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JONATHAN GLAZER’S BRAVE OSCAR SPEECH REPRESENTS THE BEST OF JUDAISM
 
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Dave Zirin
March 11, 2024
The Nation
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_ Instead of confronting what the director of The Zone of Interest
actually said, Zionists distorted his lines. Glazer was the only Oscar
winner to say anything about Gaza—rather shocking, given the
stereotype of Hollywood, as a bastion of liberalism. _

Jonathan Glazer accepts the Best International Feature Film award for
The Zone of Interest at the 96th Annual Oscars held at Dolby Theatre
in Los Angeles on March 10., (Rich Polk / Variety // The Nation)

 

I came of political age animated by the quip, “Two Jews, three
opinions.” I was around people who argued, weighed pros and cons,
and hashed out differences no matter how intense the disagreements.
Sometimes no common ground could be found. But as rough as these
debates could be, they were rooted in fact. Today though, the Zionist
catchphrase should now be “a million Jews, no opinions.” Too many
Zionists will brook no disagreement with Israel’s war on Gaza and
are willing to distort the truth to defend it.

The director Jonathan Glazer is finding that out this morning. His
speech at the Oscars, after winning Best International Feature Film
for _The Zone of Interest_, explained the way his faith and the
memory of the Holocaust have been weaponized to support the Israeli
occupation of Palestine as well as the current carnage. It was
beautiful and brave. His exact words were, “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, all the victims, this dehumanization, how do we
resist?”

The response of the right wing has not been debate and discussion.
It’s been lies, obfuscation, and vulgarity. There’s the editor
of _Commentary_, John Podhoretz, who tweeted, “By saying HE
REFUTES HIS JEWISHNESS [my emphasis] on the biggest stage in the
world five months after the attack on Israel, Jonathan Glazer has
instantly made himself into one of Judaism’s historical villains.”

Others parroted this line. Batya Ungar-Sargon, the opinion editor at
the right-wing infomercial formerly known as _Newsweek_, tweeted,
“I simply cannot fathom the moral rot in someone’s soul that leads
them to win an award for a movie about the Holocaust and with the
platform given to them, to accept that award by saying, ‘We stand
here as men who refute their Jewishness…’” This was mimicked by
all kinds of media bottom feeders. The common thread with all of them
is that, rather than reckon with Glazer’s argument that his
“Jewishness and the Holocaust [are] being hijacked by an
occupation,” they only—and shamelessly—use part of the quote as
a way to make it sound like Glazer is rejecting his religion and
culture, when the opposite is obviously the case. He is
actually _reclaiming_ his culture from the pampered pro-Israel media
prizefighters who argue that Judaism and Zionism are one and the same:
that a 5,500 year old religion and culture must exist only as the
support system for a 76-year-old colonial ethno-state. To call out
this lie is a daring and dangerous act, and Glazer should be commended
for standing in the tradition of debate—not of calumny and lies.

This is especially fitting given Glazer’s film: a chilling and
shattering look at Nazism in the form of an idyllic Nazi officer’s
home right outside Auschwitz. There is nothing “banal” about the
evil on display in this film; a family frolics in a stream as bones
and body parts float past them. It would be easy to read the film as a
remembrance of the horror perpetrating on the Jewish people. But
Glazer, as he has been collecting awards, has made perfectly clear:
The phrase “never again” is not a Jewish slogan but something that
must be raised every time a people are subject to genocide. He also
said at the Oscars, “All our choices are made to reflect and
confront us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’
rather ‘Look what we do now.’… Our film shows where
dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and
present.”

Glazer was the only Oscar winner to say anything about Gaza—rather
shocking, given the stereotype of Hollywood, as George Clooney claimed
in his unctuous speech a decade ago, that this is a bastion of
liberalism. Hollywood is more of a PEP squad: progressive except for
Palestine. Yet, if Glazer’s voice was the only one from the podium
to acknowledge that these horrors were taking place while people were
sitting snugly in their Vera Wangs, he was far from alone. The
ceremony was delayed as solidarity protests blocked roads around the
venue. It was a reminder that people are trying to stop the violence
and win a permanent cease-fire in every corner, every college campus,
every cultural arena in the country. That is, except for the Oscars,
where the call for justice and peace were on mute. As Jews, our
tradition of debate could not be more rich. It says so much about the
Podhoretzes of the world—and how alien they truly are to Jewish
tradition—that they want to take this tradition of debate and put a
stake in its heart.

_[DAVE ZIRIN is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of
11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and
writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and
Politics of the NFL [[link removed]].]_

_Copyright c 2024 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
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Distributed by PARS International Corp
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* zionism
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* Anti-Zionism
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* Judaism
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* Jonathan Glazer
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* Gaza
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* Ceasefire
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* Israel
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* Palestine
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* Rafah
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* Genocide
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* The Zone of Interest
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* Hollywood
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* Oscars
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