After high Hollywood stars like Michael Rapaport and Debra Messing joined 450 Jewish leisure business insiders to denounce an Oscar winner’s speech condemning Israel, an extra 500 individuals joined the trouble when it went viral in a single day.
The Hollywood Reporter reported Tuesday that the signatories to an open letter repudiating “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer greater than doubled, now topping 1,000 Jewish members of the leisure group.
“The Zone of Interest,” a few Nazi household’s life subsequent to Auschwitz, took house two Academy Awards earlier this month, together with for Greatest Worldwide Movie, throughout which Glazer gave his controversial speech.
“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst,” Glazer mentioned. “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?”
Debra Messing, Julianna Margulies and Michael Rapaport have been among the many high-profile Jewish entertainers denouncing filmmaker Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar speech about Israe. (Getty Pictures)
In an open letter launched Monday, the group of tons of responded to Glazer, “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.
“Each civilian loss of life in Gaza is tragic. However Israel just isn’t concentrating on civilians. It’s concentrating on Hamas. The second Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders is the second this heartbreaking battle ends. This has been true for the reason that Hamas assaults of October seventh.”
The signatories continued, “The usage of phrases like ‘occupation’ to explain an indigenous Jewish individuals defending a homeland that dates again hundreds of years, and has been acknowledged as a state by the United Nations, distorts historical past. It offers credence to the trendy blood libel that fuels a rising anti-Jewish hatred all over the world, in america, and in Hollywood. The present local weather of rising antisemitism solely underscores the necessity for the Jewish State of Israel, a spot which can all the time take us in, as no state did in the course of the Holocaust depicted in Mr. Glazer’s movie.”
Among the other high-profile names attached to the letter were actors Julianna Margulies, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tovah Feldshuh, Lisa Edelstein and Brett Gelman, top producer Amy Pascal, and filmmakers Eli Roth and Rod Lurie.
“There was no concern for the way Jewish persons are going to react to a speech like that, to that applause to these crimson pins, when not even our hostages are being talked about, and it’s simply extremely hurtful, extremely painful,” Gelman informed Variety. “It’s actually baffling to me that folks have been selecting to be silent that evening.”
Representatives for Glazer didn’t reply to Fox News Digital‘s requests for remark.
Jonathan Glazer accepts the Best International Feature Film award for “The Zone of Curiosity” at the 96th Annual Oscars held at Dolby Theatre on March 10, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Rich Polk/Variety via Getty Images) (Photo by Rich Polk/Variety via Getty Images)
Glazer’s words were also rejected by one of his film’s executive producers, Danny Cohen, who said last week, “I simply essentially disagree with Jonathan.”
“It’s actually necessary to acknowledge it’s upset lots of people and lots of people really feel upset and indignant about it. And I perceive that anger frankly,” Cohen said on the Unholy podcast. “The battle and the continuation of the battle is the accountability of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group which continues to carry and abuse the hostages, which doesn’t use its tunnels to guard the harmless civilians of Gaza however makes use of it to cover themselves and permit Palestinians to die. I believe the battle is tragic and terrible and the lack of civilian life is terrible, however I blame Hamas for that.”
The speech was additional condemned in an open letter by The Holocaust Survivors’ Basis.
“I watched in anguish Sunday evening once I heard you employ the platform of the Oscars ceremony to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality in opposition to harmless Israelis with Israel’s tough however crucial self-defense within the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity. Your feedback have been factually inaccurate and morally indefensible,” Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA president and 94-year-old Holocaust survivor David Schaecter wrote to Glazer.
“The ‘occupation’ of which you converse has nothing to do with the Holocaust. The Jewish individuals’s existence and proper to dwell within the land of Israel predates the Holocaust by tons of of years. At this time’s political and geographic panorama is the direct results of wars began by previous Arab leaders who refused to simply accept Jewish individuals as their neighbors in our historic homeland. Now that a number of Arab international locations are making peace with Israel as a result of safety and prosperity are higher for all individuals, Iran and its terrorist proxies began one other battle, abetted by too many, who, by means of naïveté or malice, blame ‘the occupation.’”
Jonathan Glazer (R), winner of the Best International Feature Film award for “The Zone of Curiosity”, poses in the press room during the 96th Annual Academy Awards at Ovation Hollywood on March 10, 2024 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images)
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“Worse is that you simply selected to make use of the Holocaust to validate your private opinion. You made a Holocaust film and gained an Oscar. And you’re Jewish. Good for you. However it’s disgraceful so that you can presume to talk for the six million Jews, together with one and half million kids, who have been murdered solely due to their Jewish id,” Schaecter continued.
“And it’s disgraceful so that you can presume to talk for these of us who personally noticed the world stand silent as our moms, father, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins have been murdered. We truly had nowhere to go – no potential place for refuge. No nation would settle for us regardless that world leaders knew full properly that hundreds of Jews have been being murdered each day. There was no Jewish nation to which we might flee. Try to be ashamed of your self for utilizing Auschwitz to criticize Israel.”
“The Zone of Curiosity” offers a harrowing depiction of a Nazi commander’s family living next to the atrocities of the Auschwitz concentration camps. The film earned five Oscar nominations including Best Picture, and Glazer himself was nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
Fox News’ Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.
