At the 96th Oscars ceremony, which took place last Sunday, the film “Zone of Interest” was announced as the winner of the Best International Film Award. The film, directed by Jonathan Glazer (Jewish-British), is a historical drama which describes the life of Rudolf Höss, the Nazi commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his family, on their quest to live a perfect life in their new home near the camp. Glazer used his winning speech to refer to the situation in Israel: “Our film shows where dehumanization leads at it’s worst… The Holocast was an occupation that led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether victims of October 7th or the ongoing attack in Gaza.”
The speech made some waves, but what really caught the media is the open letter signed by more than 1,000 Jewish creators, producers, actors, executives and people in the Hollywood industry. The letter condemns the speech with these words: “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… Every civilian death in Gaza is tragic. But Israel is not targeting civilians. It is targeting Hamas. The moment Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders is the moment this heartbreaking war ends… 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.”
Among the signatories of the letter: Michael Rapaport, Odeya Rush, Eli Roth, Juliana Margulies, Mark Feuerstein, Amy Sherman-Palladino, Nancy Spielberg, and more.
Glazer, of course, declined to respond (probably a good thing).
It’s good to see public anti-Israeli attacks making less and less noise, and it’s good that much more attention is directed to the existing, respectable and impressive counter-reaction.
To respond-
tgnovick3@gmail.com
