Gal Gadot’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony Tuesday was disrupted by sign-carrying demonstrators on both the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel sides.
Several dozen protesters showed up just before the ceremony was due to get underway, with the pro-Palestinian protesters holding signs that read “Heros Fight Like Palestinians,” “Viva Viva Palestina” and “No Other Land Won Oscar.”
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As with the “Snow White” premiere early this week, the area on Hollywood Boulevard was tented off, and fully not visible from the street, but that didn’t deter the protesters from coming out and causing significant disruption.
The crowd shouted, “Up up with liberation, down down with occupation” and “Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crime.”
Roma Ealaicos, who stood across the street from the tented area told Variety, “We’re all really upset about what’s happening in Gaza right now. From the last year and a half, and especially in the last 24-48 hours, 400 innocent people have been killed by the Israeli military, unprovoked.” He went on to say, “There’s no reason we should be celebrating an Israeli,” referring to Gadot.
He expressed his disappointment in the actress for not using her platform and for “keeping her head in the sand.” “She has the ability to learn and read the same books that we read. There’s just no excuse.”
The crowd grew to over two dozen on each side.
Content creator Dana Nikri was holding an Israeli flag. Speaking with Variety, Nikri recalled how her friends had gone to the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023, saying they were “murdered.” “They come [to] our home and take us from our home and give us dead children,” she said, adding, “We don’t start war, we don’t want war at all.”
The ceremony finally got underway, starting 15 minutes late. The protesters could still be heard chanting throughout, and police arrived on the scene after a pro-Palestinian protester stole an Israeli flag.
Gadot was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a ceremony emceed by Steve Nissen, with “Wonder Woman” director Patty Jenkins, “Fast and Furious” star Vin Diesel and Shira Haas also making appearances to laud Gadot.
“I’m just a girl from a town in Israel, this star will remind me that with hard work and passion and some faith, anything is possible” Gadot said as she stepped up to the podium. She thanked Diesel and Jenkins. She told Diesel, “You took a chance on a complete unknown and invited me to the ‘Fast and Furious’ family, talk about starting big. It was my first movie ever, and your faith in me completely changed the course of my life.” She thanked him for trusting in her and added, “We’re always family.”
Gadot told Jenkins she was her “Wonder Woman behind the camera.” “Going through this journey together, you’ve been a beacon of light and have always guided me with love and compassion,” Gadot said. She added, “Working with you taught me to trust myself and my powers as an actress. It was only after our movie that I finally started to call myself ‘an actress.’”
Gadot stars as the Evil Queen in Disney’s upcoming “Snow White” live-action remake, featuring Rachel Zegler as the titular poison apple princess.
Gadot, who is Israeli, has been an outspoken supporter of Israel on social media, as well as in a passionate speech she delivered on March 4 when she was honored at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual summit in New York City. “Never did I imagine that on the streets of the United States, and different cities around the world, we would see people not condemning Hamas, but celebrating, justifying and cheering on a massacre of Jews,” she said, in part.
Speaking to Variety ahead of her Walk of Fame ceremony, Gadot emphasized that, while she previously stayed away from politics, she felt compelled to speak up following Hamas’ terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023. “When people were abducted from their homes, from their beds, men, women, children, elderly, Holocaust survivors, were going through the horrors of what happened that day, I could not be silent. I was shocked by the amount of hate, by the amount of how much people think they know when they actually have no idea, and also by how the media is not fair many times. So I had to speak up.”
Even after fielding criticism for some of her statements, she insisted, “When your compass is clear, your conscience is clean. I know what I’m advocating for, and I know what I wish for the world.”
Gadot isn’t the only Disney star who’s faced pushback from protesters recently. Last month, several dozen pro-Palestine protesters gathered outside the Hollywood premiere of “Captain America: Brave New World” and called for a boycott of the film over its inclusion of the Israeli superhero Ruth Bat-Seraph, aka Sabra, played by Israeli actress Haas. Protesters held signs that read “Sabra has got to go,” “Disney supports genocide,” “Boycott ‘Captain America’” and “Pray 4 Princess Jasmine.” They chanted phrases such as “Free, free, free Palestine” and “Disney, Disney you can’t hide.”
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