Free speech means the right to protest, criticize, and organize, including about Israel, including from Hollywood. It does not mean the right to be taken seriously regardless of whether the claims hold up, and it does not exempt celebrity activism from the same criticism that anyone else’s advocacy would face.

That distinction keeps disappearing. Increasingly, the exercise of that right comes without the homework it’s supposed to earn: without depth, without fact-checking, without any apparent interest in whether the underlying claim is true. An antitrust dispute becomes evidence of Zionist power. A convicted participant in terrorist murders becomes a political prisoner. The common thread isn’t conviction. It’s that Israel is the fixed villain, no matter the subject, and the people saying so rarely seem to have done the reading.