Jon Voight Slams 'Ignorant' Javier Bardem And Penelope Cruz Over Israel 'Genocide' Comments

Jon Voight has slammed Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz over their recent open letter comments branding Israel’s actions in Gaza as ‘genocide’.

The actor, and father of Angelina Jolie, slated the couple for their ‘ignorance’ in a seething column for the Hollywood Reporter.

Bardem and Cruz signed the open letter, released last week, along with a host of other Spanish actors, directors and musicians.

It called for a lifting ‘of the blockade which the Gaza Strip has suffered for more than a decade’, and for the EU to ‘condemn the bombing by land, sea and air against the Palestinian civilian population in the Gaza Strip’.

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But Voight, a vocal Republican becoming known for his political outbursts, has condemned the remarks, accusing the pair of stoking anti-Semitism.

“My name is Jon Voight and I am more than angry, I am heartsick that people like Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem could incite anti-Semitism all over the world and are oblivious to the damage they have caused,” he wrote.

“They are obviously ignorant of the whole story of Israel’s birth, when in 1948 the Jewish people were offered by the UN a portion of the land originally set aside for them in 1921, and the Arab Palestinians were offered the other half.

“The Arabs rejected the offer, and the Jews accepted, only to be attacked by five surrounding Arab countries committed to driving them into the sea. But the Israelis won.”

He goes on: “The Arabs tried it again in 1967, and again in 1973, launching a sneak attack on the holiest Jewish holiday. Each time the Jews prevailed but not without great loss of life. And when Israel was not fighting a major war, it was defending itself against terrorist campaigns.

“And yet Israel has always labored for a peaceful relation with its Arab neighbors. It voluntarily returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in return for peace, and gave the Palestinians all of Gaza as a peace gesture. What was the response? The Palestinians elected Hamas, a terrorist organization, and they immediately began firing thousands of rockets into Israel.

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“After years of trying to make peace, the wars they had to fight, being attacked by their enemies, and still being attacked, and finally after years of running into bomb shelters and having hundreds of civilians killed by suicide bombers, civilians being killed in their sleep, stabbed to pieces, finding enough is enough and finally retaliating, instead of my peers sticking up for the only democratic country in that region, they go and take out poison letters against them.

“You have forgotten how this war started. Did Hamas not kidnap and kill three young teenagers for the sake of killing, and celebrated after the killing? What a travesty of justice.

“I am asking all my peers who signed that poison letter against Israel to examine their motives. Can you take back the fire of anti-Semitism that is raging all over the world now?

“You have been able to become famous and have all your monetary gains because you are in a democratic country: America. Do you think you would have been able to accomplish this in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, et cetera? You had a great responsibility to use your celebrity for good.

“Instead, you have defamed the only democratic country of goodwill in the Middle East: Israel.

You should hang your heads in shame. You should all come forth with deep regrets for what you did, and ask forgiveness from the suffering people in Israel.”

Voight hit the headlines last month, after he delivered an emotionally charged condemnation of President Barack Obama on the Fox News channel in the US, accusing the President of ‘taking the country apart piece-by-piece’.

Photo credit: AP/PA

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