Israel, The Holocaust, and Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar Speech

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Over 450 actors, producers, and photographers have signed a “Statement from Jewish Hollywood Professionals” castigating “Zone of Interest” filmmaker Jonathan Glazer over his recent Oscar acceptance speech, in which the director of the Holocaust film assailed Israel for “hijacking” Judaism with its conduct toward the Palestinians, American entertainment journal Variety reported Monday.

“We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the purpose 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,” reads the statement, echoing Glazer’s own language at the awards ceremony.

“The use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history. It gives credence to the modern blood libel that fuels a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, in the United States, and in Hollywood,” the statement continues, adding, “The current climate of growing antisemitism only underscores the need for the Jewish State.”

The online document’s details indicate it began circulating on Thursday, four days after Glazer’s controversial speech. According to Variety, its signatories include Debra Messing (“Will and Grace”), Brett Gelman (“Stranger Things,” “Fleabag”), and Julianna Margulies (“The Good Wife”).

Glazer declined to comment on the open letter.

Glazer’s speech caused a furor. “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan on this,” said “Zone of Interest” producer Danny Cohen, a former TV executive at the British Broadcasting Corporation, when interviewed on an Israeli news podcast two days later, adding that Glazer’s comments were a “distraction” from his film.

Lazslo Nemes, whose Holocaust film “Son of Saul” won the 2016 foreign language Oscar, also condemned Glazer. In a statement to the UK’s The Guardian on Friday, the Hungarian-Jewish director said that “‘The Zone of Interest’ is an important movie… Its director should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilization, before or after the Holocaust.”

Glazer’s Oscars speech also drew harsh criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and The Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA. The Foundation’s president, David Schaecter, 94, the only one of 105 family members to have survived the Holocaust after passing through both the Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps, called Glazer’s speech “factually inaccurate [and] morally indefensible.”

“[I]t is disgraceful for you to presume to speak for those of us who personally saw the world stand silent as our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were murdered,” wrote Schaecter in an open letter dated March 11, the day after Glazer’s speech.

“You should be ashamed of yourself for using Auschwitz to criticize Israel,” added the Holocaust survivor

[Who knows? One reason the current wave seems shocking is we in the West especially in America have just come out of an unprecedented honeymoon period. This wave is historically mild. The government does not encourage or support it. The Holocaust happened when Zionism was a nascent movement that had yet to come to fruition. And it was not just over there. With the German-American Bund and Christien Front, the 1930s and 40s were worse. You had physical attacks reminiscent of now, plus open discrimination. The majority of Americans were strongly prejudiced against Jews. Polling from that era backs this up. Now it's Israel and Trump that are triggers, then it was Hitler, Father Coughlin, and Lindbergh. Without Israel, it probably would have looked different and occurred at a different time but it probably would have happened. Honeymoons end.