How to Willfully Misconstrue a Call for Peace

Over a week later, and people are still claiming Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar speech said something it didn’t.

I wasn’t a big fan of Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winning film The Zone of Interest, but I was a big fan of his acceptance speech for Best International Film. Here’s the video followed by the transcript:

Thank you so much. I’m gonna read. Thank you to the Academy for this honor and to our partners A24, Film4, Access, and Polish Film Institute; to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum for their trust and guidance; to my producers, actors, collaborators. 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. 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 — [Applause.] Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist? [Applause.] Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in the film, as she did in life, chose to. I dedicate this to her memory and her resistance. Thank you.

This is a pretty level-headed call for peace despite the word confusion where it appears Glazer meant “reject” rather than “refute” (refute makes no sense since you’re not making an argument with yourself) Glazer correctly notes that dehumanization allows people to perpetrate horrible atrocities. October 7^th, as Glazer notes, was an atrocity. Israel’s war on Gaza is also an atrocity that pushed even Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish politician in America, to call for new elections because there’s no end in sight to the devastation that has killed countless Gazans. Both of these things are awful, and it is not wrong to say that both of these things are awful.

However, a contingent of Jewish professionals continue to argue that Glazer said something he didn’t because they can brook no contradiction of any of Israel’s decisions. Variety reports that “More than 1,000¹ Jewish creatives, executives, and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing” the speech. They also seize on Glazer’s misuse of refute when again, the more apt word choice is “reject.” Here’s the letter:

We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the purpose of drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination. 

Every civilian death in Gaza is tragic. But Israel is not targeting civilians. It is targeting Hamas. The moment Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders is the moment this heartbreaking war ends. This has been true since the Hamas attacks of October 7th.

The use of words like “occupation” to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years, and has been recognized as a state by the United Nations, distorts history.

It gives credence to the modern blood libel that fuels a growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, in the United States, and in Hollywood.  The current climate of growing antisemitism only underscores the need for the Jewish State of Israel, a place which will always take us in, as no state did during the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s film.”

If you’re offended that Glazer drew a comparison between the Nazis and the current Israeli government, then maybe the question isn’t, “How could Glazer do such a thing?!” but “How do oppressed people become oppressors?” Also, if the argument is that Israel seeks to fight its own extermination, then I need you to explain to me exactly how Hamas plans to do that—specifically against Israel’s massive arsenal, and how leveling Gaza ensures that Hamas can never attack again.