'Acknowledging Jewish victims will cost him': Jewish creators comment on Jonathan Glazer's speech

At the 96th Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on Sunday night, British-Jewish director Jonathan Glazer, whose film, The Zone of Interest, had just won the Oscar for Best International Feature, made a somewhat garbled statement critical of the Israeli government’s policy, conflating “the Occupation” with “the Holocaust.” Many Israeli officials and Jewish leaders criticized the statement, but some Jews in Hollywood actually cheered it.

That’s because he did what so few who have criticized Israel’s decision to respond militarily to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel – in which about 1,200 Israelis were murdered (and raped, burned, dismembered, and tortured) and 240 were taken hostage – have done: He mentioned “the victims of October 7 in Israel.”

“At least he said that,” said one entertainment industry insider, who, like everyone I spoke to for this piece, did not want to give a name or any identifying details for fear of derailing his career.

If that sounds like the bar has gotten very low for what counts as a show of support for Jews and Israel in Hollywood, that’s because it has. Simply acknowledging that there were victims in Israel is light years ahead of the prevailing political winds in Hollywood these days, people told me.Typical politically engaged celebrities in Hollywood simply ask for a “ceasefire now,” with no hint of the fact that there are still 134 hostages held by Hamas in Gaza – a number of whom are American citizens, which is rarely mentioned – or  that Hamas has publicly stated, on multiple occasions, that it will commit more, and even bigger, massacres in Israel as soon as it can, and that Israel has an obligation to defend its citizens.

The real villain: Hamas or 'the occupier'

That’s why many Jewish entertainment professionals were relieved by Glazer’s speech, in which he said: “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’s shaped all of our past and present.”It was possible to think he was speaking about Hamas’s dehumanization of Israelis as well as Israel’s dehumanizing Gazans, pointed out one professional.

Glazer went on to say, in the most confusing part of his speech, “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 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

Most think he meant that he and his producers (“the men” to whom he refers) rejected or disapproved of the idea of their Jewishness and the legacy of the Holocaust being used to justify the invasion of Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank, not that he was rejecting his own Jewish identity. Commenting on the confusing phraseology, one insider said, “That was quite a word salad. I’ve met him and he’s usually very clear, very focused on what he’s trying to get across. Writer/directors are generally the most charming, most articulate people in the world because they’re always trying to get people to give them money to make a movie; they’re always pitching.

“I think he was tying himself in knots, trying to find a way to acknowledge that there was a massacre, that there were Jewish victims. He wanted to say it without saying it... I think that’s because he did this Auschwitz film, and he’s a British Jew. He knows that the Nazis would have killed him and Hamas would have killed him. For him to say, to acknowledge that there were any Jewish victims at all will probably cost him some dinner-party invitations, probably from intellectuals he respects. That’s the reality.”

Would it have been so hard for him to say the word “Hamas”? I asked. “Yeah, it would have,” was the answer I got. “There can be Jewish victims as long as the worst villain, the only real villain, is Israel, the occupier.”

INSIDE THE AUDITORIUM, there were almost no yellow ribbons denoting support for the hostages held by Hamas, save for Avi Arad, the Israeli-American producer of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which was nominated for Best Animated Feature. Other attendees said they would have worn yellow ribbons but their cars were closely eyeballed by protesters who tried to block invited guests from attending the awards ceremony.

But there were many celebrities wearing red pins and calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, among them Ramy Youssef, who is one of the stars of the movie Poor Things. Youssef, a writer and producer as well as an actor, is best known for the series Ramy, which is about the son of Egyptian immigrants to the US. Interviewed on the red carpet, Youssef said, “This pin here is for Artists4Ceasefire, which has...more than 400 signatories [to its open letter] just calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Palestine to really ensure the safety for innocent people. We really want to stop killing kids, and we want to make sure everyone’s safe. It’s really just a humanitarian issue that a lot of artists have been really passionate about.” He didn’t mention the hostages at all or that among them are children.

Among other celebrities wearing the red pins were siblings Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, whose song “What Was I Made For?” from the movie Barbie won the Oscar for Best Song; and Mark Ruffalo, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Poor Things.

Since the start of the war, a few Jewish Hollywood voices have emerged to support Israel, most of whom have visited the country and spoken out at rallies in the US, including actors Michael Rapaport and Brett Gelman – both of whom performed skits on Eretz Nehederet, one of which featured Rapaport hosting the Oscars, which was brutally critical of Hollywood’s indifference to the plight of the hostages – as well as Debra Messing and Jerry Seinfeld.

Influencers Baby Ariel and Julia Haart of My Unorthodox Life have also been here and have devoted much of their social media to defending Israel. Early on, David Simon, the showrunner of The Wire, and Orange is the New Black’s Jenji Kohan spoke out in defense of the victims of October 7, and recently, comic/actress Tiffany Haddish visited Israel. Israelis based in Hollywood and Israeli-Americans, like Gal Gadot and Natalie Portman, have spoken out, especially about the hostages and the sexual assaults.

Steven Spielberg, who presented the Best Director Award to Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer, did not make a statement about anything connected to the war on Sunday.

Spielberg, seen as the most respected Jewish elder statesman in Hollywood – and one with something to say about Jewish suffering, as he directed Schindler’s List and created the USC Shoah Foundation, which collects testimony from Holocaust survivors – remained silent about the October 7 atrocities for months, ignoring direct requests from Holocaust survivors to comment.

Finally, in December, he wrote, “I never imagined I would see such unspeakable barbarity against Jews in my lifetime” in a feature published on the foundation’s website, and he pledged that the foundation would collect testimonies from survivors of the Hamas massacre. Non-Jewish Hollywood A-listers who often speak out on causes and have visited Israel in the past, such as Paul McCartney, continue to be silent on this conflict.