Chris and Ben Affleck pictured at the 70th Annual Academy Awards on 22 March 1998. [Getty]
Award-winning Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha has paid tribute to Chris Affleck as “one the most steadfast advocates of Palestine” following her death at the age of 83.
Affleck, the mother of actors Ben and Casey Affleck, died on 2 June following a battle with cancer, her family announced in an obituary on Friday.
She was a life-long civil rights advocate and defender of Palestinian rights.
After travelling to Palestine and Israel in 2009, she became an organiser for the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine.
“My wife, our children, and I are immensely heartbroken to learn that Chris Affleck has passed away,” Abu Toha wrote in a social media post on Saturday.
“Chris was far more than a friend. She was like a mother to me and Maram, and a grandmother to our two, and later three, children during the time we lived in Cambridge between 2019 and 2020,” he said.
While many knew her as the mother of the Hollywood actors, Abu Toha described her as also “one the most steadfast advocates of Palestine”.
He remembered seeing her during the Covid-19 pandemic with a “Free Gaza” poster in her car and recalled giving her a necklace and ring made by his sister, who continues to live in Gaza.
Ben Affleck later responded to Abu Toha in a message, writing: “I want to reaffirm that the central cause of her life – and the most meaningful cause of distress to her, was the suffering and injustice caused to the Palestinian people.”
The Oscar-winning actor and director is among the highest-profile Hollywood stars to have expressed support for Palestinian rights.
He was among the signatories of the October 2023 Artists4Ceasefire letter demanding an immediate end to the war in Gaza.
In 2025, he was among hundreds of Hollywood figures to sign a letter condemning the Academy for failing to support the Oscar-winning Palestinian co-director of No Other Land Hamdan Ballal after he was attacked by Israeli settlers.
He has also spoken out against US involvement in the Middle East and condemned Islamophobia.
