Over 450 Jewish Hollywood stars signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s abhorrent Oscar speech.
The Jewish director blamed Israel for everything, including October 7.
The Jewish director won an Oscar for his Holocaust movie Zone of Interest.
Glazer said: “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, or the victims of this dehumanization. How do we resist?”
So many well-known Jewish creatives and professionals, including those who have been loud in their support for Israel, signed this open letter provided by Variety:
“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.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.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 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.”
Debra Messing, Michael Rapaport, and Tovah Feldshuh signed the letter. All three have been outspoken for Israel since October 7. Messing even spent time putting up posters in NYC and visiting families in Israel. Rapaport’s social posts always involve Israel, Jews, and the hostages. I love them!
We also see other familiar names: Eli Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julianna Margulies, and Rabbi Marvin Hier.
Hier founded the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. He also won an Oscar for his 1981 documentary Genocide and 1997 documentary The Long Way Home.
Hier could not believe Glazer’s speech but also the audience’s reaction:
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Hier. “If I didn’t know better, I would think that this was a Hamas rally. Where was the audience? People should have gotten up and booed because he left the Academy Awards [TV audience] thinking this was fine.”
The Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation also condemned Glazer’s speech:
“I watched in anguish Sunday night when I heard you use the platform of the Oscars ceremony to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defense in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity. Your comments were factually inaccurate and morally indefensible,” Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA president and 94-year-old Holocaust survivor David Schaecter wrote to Glazer.”The ‘occupation’ of which you speak has nothing to do with the Holocaust. The Jewish people’s existence and right to live in the land of Israel predates the Holocaust by hundreds of years. Today’s political and geographic landscape is the direct result of wars started by past Arab leaders who refused to accept Jewish people as their neighbors in our historic homeland. Now that several Arab countries are making peace with Israel because security and prosperity are better for all people, Iran and its terrorist proxies started another war, abetted by too many, who, through naïveté or malice, blame ‘the occupation.’”
Zone of Interest executive producer Danny Cohen, lashed out against Glazer:
Glazer’s words were repudiated by one of his film’s executive producers, Danny Cohen, who said last week, “I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan.””It’s really important to recognize it’s upset a lot of people and a lot of people feel upset and angry about it. And I understand that anger frankly,” Cohen said on the Unholy podcast. “The war and the continuation of the war is the responsibility of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization which continues to hold and abuse the hostages, which doesn’t use its tunnels to protect the innocent civilians of Gaza but uses it to hide themselves and allow Palestinians to die. I think the war is tragic and awful and the loss of civilian life is awful, but I blame Hamas for that.”
Individual statements even attacked the stupid red pins others wore to the Oscars in support of a ceasefire. I wonder how many knew the symbolism behind the red hand on the pin.
I am happy that so many leftist Jewish Hollywood stars have come out hard against Hamas and those who speak against Israel, even those in Hollywood and politics.
(Now if they would only stop voting Democrat. But baby steps!)
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