Does Emma Thompson Support Israel?

David Svetsky Feb 26, 2025 3 min read

Short answer: As of July 2026, no. Emma Thompson does not support the State of Israel's government or policies. Over nearly two decades she has repeatedly lent her name to pro-Palestinian advocacy, most notably signing the 2012 letter urging Shakespeare's Globe to disinvite Israel's national theater Habima, and she has criticized Israeli settlements and the West Bank separation barrier. She has no known Jewish heritage (she is an atheist of English and Scottish descent) and no public record of visiting Israel or defending it. Her framing at times invokes a "just peace" for both peoples, but her concrete public actions have consistently sided with boycott and criticism of Israel.

What Emma Thompson has actually said and done

January 2007: Thompson lent her name to the launch of ENOUGH!, a UK coalition marking 40 years of Israel's occupation, tied to a British government-funded report warning that Israel's separation barrier was trapping some 250,000 Palestinians. She called the report proof of "the vital need for our ministers to make fresh moves for a just peace" to spare "Palestinians and Israelis" further conflict, as reported by the Palestinian news agency WAFA.
March 2012: Thompson signed a letter published in The Guardian, alongside about three dozen artists including Mark Rylance and Mike Leigh, urging Shakespeare's Globe to withdraw its invitation to Israel's national theater Habima over what they called the company's "shameful record of involvement with illegal Israeli settlements," warning the festival would otherwise be "complicit with human rights violations." The letter was covered by The Times of Israel and The Jewish Chronicle.
April 2012: Shakespeare's Globe declined to withdraw the invitation, calling Habima "the most well-known and respected Hebrew-language theatre company in the world." Critics accused Thompson and the signatories of applying a selective standard used against Israel alone while raising no objection to authoritarian states' theaters at the same festival, as JNS reported.
February 2014: Two years on, Thompson was still publicly identified as a leading celebrity boycotter of Israel, drawing an open letter from Stephen M. Flatow (father of American terror victim Alisa Flatow) urging her to reconsider, published by The Algemeiner. It was a sign her Habima stance had become a defining part of her public record on Israel.
March 2025: Thompson joined Joaquin Phoenix, Sandra Oh and others on a letter condemning the Academy for failing to adequately defend Palestinian "No Other Land" co-director Hamdan Ballal after his detention by Israeli forces and settlers in the West Bank. It is her most recent documented pro-Palestinian action, reported by TheWrap via Yahoo Entertainment.

Why people ask, and where she actually stands

Emma Thompson is a British actress and screenwriter, a two-time Oscar winner, with no Jewish identity or personal connection to Israel. She is a self-described atheist of English and Scottish descent (her father was Eric Thompson, her mother is Phyllida Law), and there is no evidence she has ever visited Israel. The question of whether she supports Israel traces to her long pro-Palestinian advocacy rather than to any single flashpoint: the 2007 ENOUGH! coalition against the occupation and the separation barrier, the 2012 Habima boycott letter, and the 2025 Hamdan Ballal solidarity letter. Her rhetoric occasionally frames the goal as a "just peace" for Palestinians and Israelis alike, but every concrete action on the record has been critical of Israeli policy or supportive of boycott campaigns, never of Israel itself.

The bottom line

Emma Thompson is not an ally of Israel. Her public record from 2007 through 2025 is consistently pro-Palestinian and critical of Israeli settlements, the separation barrier, and Israel's national theater, with no offsetting pro-Israel statements, donations, visits, or Jewish-identity ties. For a pro-Israel audience, she is best described as a longtime, documented supporter of boycott and criticism of Israel. Where the record is thin, we have said so: we could not verify claims tying her to several later boycott and ceasefire letters, so we left them out.

Wear your own answer

When a public figure spends two decades lending her name to the other side, the clearest reply is to put your own name on the record. If you would rather stand with Israel out loud, our I Stand With Israel bracelet is a quiet, everyday way to do it, and the rest of our Support Israel collection turns that conviction into something you can wear and share.

Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.