ACTOR MARK RUFFALO has said it is “appalling and fundamentally dishonest” of entertainment giant Paramount Skydance to accuse him of using “antisemitic tropes”.

Paramount is run by David Ellison, whose ultra-wealthy family is a close ally of US President Donald Trump.

It has launched a $110 billion (€94.03 billion) bid for control of a stable of assets that includes Warner Bros. Pictures, CNN and the HBO Max streaming service.

The dispute started when Ruffalo re-shared a video from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement which featured comments made by Oracle Executive Vice Chair Safra Catz.

David Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison, is the co-founder of technology company Oracle.

In the video, Catz said “we have some really profoundly scary technology” which Oracle has made available to Israel following the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.

Ruffalo re-shared the video and remarked that Larry Ellison is “using [Oracle] to fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition”.

“Look how [Catz] revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle,” added Ruffalo.

In a rare statement over the weekend, Paramount said it was “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute”.

“Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong – they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe,” Paramount said.

“This doesn’t deserve a response in kind – and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”

On Saturday, Ruffalo, in response, said: “The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest.”

He added: “Criticising the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticising Jewish people.

“This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel.”

The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue…

— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 22, 2026

Ruffalo said that “everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones”.

In a statement posted to X, Ruffalo said the Paramount merger has “real consequences for real people, and for the entire country”.

“Scrutinising the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary.”

He added that “lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have called for serious national security review, and regulators still haven’t given the public a real answer” and that “until they do, the merger shouldn’t move forward”.

The merger has turned into an increasingly high-stakes row pitting Paramount against a coalition of liberal states who say the attempt to swallow Warner Bros. Pictures will be bad for filmmakers and bad for moviegoers.

Last week, Paramount demanded California and other US states suing to block its merger put up $1.9 billion (€1.62 billion) to cover fees the company will have to pay if the deal gets delayed.

Meanwhile, Ruffalo is well-known for his political activism and has even entered the fray in Irish politics.

In 2020, he called on then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to block the Shannon liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.

He renewed this call in 2024, which resulted in the Green Party accusing him of a “very misleading account” of the Shannon LNG terminal.

Ruffalo said the Green Party, then part of the coalition government, was trying to “jam through a bill to fast track building LNG terminals that would import fracked gas from the United States”.