Lots of people have objected to Paramount’s planned purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Some of those people are antisemitic, says Paramount’s top lawyer.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer, said that some opposition to the Paramount/WBD deal is coming from people with “antisemitic views.”
“Let’s be honest,” he told the Times. “There’s a lot of fear-mongering, particularly from people in Washington, D.C. They are running a political campaign. Some of these people are trying to inflict harm on this transaction, really because of their own antisemitic views. Regulators and law enforcement officials will see right through that.”
What does Delrahim mean by that?
Paramount declined to comment. I’ve also asked Delrahim to expand on his remarks. In the absence of an explanation, the only plausible answer I can think of is that Paramount owners Larry and David Ellison are active supporters of Israel, and Delrahim is suggesting that some people who are critical of the Ellisons’ pro-Israel stance are also antisemitic.
This isn’t the first time the issue of Israel has come up since the Ellisons bought Paramount: Last fall, Paramount denounced a campaign, signed by some high-profile actors and filmmakers, not to work with some Israeli film organizations. Paramount said the campaign amounted to “silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality.”
Paramount’s statement generated a response from a group of anonymous Paramount employees, who said the company was siding with “systems of apartheid, occupation, and … a genocide in Gaza and of the Palestinian people.”
Debates over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and whether criticizing Israel’s actions in that conflict equates to antisemitism — are long-standing and highly charged. Which is why it’s so striking to see Delrahim, who is meant to shepherd the Paramount/WBD through a thicket of regulators around the world, seemingly connect it to his proposed deal.
Maybe there’s some 4-D chess I’m missing here. But it looks like Delrahim — who has spent a lot of time working in Washington, most recently as head of antitrust enforcement at the Department of Justice during Donald Trump’s first term — may be making his would-be deal that much harder to get over the line.
Let’s say you’re a regulator who questions the wisdom of that combination —perhaps you’re worried about what it means for the theatrical movie business, or what it might mean for journalism if CBS and CNN are combined. But now Paramount’s lawyer is suggesting that your concerns are really a cover for your theoretical antisemitism.
That may not matter when it comes to the Trump administration, which is widely expected to sign off on the transaction. But it’s hard to see how this is helpful anywhere else.
