I didn’t watch the Oscars last weekend. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and other sites list the winners, so what’s the point? There are better things to watch, but I knew there would be some left-wing shenanigans. If Trump wins the 2024 election, expect most awards shows to go off the rails again. With the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip, there was going to be some anti-Israel moment, and lo and behold, it came from director Jonathan Glazer.
His film “Zone of Interest,” which detailed the homelife of Nazi Rudolf Hess and his family near a concentration camp, won Best International Feature Film. So, when he took his Academy Award, he had this to say about what’s happening in Gaza (via NYT):
BREAKING: JONATHAN GLAZER ACCEPTS OSCAR FOR BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM AND CONDEMNS ATROCITIES IN GAZA
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) March 11, 2024
“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst ... We stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to… pic.twitter.com/Yx2QLydqEN
The Israel-Hamas war was prominently addressed on the Oscars stage on Sunday in an acceptance speech for “The Zone of Interest,” which follows the domestic life of a Nazi commandant whose house is just outside the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The director Jonathan Glazer read from prepared remarks after the film won for best international feature, offering thanks to collaborators before turning to the conflict.
“All our choices were 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.”
Glazer, who is Jewish, said that he rejected “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”
He continued: “Whether the victims of October the seventh in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is complicated and soaked in nuance, and the people who you should not be listening to regarding ideas for peaceful resolutions are Hollywood members. Also, you can’t reject your Jewishness, sir, just as I can’t reject the Korean blood coursing through my veins. As some noted, Glazer could reject his Jewishness all he wants; Hamas still wants him dead.
The Nation, a left-wing magazine, covered the event with this headline: “Jonathan Glazer’s Brave Oscar Speech Represents the Best of Judaism.” National Review quoted the president of the Holocaust Survivor Foundation, who found the speech “morally indefensible.”
Glazer outrageously accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, which is laughably untrue, while accepting an award about a high-ranking Nazi living near a concentration camp. The irony and lack of self-awareness is what’s equally offensive here.
Jonathan Glazer made a movie about a man who builds his own professional success on his ability to ignore the suffering of the Jews around him.
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) March 11, 2024
The man is immune to irony.
In Jonathan Glazer's "Zone of Interest," you don't see one Jew. Those are the best Jews, according to Glazer: the faceless victims screaming in the distance. Ironically, he's the villain: picking up awards from the bodies of those anonymous dead Jews while ignoring the living…
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) March 11, 2024