Thank you so much. . . . 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 . . . 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 of this dehumanization. How do we resist? [Applause.]
— Jonathan Glazer, accepting an Oscar for his Holocaust film, “Zone of Interest”
“Look what we do now,” he says. Who is “we?” It is both the perpetrators of Oct. 7 and the responders. They are equated. They are both dehumanizers. Except this: Israel gets a mention. Hamas does not.
Also this: Jews get a mention. Palestinians and Muslims do not.
Thus, Glazer’s statement endangers Jewish lives, and this at a time when they are more endangered than at any time since the Holocaust. Only Jewishness is named. Glazer is like one of those assimilationist Jews in pre-WW II Germany who figured that the more he could “refute” his Jewishness, the safer he would be. If Glazer wants to endanger himself, it’s his choice, but he has no right to endanger other Jews. That’s what his name-Jews-but-don’t-name-Hamas statement did.
“ . . . [we are] men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict . . . ”
Occupation by whom?
Glazer means an occupation by Israel, since this occupation is anti-Jewish (“refuted”) and since it hijacked the Holocaust. It is this anti-Jewish occupation that “led to conflict.” Hamas did not cause the conflict. Hamas does not even get a mention.
This gets a mention: “conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.” To Glazer, the victims are equated: the victims of aggression and the victims of self-defense. Both are equal dehumanizers. And you wonder whether moral relativism has taken hold?
Oddly, Glazer asks: “How do we resist?” That is exactly what Israel is doing. Israel shows how to resist the intentional dehumanization, the beheading, the rape, the body-burning, the bragging about it, the videoing of it, by Hamas.
Glazer equates Israel’s resistance with the unintentional, collateral damage inflicted on the Gazans by, ironically, Hamas’ intention to make sure it happens. Hamas put in place many policies to ensure suffering in Gaza, such as not building bomb shelters there while positioning its soldiers in the homes and hospitals there, all as a prelude to launching a savage, Holocaust-like attack they knew would draw a massive military act of self-defense.
Glazer speaks of “the Holocaust being hijacked.” Hijacked by whom? By Hamas.
And by whom is the Holocaust not being hijacked? By Israeli soldiers who defend Jewish lives (including Glazer’s), unlike Glazer, whose words endanger Jewish live.
Note: Glazer contrasts Oct. 7 with the “ongoing attack on Gaza.” Really? There is no “ongoing” hostage-taking? In Glazer’s world, innocent hostages were dehumanized on one day only, but innocents in Gaza are subject to “ongoing” dehumanization. That attitude is about as strong a refutation of Jewishness as we can think of. That attitude devalues the lives of kidnapped Jews and others who lived in Israel — ongoing hostages all. (May this status be ended by the date this appears!)
The scary part is not just the recrudescence of Holocaust-like hatred of Israel and of Jews that is imbedded in Glazer’s statement; it is that he doesn’t get it even after having made a film about the Holocaust. He studied virulent hatred of Jews in the 1940s, but can’t, or won’t, recognize it in the 2020s. Even scarier: He gets applause.
Copyright © 2024 by the Intermountain Jewish News
