The Hypocritical Irony Condemning Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars Speech for “The Zone of Influence”
More than a thousand Jewish Hollywood “creatives and executives” signed an open letter condemning Jonathan Glazer‘s courageous Oscars speech for his international best film “The Zone of Interest.” Glazer highlights the common thread of dehumanization that perpetuated the Holocaust and continues today, notably in Gaza.
Below I quote the open letter verbatim, paragraph by paragraph, followed by a response to each, through to the final fifth paragraph. The letter begins:
“We are Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals.
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.”
I am also a Jewish creative, but I want nothing to do with Hollywood-izing injustice. To be clear, Mr. Glazer did not include you, as Jews, in his speech. Your Jewishness is not being hijacked. He spoke about the men that stand with him on the stage, and perhaps others who stand with him — not those who do not stand with him, like yourselves. Ironically, you are hijacking Jewishness. Ironically, again, Netanyahu, leader of your beloved Israel, does regularly allude to Jewish people everywhere as a monolith. He also is waging war in the name of Jews. This is what Glazer was referring to when he says he refutes his Jewishness being hijacked.
Israel is not in real danger of being exterminated. Palestinians don’t have an army, and no iron dome. They certainly don’t have the United States backing them with tens of thousands of bombs and other artillery. In comparison, Israel is an elite, 4th most powerful military in the world. Ironically, Israel’s atrocious siege on Gaza is creating enemies everywhere. Israel is in the process of exterminating Gaza, and dreadfully, this faux “war” is not even over. Read the news of those who have have been killed, the tens or hundreds of thousands more missing and seriously injured, the million more on the brink of starvation, and the 1.4 million in Rafah about to be evacuated to who knows . . . nowhere.
“Every civilian death in Gaza is tragic. Israel is not targeting civilians. It is targeting Hamas. The moment Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders, is the moment this heartbreaking war ends. This has been true since the Hamas attacks of October 7th.”
Israel is targeting civilians. If you think their deaths are tragic, at least abide the truth. Otherwise, your lip service hijacks genuine empathy. This targeting has been broadly documented and published. It influenced the ICJ ruling that Israel is committing “plausible genocide” through blatant targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure. Please have a listen to South Africa’s delineation of these atrocities at the ICJ.
Israel says it’s targeting Hamas, but every day this looks like more of a smokescreen than a verity. Israel has pledged to keep destroying everything Gazan until Hamas is defeated, which will be never; so that’s a license to kill innocents forever. It’s therefore wrong that releasing the hostages ends the war.
“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.”
Israel is occupying Palestinian territory. It is occupying the West bank in violation of international law. It has occupied Gaza for decades. Even with Israel’s alleged “pull out” in 2005 from Gaza, many experts still consider Gaza occupied. Controlling the water, food, and supplies into Gaza throughout its blockade is alone a form of occupation, which Israel has consistently exerted. Further, your mention of the Jewish homeland is a red herring that, ironically again, distorts history and the present. Zionists arrived from Europe to create the state of Israel; while some may have ancestral tied to Palestine, they have not lived there for thousands of years. Palestinians have always been an indigenous majority and have persisted on the land. They were and continue to be displaced and dispossessed by newcomers. And they were largely white. The ethos of white privilege in your open letter is well-described by Natasha Lennard in The Intercept, quoting writer Sara Schulman, as your:
“. . . inability to imagine that they [you] could be part of anything wrong. A total inability to be self-critical.”
Lennard goes on to say, “It is the Zionist equivalent of what the late Jamaican-British philosopher Charles Mills called “white ignorance” — by which he did not mean things people with white skin do not know. Rather, it is “a cognitive tendency” that functions as an epistemic block, resistant to facts that challenge white supremacy and expose its violence. It leaves the person “aprioristically intent on denying what is before them” — no matter how unassailable the thing is. Mills stressed that “what makes such denial possible, of course, is the management of memory.”
The final paragraph of your open letter . . .
“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 current climate of growing antisemitism only underscores the need for the Jewish State of Israel, a place which will always take us in, as no state did during the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s film.”
Israel’s factual slaughter of Gazans and almost total destruction of Gazan infrastructure has nothing to do with blood libel and does not give credence to it. Please read up on what blood libel refers to. This is another distortion and distraction from acknowledging the bare reality of the Israel’s atrocities. Blaming the very real occupation by Israel of Palestinian territory for hypothetical connections to upticks in blood libel antisemitism is also ironic. Israel’s occupation itself, which you falsely deny, foments antisemitism. Inaccurate accusations of antisemitism are weaponized antisemitism, which, ironically, have antisemitic effects. You can blame the uptick in antisemitism on the anti-Semites themselves and on Israel for waging this war in the name of the Jews. Data over the last decades show that “when Israel is in violent conflict with its neighbors,” antisemitism increases. This quote is by political scientist Ayal Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights at Gratz College in Pennsylvania.
Jonathan Gazer’s speech was courageous and accurate. Your letter of refutation is neither. It’s dishonest and hijacks antisemitism in an attempt to deny reality. As a Jew, my concern is that you are unwittingly perpetuating antisemitism by striking down heroes like Jonathan Glazer who are working to decrease antisemitism and the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, especially children. You are spreading antisemitism by misappropriating the term, speaking non-factually, and denying Israel’s atrocities, not to mention dishonestly hogging the spotlight that deserves to be largely on Gaza. Please stop, thank you.
