I used to be on the Oscars when director Jonathan Glazer made his speech after profitable just a little bald man for his Holocaust movie, “The Zone of Curiosity” — and I used to be livid.
Glazer stood up and in entrance of lots of of celebrities mentioned, “Our movie exhibits the place dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s formed all of our previous and current.
“Proper now, we stand right here as males who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to battle for thus many harmless folks.
“Whether or not the victims of October — whether or not the victims of October the seventh in Israel or the continued assault on Gaza, all of the victims of this dehumanization, how can we resist?”, he added, with producer James Wilson and billionaire financier Len Blavatnik standing behind him.
I used to be enraged: Glazer, my fellow Jew, had equated the worst atrocity of the twentieth century to the combat to save lots of a Jewish homeland.
But within the Dolby Theatre, stars together with Mark Ruffalo applauded, whereas Sandra Hüller, an actress within the film, wept.
Lastly, on Monday, and apart from a number of outspoken Jews like Mayim Bialik and Michael Rapaport, Hollywood caught up with the anger which had burned inside me for days.
A raft of Jewish stars together with Debra Messing, Eli Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Julianna Margulies, put their identify to a letter which eloquently tells Glazer what he acquired so very mistaken — and turns his phrases towards him.
“We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the aim of drawing an ethical equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of individuals, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its personal extermination,” they are saying within the letter, signed by 500 Jewish creatives.
“Using phrases like ‘occupation’ to explain an indigenous Jewish folks defending a homeland that dates again hundreds of years, and has been acknowledged as a state by the United Nations, distorts historical past.”
Glazer offers “credence to the trendy blood libel” they are saying.
“The present local weather of rising anti-semitism solely underscores the necessity for the Jewish State of Israel, a spot which is able to all the time take us in, as no state did through the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s movie,” they add.
Glazer has but to make a touch upon the brand new letter. Certainly, he has but to touch upon his speech in any respect.
Even the film’s producer, Danny Cohen, a former senior govt on the BBC, has disowned Glazer’s feedback, saying he “essentially” disagrees.
“Lots of people really feel upset and offended about it. And I perceive that anger frankly,” Cohen mentioned in an interview on the “Unholy” podcast. Cohen messaged me this week to say, “I’m eager for the main focus to return as quickly as potential to the outstanding movie itself.”
If solely the applauding celebrities had thought of what Glazer was actually saying.
However was it a shock that they didn’t?
As I regarded round on the Oscars, I may see no yellow ribbons calling for the secure return of the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7.
However there had been purple pins, representing a bleeding hand, pushed by the Artists4Ceasefire group and being worn by Ruffalo and others: Billie Eilish, her brother Finneas and the director Ava DuVernay.
The Israel authorities claimed on X that the purple arms had been truly a reference to the lynching of Israeli troopers. “This symbolism isn’t a coincidence,” it mentioned.
No-one in good conscience can sanction the homicide of infants, youngsters, wives and moms; innocents, whether or not in Israel or in Gaza.
However Glazer didn’t must equate the Israel-Hamas warfare with the Holocaust.
There is no such thing as a-one in Israel whom I’ve spoken to who desires this battle. No-one who desires to go to mattress at night time and fear concerning the sound of the rockets screaming by means of the air. Nobody who desires extra family members, mates, and mates of mates misplaced.
This can be a horror present – anybody will agree.
However Glazer didn’t must take the story of hundreds of thousands of victims and — as if it had been putty in his arms — mould it into one thing that fitted his political imaginative and prescient.
Worse, in a city that was constructed by Jews, somebody — and a Jew at that — ignored the historical past we all know so nicely: that Israel’s existence can’t be severed from the demise of six million Jews.
There’s a meme doing the rounds that claims, “A Zionist Jew and an Anti-Zionist Jew stroll right into a bar. The bartender says ‘We don’t serve Jews’”.
And it’s true.
I can’t want to change Glazer’s thoughts — hopefully we’re nonetheless allowed our personal ideas — however what I might need to clarify is that this combat introduced by Hamas towards Israel is a combat to rid the world of Israel AND Jews.
Let’s not neglect, as he appeared to, that Hamas known as for a Jewish genocide in its unique constitution.
If Hamas’ trendy model of the cattle truck got here to ship Glazer off one other Auschwitz, what would he do then?