But since Israel declared war on Gaza, artists, actors and production staff have alleged that there is a concerted campaign by industry executives to silence solidarity with beleaguered Palestinians.

Dozens of workers at every level of the arts and entertainment world: from actors and dancers to carpenters, set dressers, animators, composers and screenwriters have told Middle East Eye that they have been punished for speaking out on Israel's war on Gaza which has claimed more than 57,700 lives since October 2023.

The argument that the entertainment world, including Hollywood, had turned its back on free speech and supporting oppressed peoples was on full display earlier this year when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences refused to condemn an attack on the Oscar-winning Palestinian filmmaker Hamdan Ballal.

In February, Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank assaulted and detained Ballal, co-director of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land, an attack that Ballal's co-director Basel Adra suggested might be "revenge on us for making the movie".

Even though the Academy had recognised Ballal's work with an Oscar merely weeks before, it refused to condemn Israel's actions, issuing only a vague statement about "reports of violence" against Ballal and condemning "violence of this kind anywhere in the world".

A few weeks later, reports surfaced that high-powered studio executives had attempted to silence Snow White star Rachel Zegler over an August 2024 tweet where she wrote, "and always remember, free Palestine".

Zegler's refusal to retract her statement of solidarity reportedly infuriated the film's producers, who mounted a public campaign against her, blaming Zegler for the film's lacklustre box-office numbers.

The attempted suppression of both Ballal and Zegler's voices are just two recent examples of how power brokers in the US arts and entertainment industries have collaborated with supporters of Israel's war to manufacture silence about what several countries, as well as many international rights groups and experts, now qualify as genocide.