As she became increasingly well-known during her acclaimed five-season run alongside Jean Smart in HBO Max’s Hacks, Hannah Einbinder has used her time in the spotlight to speak out on various political and social issues she’s passionate about from climate change to AI to, most prominently in recent years, the fate of the Palestinian people amid the Israel-Gaza war.
She famously called for a “free Palestine” at the end of her 2025 Emmys acceptance speech and was arrested last month, along with other pro-Palestinian Hollywood activists like Susan Sarandon, as part of a protest ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s United Nations address.
While some celebs might choose to stay silent about their political views, for Einbinder, there’s no alternative.
“I see it as the bare minimum,” Einbinder said at The New Yorker Festival on Friday of the “responsibility” she feels to speak out about her beliefs. “I think we are living in a time that is perhaps the worst point in human history. I think the threat of AI and climate [change] push us into that territory. And I know how many eyes I have on me. I know that difference that it can make. I know it from a financial perspective. I know that I can raise money. I have done it, and so I know that folks like myself and folks with even larger platforms can make tangible difference in the world. And for me, that’s been very specific to Palestine, and so knowing that, I don’t really see any other option.”
Einbinder, who has previously spoken about how her views on Israel and Palestine have evolved since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, shared more about her recent education and perspective on the Israel-Gaza war at the New Yorker Festival event.
“I started to attend IfNotNow vigils with my friends who were going, who were already anti-Zionists, and I found this amazing Jewish community and these Jewish spaces for me to go on a journey of unlearning the propaganda that we’re fed systemically,” Einbinder told The New Yorker‘s Rachel Syme. “And once I unlearned all of that, I realized I had to arm myself with a lot of knowledge and really go through, yeah, sort of a relearning period, and when I felt equipped, you know, I started to speak because I think when you see this for what it is, you cannot help — well, some people can, I guess. But I think that it was just so intrinsically tied to my values and my sense of justice, and I felt like I have to make up for lost time because I was complicit and unconscious in this system for so long, and I have to change my mind and I have to learn and grow, and so that’s what I’ve tried to do.”
And Einbinder praised the “amazing new voices” she’d been exposed to coming out of Palestine, specifically citing Al Jazeera journalist Anas al-Sharif, who was killed in an Israeli air strike in August of 2025.
“There are these scenes that I think of that I saw happen when I think of him,” Einbinder recalled to a silent, sold-out audience at Manhattan’s Webster Hall who seemed to be listening intently as she spoke about her views on the conflict in the Middle East. “I feel like I watched this man’s life unfold, and Israel assassinated him. They knew that he and other journalists were sleeping in a tent, and they killed him because his voice was so powerful, and he had a beautiful daughter and a newborn son, and he risked his life to tell the truth about Israel’s crimes, and he was killed for that, and he was killed for being Palestinian.”
In light of what happened to al-Sharif, Einbinder says any loss or “sacrifice” that she would experience for speaking out in support of Palestine pales in comparison.
“When I speak about Palestine, when I say it’s the bare minimum, there is nothing on earth that I could ever lose or ever sacrifice. It would be a drop in the bucket to measure up to the most incredible human beings I have ever witnessed in my life and the sacrifices that they have made, so I want to draw attention to journalists like Anas and so many like him who were silenced. We are still here, and we have an obligation to tell their stories,” Einbinder said. “All of us have a responsibility, especially as Americans who are complicit as taxpayers whose money goes to fund the genocide. We have a responsibility to speak and not to stop until the genocide is ended.”
Einbinder’s remarks were greeted with enthusiastic applause, including at least one person in the audience standing up after her “genocide” comment.
Earlier in the event, Einbinder spoke about discovering comedy (and competitive cheerleading) as she grew up in Los Angeles and her breakout role in Hacks, offering some constructive criticism as the festival audience watched her memorable Branzino meltdown during the fourth season of the comedy, when she served as head writer for Smart’s Deborah Vance-hosted Late Night. She also got emotional watching a more dramatic scene between Ava and Deborah near the end of the final season.
Einbinder also spoke about her recent role opposite Gillian Anderson in Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.