On September 17, a group of about 30 Paramount Skydance employees sent a letter to the offices of David Ellison and CEOs to the offices of other senior executives who are “alliant” with “Gaza Genocide and the Palestinian people” against the company. Two weeks after not receiving a response, the group followed up on October 1 with a list of requests that included Paramount’s request to donate $1 million to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund to match the 2023 donation to Israeli humanitarian relief efforts.
A group of employees, known as both Paramount Conscience employees and Paramount Human Rights employees, operate anonymously. Members did not sign the letter “considering retaliation, doxxing, fear outs of exclusion, and future publicly announced layoffs of the company.” However, the group designates that it includes staff “all business units within the company and all levels of annual” including executive level. (Variety confirmed several members of the group’s identity, employment at Paramount, and involvement in the letter.)
Paramount Conscience employees tell Variety that the company’s leadership does not allow receiving either message. Representative Paramount declined to request Variety’s comment.
Earlier this month, an organization called Palestinian Film Workers “distributed a pledge not to cooperate with Israeli film institutions, which is involved in genocide and apartheid against Palestinians.” It has been signed by more than 5,000 people in the entertainment industry, including A-Leisters such as Emma Stone and Joaquin Phoenix. Shortly thereafter, Paramount issued a statement denounced the pledge to “silence individual creative artists based on their nationality.” (In response, Palestinian film workers emphasized that the pledge was intended to target businesses and organizations, not individual Israelis.)
The following week, Paramount Conscience employees wrote to several company leaders to call the statement “a dangerous and intentional distortion” “not representing the company’s employees.” The letter states, “Paramount’s claim that the pledge is an attempt to silence Israeli artists is a deliberate misrepresentation of the boycott and its purpose. I praise the FWP for pushing back into this bad faith argument.”
In the letter, employees condemn Paramount of hypocrisy and point to the company’s mission to “promote mutual understanding” as stated in their response to boycotts. The letter states, “A company with this supposed creative mission can actively ignore, suppress and silence internal calls for years.
Paramount employees of conscience acquired projects from Palestinian creators, including the documentary No other Land, claiming that staff across the company “sought to engage in meaningful, data-driven strategic business recommendations and Paramount leadership.” He won the Jazeera AJ+ and the Emmy and Peabody Awards in 2024.
Instead, the letter argues that Paramount is distributing what is called “One Side Story,” particularly focusing on “We Dance Again,” “The Children of The Children of The As1one: The Israeli-Palestinian Pop Music Journey.” (“AS1one” follows a boy band consisting of four Israelis and two Palestinians, conceptualized by American music executives and formed in Israel.
Therefore, the list of requests sent to Paramount Leadership on October 1 includes “a commitment to producing, gaining and distributing content to not only represent the perspectives and experiences of the Palestinian people, but also amplifying the voices of Jews against the ways in which the Israeli government misrepresents culture and religious beliefs.” The group further demands that Paramount “ensures that there is no retaliation or punishment against Paramount employees against genocide and apartheid.”
Along with Ellison, the letters and requests were sent to President of Paramount Skydance Jeff Shell and Chief Strategy and Executive Officer Andy Gordon. cheek.
Read the complete letter below and then follow the list of requests.
Leadership is the number one priority:
It firmly rejects the leadership team’s criticism of film workers for the Palestinian pledge across all business units within the company and seniority at all levels.
From hypocrisy of a spiritually creative mission to deliberate misrepresentation of the FWP’s pledge, the statements made by Paramount Leadership do not represent employees of this company. In condemning the pledge, you are aligned with apartheid, Occupation, and countless other organisations, including Apartheid, Occupation, and independent experts commissioned by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Holocaust Scholer, the United Nations Council of Human Rights, and Israeli institutions like B’TSELEM, and what is perceived as the Gaza genocide and the genocide of the Palestinian people.
As Paramount employees, we refuse to use our labour to support the brutality and accomplices in the erasure of the whole population. We do not support the leadership team’s attempts to align publicly traded American companies with public trade in line with the intentions, actions and promotional sectors of foreign governments.
As the parent company of CBS’s large news organization, Paramount is incredibly telling him he won’t choose to say anything, as hundreds of journalists have been exonerated, targeted and murdered in Gaza, and publicly disciplined film workers for choosing who want to choose who they want to work based on shared values.
We stand with coworkers of conscience across the industry demanding justice and confirm that war crimes, apartheid, and boycotts of institutions conspiring with genocide are sought just, ethical and necessary acts of solidarity.
The very dissertation of your statement, which denies the pledge, is rooted in blatant hypocrisy.
“At Paramount, we believe in the power of storytelling to connect, inspire, promote mutual understanding and sustain moments, ideas and events that shape the world we share. This is our creative mission.”
Companies with this supposed, creative mission can actively ignore, suppress and silence internal calls for years. Which is clear, global and has increased audience demand? As employees of this company, we are increasingly galvanized to oppose the demonstrable hypocrisy of this statement.
Over the years, employee growth and diverse coalitions have sought to engage top-notch leadership in data-driven, objectively strategic business recommendations to win and distribute award-winning stories like other lands.
How can we actively platform this mission from the Israeli perspective, silence of the Palestinian voice? Budgets and resources have been diverted from existing programming and marketing priorities, investing only in one-sided stories like AS1ONE, where we danced again, and that didn’t lead to success in our material business. Rather, these projects contributed to the decline of the organization’s seemingly lasting reputation and encouraged disconnection from the audience.
In addition to the hypocrisy of platforming a perspective while restraining a perspective, directly opposed to the creative mission you assert, the second half of the company’s condemnation statement is equally dishonest in the dangerous and deliberate distortion of the pledge.
“I disagree with recent efforts to boycott Israeli filmmakers. Silence of individual creative artists based on their nationality will not better understand or advance the causes of peace. The global entertainment industry needs to encourage artists to tell their stories and share their ideas with audiences around the world.
Paramount’s claim that the pledge is an attempt to silence Israeli artists is a deliberate misrepresentation of the boycott and its purpose. We praise the FWP against this bad faith argument and thank Hannah Einbinder for using her Emmy Wynn pressure as a platform for repeating the truth. “The film workers in the Palestinian boycotts do not boycott individuals and praise Javier Bardem for refusing to do this while talking to variety on the red carpet of Emmy.
As Paramount employees who support the pledge, we believe it is important to emphasize this point. Boycotts are not an attack on filmmakers. It is made up of over 100 well-known filmmakers who draw inspiration from filmmakers with Apartheid, an organization co-founded by Jonathan Dem and Martin Scorsese in 1987, and refused to screen their films in Apartheid South Africa. Similarly, when history looks back at film workers for the Palestinian pledge, we are certain that we will do so with similar respect for its foresight and humanitarian insights seen as the pledge of Huaa.
Who is truly silent when powerful media conglomerates try to intimidate film workers by using their freedom of expression to condemn war crimes in this way?
Signed,
Paramount Employees for Human Rights
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Employee Safety: We seek Paramount leadership to acknowledge the harm that employees have caused to Paramount employees by condemning the FWP’s pledge. We ask them to ensure that there was no retaliation or punishment against Paramount employees against genocide and apartheid.
Content and Storytelling: We call for leadership that not only represents the perspectives and experiences of Palestinians, but also provides a real creative mission of “promoting mutual understanding” by producing, acquiring and distributing content that amplifies the voices of Jews who are speaking out against how the Israeli government exacerbates culture and religious beliefs and lightly mismatches religious beliefs.
Humanitarian Aid: We are calling on Israeli organizations to match their $1 million corporate donations by donating a $1 million corporate donations made in October 2023 to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides $1 million in humanitarian relief to children.
