More than 450 Jewish Hollywooders repudiate director’s anti-Israel Oscar remarks

Actors, producers, writers and other movie professionals said blame for the Israel-Hamas war belongs solely to Hamas.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

More than 450 Jewish Hollywooders repudiated Jonathan Glazer’s anti-Israel remarks at the Oscars ceremony, saying that he did not speak for them, Variety reported Monday.

In an open letter sent to the entertainment magazine, the group wrote, “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,” the letter continues. “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,” the group added. “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.”

Those signing the letter included respected actors such as Debra Messing, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brett Gelman, Tovah Feldshuh and Julianna Margulies.

Producer Amy Pascal, director Eli Roth, and writer Amy Sherman-Palladino were some of the other creatives who joined them.

Glazer had taken the stage after winning the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for “Zone of Interest.”

The director took the opportunity to denounce the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the terrorists’ October 7 invasion of Israel when they massacred 1,200 people and took 253 hostages.

Sharing the stage with producer James Wilson and executive producer Len Blavatnik, he said, in part, “All our choices are made to reflect and confront us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather ‘Look what we do now…. 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.”

His movie is about how the family of Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Hess, lived right outside the concentration camp without acknowledging what was happening. It was slammed by some critics for barely showing a Jewish victim, even if the point was to portray the banality of evil.

Blavatnik later said that Glazer had not told him what he was going to say, but did not criticize his colleague.

His fellow executive producer, Danny Cohen, was the first to reject Glazer’s statement.

Interviewed on the Unholy podcast Friday, the president of Access Entertainment said, “It’s really important to recognize it’s upset a lot of people and a lot of people feel upset and angry about it. And I understand that anger frankly.”

“I just fundamentally disagree with Jonathan on this,” he added. “The war and the continuation of the war is the responsibility of Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization which continues to hold and abuse the hostages, which doesn’t use its tunnels to protect the innocent civilians of Gaza but uses it to hide themselves and allow Palestinians to die. I think the war is tragic and awful and the loss of civilian life is awful, but I blame Hamas for that.”