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Paramount said on Friday it condemned a pledge signed earlier this week by more than 4,000 actors, entertainers, and producers, including some Hollywood stars, to not work with Israeli film institutions complicit in the abuse of Palestinians by Israel.

Some organisations have faced calls for boycotts and protests over ties with the Israeli government as Israel’s military assault on Gaza grows, and images of starving Palestinians, including children, amid an officially declared famine, spark global outrage.

“We do not agree with recent efforts to boycott Israeli filmmakers. Silencing individual creative artists based on their nationality does not promote better understanding or advance the cause of peace,” Paramount said. “We need more engagement and communication — not less.”

The pledge from earlier this week said it was not urging anyone to stop working with Israeli individuals but instead “the call is for film workers to refuse to work with Israeli institutions that are complicit in Israel’s human rights abuses.”

Israeli film institutions had engaged in “whitewashing or justifying” abuse of Palestinians, it said, drawing parallels with how entertainers had made a similar pledge in the past against apartheid-era South Africa.

Signatories included actors Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Riz Ahmed, Javier Bardem, and Cynthia Nixon, among others.

US ally Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 2023 has killed over 60,000 Palestinians, internally displaced Gaza’s entire population, and set off a famine. Multiple rights experts and scholars assess that it amounts to genocide.