Jonathan Glazer: greater than 450 Jewish creatives denounce Oscars speech in open letter | Films

9 days after Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars acceptance speech and the controversy over his assertion continues.

On Monday, greater than 450 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing The Zone of Curiosity director’s speech, through which he renounced his “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to battle for therefore many harmless individuals”.

Echoing Glazer’s phrases, the group’s assertion says: “We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the aim of drawing an ethical equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of individuals, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its personal extermination.”

Signees embody Debra Messing, Eli Roth, Amy Pascal, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Julianna Margulies and Nancy Spielberg – a producer and the sister of Steven Spielberg.

The assertion continued: “The usage of phrases like ‘occupation’ to explain an indigenous Jewish individuals defending a homeland that dates again hundreds of years, and has been acknowledged as a state by the United Nations, distorts historical past. It provides credence to the fashionable blood libel that fuels a rising anti-Jewish hatred around the globe, in the USA, and in Hollywood.”

Glazer’s speech on the Oscars, accepting the award for finest international language movie alongside producer James Wilson and financier Len Blavatnik, was acquired warmly within the Dolby theatre, with enthusiastic applause from the likes of Mark Ruffalo.

“All our decisions,” stated Glazer, “had been made to mirror and confront us within the current, to not say look what they did then, however slightly look what we do now. Our movie reveals the place dehumanisation leads at its worst. It’s formed all of our previous and current.”

The backlash to Glazer’s phrases started on Monday, when the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) known as them “morally reprehensible”. On Thursday The Zone of Curiosity’s government producer, Danny Cohen, stated he “essentially disagreed” with Glazer on the problem.

Son of Saul director László Nemes shared a press release with the Guardian on Friday through which he strongly condemned Glazer, saying he “ought to have stayed silent as a substitute of showing he has no understanding of historical past and the forces undoing civilisation, earlier than or after the Holocaust.

“Had he embraced the duty that comes with a movie like that, he wouldn’t have resorted to speaking factors disseminated by propaganda meant to eradicate, on the finish, all Jewish presence from the Earth.”

These publicly backing Glazer embody administrators Asif Kapadia, Boots Riley and the actor and author Zoe Kazan. An editorial in Haaretz opined that Glazer was right, whereas the director of the Auschwitz Memorial additionally defended him, saying that “Glazer issued a common ethical warning towards dehumanisation.

“His purpose was to not descend to the extent of political discourse. Critics who anticipated a transparent political stance or a movie solely about genocide didn’t grasp the depth of his message.”

Chatting with Selection, a few of the signatories of Monday’s letter condemning Glazer additional defined their considering.

“His phrases sounded eerily much like Vanessa Redgrave’s notorious ‘Zionist hoodlum’ speech,” stated producer Ilana Wernick. “Solely this time there was no Paddy Chayefsky to face up and say the fitting factor … Writing the letter wasn’t simply cathartic for us. It’s one thing we needed to do.”

In the meantime Brett Gelman, the Fleabag and Stranger Issues actor additionally took problem with the choice by stars reminiscent of Ruffalo and Billie Eilish to put on an Artists4Ceasefire pin. “There was no concern for the way Jewish persons are going to react to a speech like that, to that applause, to these crimson pins, when not even our hostages are being talked about, and it’s simply extremely hurtful, extremely painful. It’s actually baffling to me that individuals had been selecting to be silent that night time.”

Others who’ve made Holocaust movies reminiscent of director Jonathan Jakubowicz took problem with Glazer’s invoking the Nazi regime’s mass homicide of Jews within the Forties as a parallel to the Israeli struggle in Gaza.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, a two-time Oscar winner who based the Simon Wiesenthal Middle, stated he was appalled by the response within the room to Glazer’s phrases.

“I couldn’t imagine it,” he stated. “If I didn’t know higher, I might suppose that this was a Hamas rally. The place was the viewers? Individuals ought to have gotten up and booed as a result of he left the Academy Awards [TV audience] considering this was fantastic.”

Learn the total assertion:

We’re Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals.

We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the aim of drawing an ethical equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of individuals, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its personal extermination.

Each civilian demise in Gaza is tragic. Israel shouldn’t be concentrating on civilians. It’s concentrating on Hamas. The second Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders is the second this heartbreaking struggle ends. This has been true for the reason that Hamas assaults of October seventh.

The usage of phrases like “occupation” to explain an indigenous Jewish individuals defending a homeland that dates again hundreds of years, and has been acknowledged as a state by the United Nations, distorts historical past.

It provides credence to the fashionable blood libel that fuels a rising anti-Jewish hatred around the globe, in the USA, and in Hollywood. The present local weather of rising antisemitism solely underscores the necessity for the Jewish State of Israel, a spot which is able to all the time take us in, as no state did throughout the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s movie.