An open letter signed by around 450 Jewish executives and creatives in Hollywood denounced the controversial speech given by The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer at the 96th Academy Awards last week, according to an exclusive report by Variety on 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,” the open letter stated.
The opening sentence of the letter directly refers to Glazer’s speech upon accepting his award for Best International Feature Film, where he 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 — 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?”
In the letter’s response to Glazer, it stated that “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 letter also acknowledged every single civilian death in Gaza as “tragic” but also noted that Israel’s fight is not against civilians in Gaza but against Hamas. The letter stated that the war would end once the terrorist organization gave back the hostages and completely surrendered itself to Israel.
It concluded by stating, “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.”
Celebrities that signed the letter include actors Debra Messing, Tovah Feldshuh, Mayim Bialik, Tara Strong, Michael Rapaport, Jennifer Jason Leigh; Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino; producers Lawrence Bender (Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds), Gary Gilbert (La La Land), and Amy Pascal (Spider-Man), as well as many other film and TV directors and representatives of talent agencies in Hollywood. The Variety report also noted that an additional 50 also signed their names to the letter since it was published.
Brett Gelman, an actor known for Fleabag and Stranger Things, told Variety “There was no concern for how Jewish people are going to react to a speech like that, to that applause to those red pins, when not even our hostages are being mentioned, and it’s just incredibly hurtful, incredibly painful.” Prominent pro-Israel activist Noa Tishby said that “Glazer’s shocking attempt to blame global issues on his Jewishness and the Holocaust reveals the significant disconnect present among some in Hollywood.”
The report also quoted Venezuelan Jewish filmmaker Jonathan Jakubowicz, who said “If Israel had existed in the 1930s and 40s, Auschwitz would not have happened. Mr. Glazer used the memory of the victims of the gas chambers to attack those trying to rescue Holocaust survivors and their relatives from captivity and sexual slavery.”
Director László Nemes, who also won an Oscar for his Holocaust film Son of Saul, also criticized Glazer’s speech, telling The Guardian that the Glazer “should have stayed silent instead of revealing he has no understanding of history and the forces undoing civilization before or after the Holocaust. Had he embraced the responsibility that comes with a film like that, he would not have resorted to talking points disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, in the end, all Jewish presence from the Earth.”
He continued by noting his concern that “we are reaching pre-Holocaust levels of anti-Jewish hatred,” describing it as “trendy” and “progressive.”
Even Zone of Interest producers disapproved of the speech
Even one of the producers of The Zone of Interest, who stood beside Glazer as he made the speech, didn’t sign off on his comments. A spokesperson for pro-Israel producer Len Blavatnik told The Hollywood Reporter that he was not consulted on the speech but that “he’s incredibly proud of the film and the accolades it has received, and he doesn’t want to distract from the important themes of the movie.”
Danny Cohen, the film’s executive producer and co-financer, also criticized Glazer’s speech in an episode of the podcast Unholy: Two Jews on the News last Friday but defended the film as “a great piece of art” and that a lot of people in the Jewish community contacted him saying it was a “remarkable and very important film.”
Regarding Glazer’s speech, Cohen said, “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,” he said on the episode. He also said that many in the Jewish community said “they’re upset in the sense that they feel that has been mixed up with what’s going on now – whether that was Jonathan’s intention or not.” He also stresses that “he fundamentally disagrees with Jonathan on this. My support for Israel is unwavering. I strongly believe that the war and the continuation of it is the responsibility of Hamas – a genocidal terrorist organization that continues to abuse the hostages and doesn’t use its tunnels to protect the civilians of Gaza but uses it to hide themselves.”
Cohen also said, like Blavatnik, that he was not consulted on the speech beforehand, but believes that Glazer planned the speech with co-producer James Wilson
Cohen also says that the war is distracting from the film itself, describing it as “an extraordinary triumph of filmmaking” and it is “one of the truly great films about the Holocaust. And the discussion is weakened now in this moment of great recognition for the film with two Academy Awards is not about the film, but it’s about the speech. Jon spent 10 years making the film and has made something remarkable, but people are talking more this week about what he said for 30 seconds.”
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