Jonathan Glazer’s speech about Israel, at the Oscars, generates controversy | Gaza Strip

Director Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the Oscars, where his film about Auschwitz and the Holocaust The Zone of Interest won, in the early hours of Monday, the statuette for Best International Film, it is dividing opinions. After taking the stage with producer James Wilson to receive the award, Glazer, who is Jewish, stated that they both disapprove that Judaism and the Holocaust are being used as a way to legitimize an “occupation” that has seriously compromised “so many innocent people , both the victims of the October 7th offensive in Israel and those of the ongoing attack” in the Gaza Strip. At the same time that his position is receiving applause, identical to that received from the audience at the ceremony itself, there are also those who are vehemently condemning his comments.

This is the case of David Schaecter, president of the Holocaust Survivors Foundation in the United States. In open letter published this Tuesday on the organization’s website, the person responsible says he watched with “anguish” as Jonathan Glazer used “the platform of the Oscars to equate Hamas’ maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defense in the face of continued barbarity” of the same group. “His comments were factually inaccurate and morally indefensible,” added Schaecter, who is 94 years old.

“The ‘occupation’ you speak of has nothing to do with the Holocaust. The right of the Jewish people to live in the land of Israel predates the Holocaust by hundreds of years. The political and geographical scenario of today is the direct result of wars started by ancient Arab leaders who refused to accept the Jewish people as their neighbors in our historic homeland”, argues the person responsible, for whom Glazer “chose to use the Holocaust to validate your personal opinion.” “You made a film about the Holocaust and won an Oscar. And he is Jewish. Good for you. But it is shameful that you presume to speak on behalf of the six million Jews, including one and a half million children, who were murdered [durante a II Guerra Mundial] just because of his Jewish identity,” he writes.

Contrary to David Schaecter, Breaking the Silence stands in solidarity with Jonathan Glazer. In a reaction shared on social media, this Israeli organization, created and made up of veteran soldiers, applauded the director for repudiating “the cynical use of Judaism and the Holocaust” to justify the occupation of Palestine. “We refuse to accept the ease with which the blood and lives of civilians are used as justification for political ideologies, or as bargaining chips,” https://twitter.com/BtSIsrael/status/1767154094978801934 on X, ex-Twitter, Breaking the Silence.

Some figures present at the Oscars ceremony, such as Billie Eilish (who, with What was I made forwritten with brother Finneas O’Connell for the film Barbiewon the Oscar for Best Original Song) or actor Mark Ruffalo, wore a small red pin on their clothes calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.