't what it looked like. Whenever people see a celebrity doing something that could be morally condemnable, they rush in to both defend and accuse in anticipation of either party. Noah might not have been involved with the people giving out Zionist stickers, nor are his actions in any way comparable to Elon, but his implicit support for Israel by failing to condemn the actions of the state in his apology tell us enough about his views if we can apply the same level of media literacy we apply to Byler analysis.
When Noah said "we should all stand together for humanity and for peace" he did not say "against state violence" or advocate for a ceasefire. His apology message was rife with rhetoric and sentiments that suggested either a lack of understanding of the imbalance between the sides of the conflict - when he said "we all hope for the same things, that being those innocent people still being held in Gaza to be released and returned to their families, and equally hope for an end to the loss of innocent life in Palestine, so many of those people being women and children." - or simply a lack of regard for Palestinians. I truly cannot read this sentence with any other interpretation than as a very insidious and subtle way of trying to suggest that the tragedy of these two things is equal and I think it demonstrates that he is really prioritising Israeli lives, because it feels like he adds Palestinians in as an afterthought to the sentence and then adds on the part about them being women and children as if to emphasize that they really are innocent despite being Palestinian, and that's why they deserve a reprieve from killing. That might be an exaggeration, but for me the lack of a suggestion that what we want is a ceasefire in order to achieve peace makes me think he doesn't care that much about Palestinian peace.
That being said I do think we can lend him a lot of understanding that the reason he said these things is because it is the same rhetoric that everyone around him is pedaling to cover up covert Zionism, and he has good faith in these people because they helped raise him, and he may not understand the gravity of his words because he may not have the time or the education to be able to get into the history of Israel-Palestine, and more importantly because he is not in an environment that encourages him to do so whatsoever. I think this was clear when he had earlier reposted an Instagram post that said "You either stand with Israel or you stand with terrorism." which showed that his understanding of either side was already manipulated to not see Israel as the original perpetrator of the hostilities. I say he is very susceptible to this kind of rhetorical propaganda because he is very young and because of his position as a gay Jewish celebrity in Hollywood. I do think despite this that Noah is still responsible for his own actions and whoever he might be as a person exists beyond the political implications of his actions, though, and he doesn't deserve the insane harassment and backlash he's faced. It is unforgiveable that he has received death threats for it. Nonetheless we definitely should expect better from him and we can be encouraging and be fans within that. I believe he is a good and kind person and he wouldn't endorse genocide if he really understood what was going on, and I also don't believe he really is in a position to necessarily be able to understand what's going on - for a lot of people, being in encampments, communities and organisations is what has allowed them to actually get reliable and trustworthy information and education about Israel and Palestine if they aren't reading books about it, and I would doubt that Noah is, and I would frown upon calling in a moral failure if he isn't. However, he is now collaborating with Amazon, which is on the BDS list for its direct complicity and profiting off the Israeli occupation by providing $1.22 billion of cloud technology to the Israeli government and military. As a celebrity in the public sphere, choosing to collaborate with a corporation is a declaration of support and a participation in increasing the popular support of that corporation. In the face of his previous brush ins with being implicated in Israeli politics, I really think Noah should know better and should not be endorsing Amazon. I don't think he should be attacked for it but I do think we should take it as what it is. It is very directly and undeniably an endorsement of Amazon. I've tried to comment on his post about it but it seems comments about it have been limited. The fact that the endorsement happened the same week as Will Byers' birthday really rubs this in for me because I think it's a publicity stunt for Amazon. I did really want to believe that Noah maybe supported Palestine but didn't want to receive backlash for it, but this has changed my mind about it and I think now it's necessary to boycott season five by pirating it even if we are superfans of this show, because Eduardo Franco dropping out and Brett Gelman's continued presence on set really can't mean good things for the cast as much as that breaks my heart.
But social change can't occur without resistance, and killing is still occurring even now, after the ceasefire, so it's okay even if you haven't been involved or engaged up until now and you might not even be aware of some of the things talked about in this post. Israel should not be allowed to make territorial and financial gains by devastating tens of thousands of innocent people and neither should the people that support Israel. Whether or not there can be a one state solution, the violence needs to stop and Israel needs to be held accountable for the mass killing and ethnic cleansing that has occurred, otherwise the world will move on as normal as if what happened and is still happening is at all justified. It's not much to ask, just pirate season five or at least stop defending Noah Schnapp, please! I would hope that the people who are closest to Noah and have the time to educate themselves do so and pass that onto him, because celebrities are a key point that corporations are able to use to get support in the face of mass violence like this!
