National treasure Miriam Margolyes isn’t afraid of speaking the truth. And amid the ongoing horrors of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians, the 84-year-old Jewish actress has invoked the wrath of Zionist genocide-supporters by calling them out.
She recently explained how the Gaza genocide is the biggest issue for her today:
because I’m Jewish, because I know how much wickedness and cruelty were meted out to Jews in my lifetime. I was born in ’41, at the height of the Holocaust. And I cannot bear to think that my people are doing exactly the same thing to another nation. And the nation that they’re doing to it – the Palestinian nation – was not responsible for the Holocaust, had nothing to do with it… My heart is broken. And I think the terrible thing I have to face is that Hitler won. He changed us. He made us like him.
Now, because she dared to highlight how Israeli war criminals are behaving in the same way as Nazis during the Holocaust, the pro-Israel lobby is out to cancel her. As the disgraced Jewish Chronicle reported, “the Campaign Against Antisemitism has called for the Harry Potter star to be stripped of her OBE and Bafta” as a result of her words. The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) is a highly controversial organisation whose one-time spokesperson, Israeli-state apologist Jonathan Sacerdoti, once bragged about “weaponising” antisemitism allegations to undermine figures calling for peace and justice in Palestine.
Jewish writer Michael Rosen asked for important context about what the CAA represents:
Could you please clarify for your readers here: who are the CAA, who do they represent, and what is the likely effect of such a call from them?
— Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 (@MichaelRosenYes) July 31, 2025
As Jewish campaigner Tony Greenstein previously noted, the CAA focuses intensely on smearing critics of Israel. He added that:
The one thing that the Campaign Against Antisemitism doesn’t do is to campaign against anti-Semitism.
Outpouring of love and solidarity for Miriam Margolyes
Fortunately, as many pointed out in response to the backlash, Miriam Margolyes isn’t the type of person to give in to bullies:
How the national treasure that is Miriam Margolyes would respond to being cancelled. pic.twitter.com/a9yMhL9Vt2
— Betty teapot 🦋 (@bettyteapot00) July 31, 2025
I think @MMargolyes would be impossible to cancel. She’s a force of nature.
— Mary McKnight #IAmEuropean. #LH44 💙 (@MaryMcKnight1) July 31, 2025
It’s also clear that Margolyes isn’t alone, as many people online expressed their love and solidarity:
She’s brilliant, a much needed real human being unafraid to tell it like it is & a total mensch
— nole deloitte (@noledeloitte) July 31, 2025
Miriam Margolyes is a hero. She’s a Jew who believes that ‘Never Again’ applies to all humanity & speaks up about the reality that Israel does not represent us. She speaks truth to power in the best Jewish tradition. Having the reactionary Campaign Against Antisemitism & its… https://t.co/mXt9tU635L
— Andrew Feinstein (@andrewfeinstein) July 31, 2025
Israel is inverting the Holocaust. Miriam Margolyes, like millions of others, is simply noticing and saying what she’s noticed. https://t.co/V5UsHLQ2uO
— Jews Sans Frontieres (@jewssf) July 31, 2025
Any Jew the Zionist Jews attack & persecute is the one we should stand with ✊🏾 Miriam Margolyes is my kind of human, a Jew I stand in solidarity with & who brings honour to Judaism & Jewish identity. The Synagogue of Satan reveal themselves every time (Rev 2:9 /Rev 3:9). pic.twitter.com/NuiywyhMGs
— Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu (@SholaMos1) July 28, 2025
Miriam Margolyes had called out the similarity between Nazi and Israeli war criminals previously. And in a recent interview with the Sunday National, she said:
I know that evil is happening on a grand scale, and my country is supporting and helping it… I’m shocked and disgusted and dazed by this, and I don’t understand why everybody isn’t, I really don’t see why people allow this horror to take place.
As she explained:
I try and raise awareness when I think something is wrong. And I am absolutely bloody certain that what Israel is doing is wrong, wicked, indefensible
And she slammed the right-wing political establishment’s loss of humanity:
I’m a human being, it’s about being a human being. Keir Starmer, and that long drink of a fellow Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Nigel Farage, they’ve all forgotten how to be human.
She’s right
Miriam Margolyes is right. Because the British government – under both Blue and Red Tories – has failed to challenge Israel in any meaningful way as it has killed at least one child every hour in Gaza since October 2023. The UK has also participated in that genocide, largely via RAF Akrotiri.
Britain’s influential pro-Israel lobby has a loyal, docile friend in Keir Starmer’s government today. Indeed, it has funded half his cabinet. A tax-haven hedge fund ‘standing to profit’ from Israel’s war crimes, meanwhile, sent the Labour Party £4m before the 2024 election.
The voice of Margolyes is an important voice of humanity amid the genocide we have been witnessing for almost two years now. And we must keep resisting cynical attempts to silence such voices.
Featured image via the Canary
