California Attorney General Rob Bonta has a Mark Ruffalo problem.

Last Friday, Ruffalo took to Instagram to denounce Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery. He tried to link the merger with the Middle East conflict through a bizarre conspiracy theory.

According to Ruffalo, David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, is using money from his father, Larry, to finance the merger, and that Larry Ellison’s company, Oracle, is connected to Israel.

Mark Ruffalo speaks at a rally celebrating the cultural vitality of The Center at West Park at West Park Presbyterian Church in New York. Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

In other words, Jewish money, in service of Israel, is supposedly buying up the media and will one day turn their tools on you.

Ruffalo called Larry Ellison a “classic Oligarch”; described war of self-defense against Hamas terrorists in Gaza as “a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle”; and warned that Oracle’s technologies “will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you.”

Paramount answered that it is “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute.” Ruffalo called that accusation “appalling and fundamentally dishonest.”

He should take that up with… Mark Ruffalo.

In May 2021, after a similar outburst, the same actor wrote: “I have reflected & wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide.’ It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful & is being used to justify antisemitism here & abroad.”

He was right the first time. Nothing has changed except the target, which this time is a family of Jewish and Israeli-linked businessmen on the wrong side of a deal his political allies want killed.

None of this would be Rob Bonta’s concern if Ruffalo were just another actor with a phone, but he is not.

In February, when Ruffalo demanded action against the merger, the attorney general answered him publicly, from his official X account, by name: “Mark, I hear you. I’m in conversation with my AG colleagues about Paramount/Warner Bros. As the epicenter of the entertainment industry, California has a special interest in protecting competition.”

In May, the New York Times reported, Bonta met at a semi-private session arranged by Norm Eisen’s Democracy Defenders Fund, where Ruffalo pressed him to sue. In July, he sued. Ruffalo is the case’s celebrity face, recruited by the attorney general personally.

On its face, the lawsuit is a conventional case about market concentration in film distribution, brought by a dozen states, and it was filed six weeks before Ruffalo discovered that antitrust law is a branch of anti-Zionism.

But a public official who courts a spokesman owns what the spokesman says next. And an attorney general who answered “Mark, I hear you” while Mark talked about market shares cannot pretend to be out of earshot now that Mark is talking about Jews.

Paramount, at least, got a meeting with Bonta, even if it was canceled. California’s Jewish parents, shocked at the antisemitism in classrooms and on public college campuses, have spent years asking the state of California to hear them.

Little happened beyond acknowledgement letters until the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs, a pro-Israel group, finally sued the state, though not Bonta himself, in February. Nobody answered those parents by name.

Whose grievances become an attorney general’s priority, and whose require litigation merely to be heard?

One sentence would be a decent start on the answer, and as of this writing the attorney general has not said it: “The state’s case rests on market structure and nothing else; ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ are not merger analysis, and California disavows them; and antisemitism has no place here.” He has said the last part before, to a Palo Alto audience in 2022; but political momentum within his party has shifted since Oct. 7, 2023, and it is not clear where he stands.

It would cost Bonta nothing but a news cycle of Ruffalo’s disappointment to speak out against the actor’s absurd, antisemitic conspiracy theories.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks during a press conference at the Elihu M. Harris State Office building in Oakland, California. REUTERS

On Monday morning, the National Jewish Advocacy Center filed California Public Records Act requests for the attorney general’s communications about this merger, so Californians can see exactly what he heard, from whom, and when.

Bonta has responded, telling The Ankler that our action is “completely meritless and silly.”

It’s anything but.

Bonta once told Ruffalo, “Mark, I hear you.” Bonta should hear the concerns of the Jewish community, too. If and when the talks with Paramount resume, Bonta should walk back in with a case that is about nothing but the merger.

Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder is the CEO and director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center Inc.

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