A-list producer Lawrence Bender has the kind of presence that commands a room – great posture, self-possession, and the relaxed air of someone used to taking charge on set. We met for breakfast in a crowded hotel restaurant, with the clatter of dishes and scattered conversation in the background.
We were both there for the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) 2025 conference. He was attending in support of JNF’s Israel Entertainment Fund (IEF) and to promote the television miniseries Red Alert, which he produced. The show, which streams on Paramount+, first appeared in Israel as Or Rishon, or “First Light,” on Channel 12 in October, and recently received a Critics’ Choice Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Series.
IEF co-produces content with Israeli creators, such as writer and director Lior Chefetz, to bring Israeli stories to a global audience and support Israeli filmmakers. The tense four-part miniseries Red Alert dramatizes the heroism of ordinary Israelis attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Bender, 68, is a household name in Hollywood circles. He has produced some of the most iconic films of the past three decades: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and 2, and Inglourious Basterds directed by Quentin Tarantino; Hacksaw Ridge (by Mel Gibson); Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino); Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant); and Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Bender’s films have garnered 36 Oscar nominations and eight Academy Awards.
It is no secret that Hollywood is a progressive town, and Bender has considerable street cred on that front as well, seeming to devote almost as much time to progressive causes close to his heart as he does to his career. He has worked to eliminate nuclear weapons, promote the use of energy-efficient light bulbs, and convince drivers to give up their SUVs, among many other environmental initiatives.
Many left-of-center Jews seem to feel that they face a “Sophie’s choice” and must decide between supporting Israel and their progressive politics. Not so for Lawrence Bender.
Over eggs and coffee, I asked him about his Jewish upbringing.
Raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Bender described his ancestry. “My grandparents came from Hungary, Romania, Belarus – all Jews.”
He smiled at Passover memories: “My Aunt Selma made the best gefilte fish in the world, and my Aunt Grace made the best matzah brei.” He thought about that for a beat, perhaps a little guilty at the possible slight, adding: “Although my mom would challenge that. She made a great matzah brei.”
Even though South Jersey had a large Jewish community, he was the only Jewish student in his elementary school. Whenever he took days off for Jewish holidays, his teacher asked him to explain them to the class because no one else was familiar with them.
Was his bar mitzvah one of those extravagant affairs – shades of You’re So Not Invited to my Bat Mitzvah? He laughed. “It was in a Conservative temple, a regular bar mitzvah that we all have. It was beautiful, but, we did [the party] in my backyard. My mom cooked all the food – made the meatballs. My dad did the flowers. There was really no other way. It’s not like my parents had a lot of money,” he noted.
“In high school, the Polish kids, the Italian kids – they pushed me into the lockers, that sort of thing. So, I had to deal with what’s called bullying today. No one called it bullying then, though. Even my friends made fun of me for being Jewish. My best friends would put their finger on their nose and call me ‘Der Ike,’ short for ‘Bender Kite.’” He laughed lightly and tapped the bridge of his nose, illustrating.
He seems to have taken the experience in stride, reflecting, “It’s odd, I didn’t realize how antisemitic that was. They were just my friends. They loved me, even though I’m Jewish, right?”
His parents didn’t talk much about Israel, but “it was something that was there. Once a year, we would give coins to buy trees. There was always ‘the thing’ about buying trees for Israel.”
My family donated money for trees to mark special occasions. When somebody passed away or when a baby was born, you bought a tree. Of course, that “thing” was the work of the Jewish National Fund. Bender looked surprised and happy. “Way back then? Way back?” he asked.
Since its founding in 1901, the JNF has led massive tree-planting campaigns across what was then Ottoman Palestine and later the young State of Israel. By the late 1960s, when Bender was dropping coins into those familiar little blue boxes, the JNF had already planted more than 95 million trees – olives, acacias, pines, carobs – each one a declaration of permanence.
“It anchored Jews in the Diaspora to Israel,” I offered. “It created a connection and felt like you were contributing.”
“Yes, 100%,” he agreed. “It was part of our life.”
His dad’s best friend offered to send him to Israel, “but like an idiot, I was 15 and wanted to go on my high school ski trip. Later, he sent my brother Craig, who had the most amazing time. I regretted that for years,” he reflected.
That would have been the early 1970s. Back then, Israel was still finding its footing economically, long before the Start-Up Nation era. The country was young, idealistic, and stubbornly hopeful – much like the trees that JNF and families like ours helped plant.
“When I came home on breaks from college, my mom and dad would say, ‘Find a nice Jewish girl. They have a Hillel on campus; you should go there.’ I was like, ‘No, that’s okay, Dad, I don’t need to do that.’ I wasn’t against being Jewish; I just didn’t seek it out.”
The A-lister took his first trip to Israel in 2003 with the Israeli Policy Forum (according to its website, founded to “secure a Jewish, democratic Israel, and promote a negotiated two-state solution”) during the Second Intifada. It was a period marked by a slate of Palestinian suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians on buses, in restaurants, hotels, and shopping malls.
“As American Jews, we were trying to figure out what we could do,” he told me. “It sounds a little naive, but we wanted peace.”
Bender described the itinerary – meetings in Ramallah with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, a visit to Cairo with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and conversations with Knesset and Israeli military figures. Pretty heady stuff.
“We felt like Mubarak understood how important Israel was for Egypt. Because in the mid-’90s there was a lot of business going on between the Israelis and the Egyptians, and that was creating jobs and wealth.”
They left the meeting in Egypt feeling encouraged until news broke on their flight back to Israel that there had been a terrorist attack on Jaffa Street in Tel Aviv. Terrorists blew up a bus. “We were so upset and deflated.”
When the group landed in Tel Aviv, Bender and a friend rushed to the site of the attack, and what he saw still stays with him. “The street was spotless. The bus, the debris, even the bodies – everything was gone. It was as if it had never happened,” he said. “It was shocking.”
It’s a policy designed to prevent secondary attacks, restore security, and help citizens return to daily life. The UK did the same with attacks by the IRA, but it rattles me too. What about the emotional costs? What does this do to the grieving process? I think it’s hard for Jews in the Diaspora to really know what it takes for Israelis to survive and move on.
Bender successfully combines his advocacy and filmmaking passions. His documentary An Inconvenient Truth triggered a worldwide climate change movement that impacted parts of our everyday lives, from plastic straws to how we power our cars.
He has produced two Black Lives Matter-related films, Two Distant Strangers and Cops and Robbers, the latter of which focuses on the killing of George Floyd. He spoke about his movie The Laramie Project, based on the murder of Matthew Shepard, a young gay man in Wyoming beaten and left tied to a fence for 18 hours.
Red Alert came out of that same imperative to act. The self-described October 8 Zionist explained it this way. “It became clear that the very people who were attacked – Israeli citizens, innocent people – did not have the support of the world, and that was shocking to me.”
He was aware of the rising tide of global antisemitism and the anti-Israel boycott campaign, like everyone else. “I had friends whose kids left Paris because they were getting taunted for being Jewish, but this was a whole other level. It was a paradigm shift.
“I decided right then and there that I needed to do something, and that’s when I became much more of a Zionist,” he said. He explained that this decision culminated in his choice to produce Red Alert and ultimately join the IEF advisory board, which includes power brokers like WME talent agency’s Rick Rosen and attorney Martin Singer, and actresses Mayim Bialik and Debra Messing.
It should not be particularly noble to support Israeli filmmaking, but it is because you’re always up against the odds. Due to the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, films, television, and music by Israelis, or in support of Israel, have faced acute challenges getting distribution or have been disrupted during performances.
Controversy and protests targeting Israeli films were everywhere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Just last month, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance in Paris (the IPO has dealt with disruptions for decades) was disrupted three times by protesters who deployed flares and smoke bombs, and engaged in physical confrontations.
A more recent turn of events has been the discrimination against Jewish authors, regardless of whether they have written about or support Israel. They have been subjected to rescinded book festival invitations, as well as book review bombing on the Internet. The UK’s Telegraph reported that half of British publishers are refusing even to accept manuscripts from Jewish authors.
Did the Oscar winner know what he was getting into? Yes, but he was focused on the mission, not the obstacles. “Every pore of my body is in every frame of that show,” he told me. “I didn’t just put my name on it.”
Just as Red Alert was ready to find a broadcaster, Israel bombed Qatar. Bender’s Israeli producing partner, Nati Dinnar, urged him to push forward. “I said, ‘No, you don’t understand, you’re not here. There’s no way we’re going to sell this now. And once you pitch the show, you don’t get a second chance.’” So true.
Then, an unexpected moment shifted everything when Bender ran into David Ellison, founder of Skydance Media and, more recently, a major force behind the new Paramount+ and Disney partnership. After seeing the trailer and the rough episodes of Red Alert, Ellison said, “It would be an honor to be your partner on this.”
Bender paused when he recounted the experience. “That was a humbling moment. I had to take a breath because this is David Ellison.” The caveat? Ellison said, “It has to drop on Oct. 7.”
Bender understood the urgency. Oct. 7 had become a date marked in the global consciousness – a moment of reckoning that gave Red Alert its deeper purpose and emotional gravity.
What followed was 24-hour-a-day post-production, and the result was a home run, Bender said. The sale of the show should enable IEF to recoup its cost and replenish its fund.
Critics praised Red Alert for its taut pacing and powerful performances, but a few accused it of being emotionally manipulative or even Israeli propaganda. Bender had read all the reviews.
“That’s biased,” he said flatly. “That’s not a review – that’s commentary from someone with an agenda. And some of it came from Jewish reviewers, too.” He drew a clear line between critique and politics. “If someone doesn’t like the material, the acting, or the directing – that’s fair. That’s a review. But to call it propaganda because it isn’t anti-Israel? That’s just dishonest.”
A handful of reviews faulted the series for not showing the Israeli military response to Oct. 7. For Bender, that misses the point entirely. The show, he explained, was never meant to be a battlefield chronicle.
“The series was about bearing witness, not persuasion,” he said. “Whether people agree or disagree with how Israelis reacted afterward, all of that came later. To get to peace, to get the hostages back, people first have to acknowledge the truth about what happened that day.”
The conversation turned to the pressures in the entertainment world to express anti-Israel sentiment. BDS proponents recently got some fresh wind at their backs. Right as Bender and associates were trying to sell the show, “There were four or five thousand people in Hollywood who were boycotting Israeli filmmakers,” he said, referencing the Filmworkers for Palestine pledge.
The signatories are predominantly international and not really representative of “Hollywood,” but his point was well taken. Antisemitism in the form of anti-Zionism has been growing steadily since 2001, and the recent boycott pledge roped in some new A-list names, such as Emma Stone, Rooney Mara, and Joaquin Phoenix.
BDS has successfully conflated itself with the progressive movement, that many artists support these statements because they think they align with their progressive values. In my book Artists Under Fire: The BDS War against Celebrities, Jews, and Israel, I refer to this group as “Fellow Travelers.”
The propaganda and manipulative imagery that BDS feeds the American and world citizenry are contrary to the reality on the ground. We discuss Israel’s various liberal policies. Israel has been a leader in LGBTQ+ and women’s rights, water conservation and desalination, reforestation, sustainable non-fossil energy, the fight against global warming, and socialized medicine. Perhaps these Fellow Travelers believe they are on the right side of history, but they are being misled.
However, there’s no denying the palpable old-fashioned Jew-hatred that exists as well. “It’s clearly part of the zeitgeist,” Bender said. “We’ve passed the tipping point. It’s not just in Hollywood, it’s everywhere. And, yes,” he nodded, “I see antisemitism in my Academy. I’ve been a member of the Motion Picture Academy since 1995, and you absolutely see it there too.”
We were both appalled at the negative stereotypes replete in the Jewish Founders of Hollywood exhibit at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures when it first opened. The film accompanying the exhibit, he said, falsely alleged that Jews were deliberately keeping other minorities out of the business.
It took pressure from Bender and other Hollywood insiders to get it changed. “I went to the press because it broke my heart,” he said. “I saw a man with his young son reading the display, and the words they used to refer to the founders – words like ‘frugal’ – were full of antisemitic tropes. I even offered to raise money for a better exhibit, but the board members refused.”
Nowhere else in the museum were other groups presented with such coded disparagement and contempt. Although free from blatant Jew bashing, the exhibit remains uninspired and uninspiring, small and tucked away in a corner.
“The documentary branch of the Academy is well known as antisemitic,” he continued, referring to the anti-Israel skew in nominations and awards. And while it recognizes affinity groups (a group of people linked by a common interest or purpose) for all other minorities, it refuses to acknowledge a Jewish one.
Instead, the Academy insists that Jews should be part of the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) affinity group, disregarding the distinct discrimination Jews are facing in today’s world.
I would add that while the Academy now requires minority representation for Best Picture eligibility, it does not deem Jews a minority. And whereas the whole industry is attuned to authenticity in casting, it does not hold for actors portraying Jews – witness the casting of Cillian Murphy in the titular role in the 2023 film Oppenheimer.
As our conversation drew to a close, I told Bender what had stayed with me after watching Red Alert. I recalled those interviews after 9/11, when survivors of the Al-Qaeda attack on New York’s Twin Towers described firefighters running into the building as everyone else was fleeing.
“I think about what’s happening today,” I said. “People getting stabbed in New York subways while others stand by, no one rushing in, and then I think about Israelis. It feels like a country with a million firefighters, each running toward the danger to save others. Red Alert captures that spirit.”
Bender nodded and seemed moved.
Is Red Alert, like An Inconvenient Truth, the film that will change the zeitgeist and halt the world from its plunge into the abyss of antisemitism? Probably not. But if a film does rise to meet that moment, I’d wager Lawrence Bender will be the one producing it.
The writer is an attorney and 20-year entertainment veteran, the CEO of Liberate Art, and author of the award-winning book Artists Under Fire: The BDS War against Celebrities, Jews, and Israel. Her column, ‘Hollywood Stories,’ spotlights Jewish and non-Jewish entertainers who voice support for Israel and the Jewish community. www.liberateart.net, @hollywoodstoriestoday.