Actor Jon Voight has harshly criticized his daughter Angelina Jolie’s views on Israel and the war in Gaza, saying she has been swayed by propaganda and misinformation.
In an interview with Variety published on Tuesday, Voight slammed his daughter’s political stance on Gaza and the Palestinians “repeatedly, like a candidate going after an opponent in a 30-second ad,” according to interviewer Stephen Rodrick.
“She has been exposed to propaganda,” Voight told the magazine. “She’s been influenced by antisemitic people. Angie has a connection to the UN, and she’s enjoyed speaking out for refugees. But these people are not refugees.”
Jolie, a famed actress and tabloid staple, also serves as a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and has been highly critical of Israel over the past nine months. In a post on Instagram in late October, Jolie said the Hamas attack of October 7 does not “justify the innocent lives lost in bombing a civilian population in Gaza.”
In November, the actress wrote that Israel was turning Gaza into a “mass grave,” accusing the IDF of collective punishment on the population and depriving Palestinians of “food, medicine and humanitarian aid against international law.”
The father and daughter were famously long estranged, but reconciled in more recent years. Yet the veteran Hollywood actor — best known for his roles in “Midnight Cowboy,” “Coming Home” and “The Rainmaker” — has publicly criticized Jolie several times since the October 7 Hamas onslaught that triggered the current war.
“Angie, I think she hasn’t been available to this information because in Hollywood people don’t share this kind of stuff,” Voight told Variety. “They’re way off. They have no idea what’s going on. It’s a bubble.”
File: Actor Jon Voight visits Jewish settlements in the West Bank on February 16, 2022. (Samaria Regional Council)
“I love my daughter. I don’t want to fight with my daughter,” he added in the interview. “But the fact is, I think she has been influenced by the UN. From the beginning, it’s been awful with human rights. They call it human rights, but it’s just anti-Israel bashing… she’s ignorant of what the real stakes are and what the real story is because she’s in the loop of the United Nations.”
Despite repeatedly trying to stop himself from discussing politics and his daughter in the interview, Voight continued to veer back to the same topics, the interviewer wrote.
“Every year, the UN features more antisemitic motions against Israel than the ones offered against Iraq, China and Syria combined,” said Voight, saying that those who adopt the UN position that there are more than five million Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank “are so naive. They’re dupes who never get outside of their bubble.”
In a follow-up interview with Rodrick, Voight doubled down on his criticism of Jolie.
“It comes from ignorance, like everything else,” he said. “It’s like, why are these kids in the universities siding with Hamas, right? It’s because of ignorance. They don’t know the story.”
Asked if he has direct conversations with his daughter instead of discussing her positions publicly, Voight said “it’s hard for me to talk to her about this. She doesn’t really want to share this kind of stuff, because she’s of another mind about it.”
During one section of the interview, wrote Rodrick, “a middle-aged woman approaches our table, holding a loaf of challah just purchased for her family’s Shabbat dinner. Voight waves her over. She grasps his age-spotted hands: ‘I just want to thank you for all you have done for Israel. It means so much to all of us.’”
The woman added that she believed Voight should play Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a movie, to which he responded: “He’s a great, great man, but I’m not going to play him.”
For years Voight has been an outspoken supporter of Israel, and in recent years also a vocal backer of former president Donald Trump.
In a video posted on social media in November, Voight said he was “very disappointed in my daughter, like so many,” adding that her positions were due to the fact that she does not understand the conflict is about the destruction of the Holy Land — “the Land of the Jews.”
In 2022, Voight visited Israel and toured settlements in the West Bank, where he met Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council.
According to a statement from the council, Voight said at the time: “I don’t understand why Judea and Samaria is called the West Bank, when it’s clear that if you look at a map Samaria is at the heart of the Land of Israel.”
During the 2014 war against Hamas, Voight penned an article in The Hollywood Reporter that slammed “obviously ignorant” actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz for attacking Israel.
