Jonathan Glazer gets another serve

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Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants could not let Jonathan Glazer’s prepared Oscar speech pass by without its comment.

Jonathan Glazer acceptance speech for the award for “The Zone of Interest” from the United Kingdom, for best international feature film during the Oscars on Sunday, March 10, 2024, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello) READ LESS

President George Foster penned: “As a child of survivors and President of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants, I was shocked, distressed and angered by the comments made by Jonathan Glazer upon receiving an award at last week’s Oscar ceremony. To have invoked the Holocaust in the context of the Israel/Hamas war was not only egregious and hurtful especially for survivors but ahistorical. Dehumanisation was practised by the Nazis in order to exterminate the Jewish people. To accuse Israel of such behaviour totally ignores the efforts the Israeli army makes to protect the Palestinian people and move them from harm’s way as best possible in the face of Hamas’s efforts to use them as human shields. To draw an equivalence between the Nazi executioners and those fighting to ensure that such a genocide will never be repeated is an outrageous insult to survivors and to the six million who were murdered for no other reason than that they were Jewish.

Dr George Foster, President of the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants

Glazer may think that he has renounced his Jewishness, however, there are many who will never allow him to forget it. In Nazi Germany, they made no distinction based on political affiliation, religious belief, or social status. If they counted you as Jewish by their definition based on your grandparents Jewishness, then you were destined for extermination with your fellow Jews. In fact, I believe Hamas would have the same intention. In fact, they have demonstrated such actions by murderously attacking Israeli towns whose citizens had fought for peace and assisted Palestinians.

In the face of rapidly increasing antisemitism, it is particularly galling for someone who was born into the Jewish nation to have invoked the Holocaust to criticise Israel when receiving an Oscar for a movie about the Holocaust itself. This only adds fuel to our enemies at a time when we are already under serious attack. We can only hope that Jonathan Glazer critically re-examines his regrettable remarks from his privileged and comfortable life and recognises the hurt and anguish he has wrought upon the Jewish community and survivors and their families in particular.