Hollywood's backlash to Jonathan Glazer's Oscar speech only proves his point

Last week, Variety reported that “more than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter" denouncing the Oscar speech by Jonathan Glazer, director of the Holocaust-themed drama "The Zone of Interest." The angry letter amounts to a tightly scripted defense of Israel as its military forces continue to methodically kill civilians in Gaza, who are no less precious to their friends and family members than the loved ones of the letter's signatories.

A few words from Glazer provoked outrage as he accepted his award for best international feature film. He spoke of wanting to refute “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” and followed that with a question: “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

Those words were too much for those who signed the letter, a list that included many of Hollywood’s powerful producers, directors and agents. For starters, they accused Glazer (who is Jewish) of “drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination.”

Ironically, that accusation embodied what Glazer sought to confront from the Oscars stage. He said that what is crucial in the present moment is “not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’” 

The letter refused to address what Israel is doing now as it bombs, kills, maims and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where there are now 32,000 known dead and 74,000 injured. Its moral vision consisted only of looking back at what the Third Reich did. Its signers endorsed the usual Zionist polemics, fitting all too neatly into Glazer’s description of “Jewishness and the Holocaust” being “hijacked by an occupation.”

The letter even denied that an occupation actually exists, objecting to “the use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years.” Somehow the Old Testament was presumed to be sufficient justification for the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, most of whose ancestors lived in territory that is now the state of Israel. The vast majority of Gaza's pre-war population of 2.2 million has been driven from their bombed-out homes, with many now facing starvation due to the Israeli blockade of food and other vital supplies. 

Israel’s extreme restrictions are causing deaths from starvation and disease as well as enormous suffering. In early March, a panel of U.N. experts issued a statement that declared: “Israel has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys.” (So much for the anti-Glazer letter’s claim that “Israel is not targeting civilians.”)

Last weekend, at the border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said: "Here from this crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all. A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other. That is more than tragic. It is a moral outrage."

But there is no hint of any such moral outrage in the letter signed by more than 1,000 “creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals.” Instead, all the ire is directed at Glazer for pointing out that moral choices on matters of life and death are not merely consigned to the past. The crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany against Jews are in no way exculpatory for the crimes against humanity now being committed by Israel. 

What Glazer said in little more than a minute before the cameras retains a profound moral power that no distortions can hide. There's an unmistakable continuity between the setting of “The Zone of Interest” eight decades ago — much of which takes place adjacent to the notorious concentration camp at Auschwitz — and today’s realities, as the United States continues to supports Israel’s genocidal actions. “Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst," Glazer said. "It shaped all of our past and present. Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

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Much of the movie’s focus is on the lives of a married couple who are preoccupied with career, status and material well-being. Those preoccupations are hardly unfamiliar in the movie industry, where silence on the Gaza war, or outright support, are commonplace — in sharp contrast to Jonathan Glazer and others, Jewish or not, who have spoken out in his defense or in support of a ceasefire.

“What he was saying is so simple: that Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering, must not be used in the campaign as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people,” said playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner, in an Israeli newspaper interview published last week. Kushner, who wrote the acclaimed AIDS drama "Angels in America" and the screenplays for several Steven Spielberg films, including "Lincoln" and "Munich," called Glazer’s statement from the Oscars stage “unimpeachable and irrefutable.”

Yet even without signing the open letter denouncing Glazer’s comments, some in the entertainment industry felt compelled to assert their backing for Israel's genocidal war in Gaza. Notably, a spokesperson for the financier of Glazer’s film, Len Blavatnik, responded to the controversy by telling Variety that “his long-standing support of Israel is unwavering.”

How many more Palestinian civilians must be killed before such “support for Israel” begins to waver?