Natalie Portman has backed Standing Together three times since 2025. Israeli rapper Yoav Eliasi (HaTzel) has publicly attacked her over it, accusing her of "blood libels."
Natalie Portman has personally amplified Standing Together three times since August 2025, funding it and campaigning for its spinoff party, a group whose activists organized reservists refusing Gaza duty and vandalized the home of Israel's IDF chief of staff. The group's own co-director has described Israel's leadership as pushing the country toward "genocide" and "apartheid," while its funder, the New Israel Fund, has described its protests as seeking an end to "war crimes" in Gaza.
Who Is Natalie Portman?
Natalie Portman is an Israeli-American actress and director born in Jerusalem in 1981, who moved to the United States as a child and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for "Black Swan" in 2011.
In April 2018, Portman withdrew from the ceremony for Israel's Genesis Prize, a $1 million award she had been named to receive, after learning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to speak at the event. "I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu," she wrote on Instagram. The Genesis Prize Foundation canceled the ceremony in response. Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said at the time that Portman had "fallen like a ripe fruit into the hands of BDS supporters." Portman went on to call Israel's 2018 nation-state law "racist."
Not every Jewish celebrity's public record since October 7 has moved in this direction. See Jerry Seinfeld on Israel and Jewish Identity for a contrasting case.
Portman Has Backed Standing Together Three Times Since 2025
In August 2025, Portman shared a full video on her Instagram Stories of Standing Together co-director Rula Daood addressing a crowd of Jews and Palestinians, telling Gazans "your tears are our tears, and your pain is our pain," according to Israel Hayom. The outlet reported the choice to share the full clip was read as a clear expression of solidarity with Daood's message.
Five months later, on January 2, 2026, UK Friends of Standing Together published Portman's Standing Together donation appeal, titled "A message from Natalie Portman." Portman wrote that she has been "inspired by Standing Together's actions" and told readers: "I urge you to support Standing Together's grassroots fight for Israeli-Palestinian peace." The page ends with a "Make a Donation to Standing Together Today" button.
Six months after that, Portman went further still. On July 19, 2026, she addressed an online fundraiser for the new party, A Place for Us All (Makom Lekulanu), which Standing Together's co-directors launched ahead of Israel's October 2026 Knesset election. Three separate, direct engagements with the same movement across eleven months show a sustained relationship, not a one-time endorsement.
Standing Together's Own Co-Director Calls Israel's Actions "Genocide" and "Apartheid"
Standing Together co-director Alon-Lee Green said in a recorded interview that Israel faced a choice between reconciliation and continuing down "the direction of eternal war, genocide, annihilation, occupation, and apartheid." Standing Together's own website separately states its task is "to build a shared struggle against the occupation and apartheid in the West Bank" as a step toward "an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel."
Standing Together's Funder Says Israel Is Committing "War Crimes"
The New Israel Fund, which grants to Standing Together, published its own account of a Standing Together-led protest in Tel Aviv, describing the demonstrators' aim as securing "the end of the war, the return of all remaining hostages in Gaza, an end to the war crimes being committed against Palestinian people in Gaza, and a peaceful resolution to the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
The Reservist Refusal Campaign
In September 2025, over 300 reservists signed a refusal letter announcing they would not report for duty in the planned Gaza City operation. The Times of Israel reported the effort was "affiliated with the left-wing anti-war group Standing Together." Combat medic Max Kresch, speaking for the group, called the refusal "a patriotic duty."
That same month, activists vandalized IDF chief Eyal Zamir's home, spraying it with red liquid. Eight activists were arrested. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it "the vandalism of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir's home by extremist protestors." Opposition leader Yair Lapid called the suspects "radical extremists." National Unity leader Benny Gantz said the attack was "not protest or criticism, it is simply madness." Green said on video that activists came "to spill rivers of blood symbolizing the blood of the hostages, the Palestinians, and the soldiers that will spill if we permanently occupy Gaza," and called on Israel to "withdraw from Gaza."
Israel's Own Army Radio Pulled Green From the Air Over His Record
In August 2023, Arutz Sheva reported that Galei Tzahal canceled Green's segment after his past statements surfaced, including calling Palestinian militants "freedom fighters." The station's head of programming, Tali Lipkin-Shahak, said on the record that the station could not "give a platform in a personally-hosted program to those who justify harm to IDF soldiers... risking their lives."
Israeli Rapper HaTzel Has Accused Portman of "Blood Libels"
Israeli rapper and right-wing social-media personality Yoav Eliasi, known by his stage name HaTzel ("The Shadow"), has repeatedly attacked Portman over her posts on Gaza. In August 2025, after she shared protest footage and hunger-related reporting, Eliasi accused her of spreading "blood libels" and said she has been "spitting hatred on her country for years," demanding her Israeli citizenship be revoked and that she be declared persona non grata.
In an earlier 2022 post, Eliasi compiled a list of statements he attributed to Portman, captioning it: "Natalie Portman to foreign media: Israel occupies, Israel apartheid, free Sheikh Jarrah, IDF murderers in Gaza." That caption is Eliasi's own characterization and compilation of her past remarks, not a verified direct quote from Portman herself.
How Extreme Is Standing Together Considered?
From the Israeli right and center, the language has been blunt. Beyond the "extremist" and "radical extremist" labels attached to the Zamir vandalism, Israeli journalist Ben Caspit has called Green a "terror supporter" on the record, a characterization Knesset member Tali Gottlieb echoed when she publicly objected to his scheduled Galei Tzahal broadcast. NGO Monitor tracks Standing Together's NIF funding as one of roughly 32 "political advocacy NGOs" inside the New Israel Fund's grant network. Wikipedia identifies NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog, as right-wing and pro-Israel in orientation; it notes the group's NIF funding increased in 2020 alongside groups like B'Tselem and Adalah that NGO Monitor has separately criticized over their characterizations of Israel.
Who Funds Standing Together?
Standing Together has received a grant from the Sigrid Rausing Trust worth £100,000 for 2025 and 2026, distributed through the New Israel Fund. Filings with Israel's Registrar of Non-Profits, cited on Standing Together's Wikipedia page, list additional foreign funding from Germany's Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, a political foundation affiliated with Germany's democratic-socialist Left Party, along with Germany's forumZFD and roughly $750,000 cumulative from the New Israel Fund between 2015 and 2020.
That funding history sits awkwardly next to Standing Together's own donation page, which tells visitors: "We have no wealthy backers. And no foreign governments either. To fund our activity, we need you." The documented grants from a UK trust, two German foundations, and a US-based fund do not square with that claim.
The group's UK support arm has its own record on the subject of extremism. UK Friends of Standing Together, the same organization that hosts Portman's donation appeal, opposed banning Palestine Action, a group the UK designated a terrorist organization under anti-terror law in 2025. The statement also acknowledged that "antisemitic narratives and ideas have been present" at demonstrations the group has joined.
The Bottom Line
Portman has moved from personally sharing Standing Together's content, to soliciting donations for it, to campaigning for the party its leaders built out of it, three engagements across eleven months. The group she is funding organized reservists who refused Gaza service, saw its co-director's own home-vandalism video draw condemnation from Israel's prime minister and opposition leader alike, has a co-director on record describing Israel's actions as heading toward "genocide" and "apartheid," is described by its own funder as fighting to end "war crimes" in Gaza, and tells its own donors it has no foreign government backing despite disclosed foreign grants from the UK, Germany, and the United States.
A Hebrew-language version of this report, drawing on original Hebrew-language sourcing, is available here: נטלי פורטמן תומכת בעומדים ביחד.