Scottish actor Gerard Butler recently made his fifth visit to Israel, this time to attend the premiere of his film “Hunter Killer” which opened October 26th. When in Israel, Butler was asked if he had been pressured by BDS activists to honor the cultural boycott or if he found it harder because of BDS to be pro-Israel. He answered, “All I know is I love Israel & I love coming here & I never worry for a pro or negative view on anything.” In speaking to Israeli media, he said “I always love being here. One day I’ll come here for vacation & just stay until I’m called elsewhere. I’ll ask someone to burn my house down in Los Angeles so I won’t have anywhere to go back to & I won’t have any choice but to stay in Israel.”
Butler’s love affair with Israel may have more to do with feathering his own nest than any ideological commitment to apartheid. That’s where being an opportunist dirtball takes you. Turns out Avi Lerner, the producer of “Hunter Killer”, is an Israeli with whom Butler has made five other films. The film’s distribution company, Summit Entertainment, is owned by Arnon Milchan, an Israeli billionaire & film producer. who was once an Israeli secret agent. In that capacity, by his own admission, he was an arms dealer operating 30 companies in 17 countries & brokering deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Israel. Shimon Peres, who was Israel’s president from 2007 to 2014 & architect of Israel’s nuclear weapons program in the 1960s, recruited Milchan as a nuclear agent. Milchan admitted to promoting the apartheid regime in South Africa in exchange for it helping Israel obtain uranium for its nuclear program. This is the company Butler keeps.
But in one of those be careful what you wish for–especially if you’re a dirtball–moments, Butler’s Los Angeles home burned to the ground a few weeks after his Israeli trip & just days after he was promoting & raising money for the occupying Israeli army enforcing apartheid & carrying out genocide against Palestinians. Couldn’t happen to a nastier piece of work. Anyone who would put his career as a second-rate actor over the human rights of the Palestinian people deserves a little bad karma in his life. That bad karma would mean including his movies in the cultural boycott of Israel.
Photo is one of umpteen photos Butler has taken over the years with Netanyahu & his loathsome family.