from Mondoweiss
Last Sunday Jonathan Glazer’s brilliant film The Zone of Interest won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
The director made this statement during his acceptance speech:
“All our choices we 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 shaped all of our past and present.”
“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 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”
At the time I am typing this, the speech is still conspicuously missing from the Oscar’s official YouTube channel, but I digress.
Glazer’s speech probably seems commonsensical, inoffensive, and too subtle to the average reader of this newsletter, but it was pretty much the only time Gaza got mentioned all evening unless you count the small number of attendees who wore ceasefire and Palestine pins and referenced them during red carpet interviews.
As soon as Glazer finished his speech, pro-Israel individuals and organizations began attacking him across social media. The immediate lie being pushed was that Glazer got on stage and rejected his Jewishness. Of course, what he actually said is that he rejected his Jewishness being used as an excuse to kill thousands of people.
The truth is often distorted in defense of Israel, but this is an exceptionally egregious example. Millions of people watched Glazer’s speech and it’s easily accessible online, even if The Academy refuses to showcase it.
Actress Noa Tishby used to peddle propaganda for the Israeli government before she got canned for lightly criticizing Netanyahu’s judicial reforms. Now, she defends the country for free. She called the entire evening “a subtle and overt display of Jew-hatred.”...
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