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Hollywood stars Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts, with their two children Samuel, 6, and Alexander, 1, recently visited Israel.

Schreiber said his grandfather was a strong Zionist who had always begged him to go to Israel. His grandfather died before he could make that happen, so this trip resonates for him. It may also have additional meaning following his most recent role as Zus Bielski in Defiance, the Holocaust movie recounting the Bielski brothers, Jewish partisans who lived and rebelled against the Nazis from a Bellarussian forest with a band of fellow refugees.

Schreiber recalls some intensely personal history:

“I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York, and I’m half-Jewish. Anything that has resonance for me about my family history, because I don’t know much about it, I’m drawn to. That’s part of why I think I choose projects like this. Less because I’m right for them, but because I want to know if I’m right for them.”

As Schreiber planted a tree in the Galilee, Naomi Watts recited the tree planting prayer.

“This particular area is called Galilee,” the dad-of-two explained. “And in this area, approximately 750,000 trees were destroyed in missile attacks [from Gaza]. So what we are doing here today is called Project Renewal.”

From years of watching Hollywood distance itself from Israel and Zionism I can safely observe that Schreiber and Watts, in their unabashed support of Israel and Judaism—make no mistake about it, the war against Israel is primarily a jihad against Judaism—are brave people for going public. Both are exquisitely gifted actors and their support for Israel should be applauded.

Once upon a time, Hollywood stars were firm supporters of Israel. Screenwriter Ben Hecht was a major voice for the Irgun. Frank Sinatra donated thousands to the fledgling state of Israel. But the cancer of multiculturalism has embedded itself into the, ahem, “progressive” Hollywood body politic and with it comes the inevitable poison of moral equivalency, resulting in such vile movies as Steven Spielberg’s historically and ethically bankrupt Munich.

Liev and Naomi hold up their Jewish National Fund certificates.

Liev Schreiber binds himself in tefillin.

Naomi Watts, holding her son Alexander, prays at the Kotel,
the Western Wall.

More pictures here.