Mick Hartley

There's been quite a reaction to Jonathan Glazer's Oscar acceptance speech. The passage in question: 

‘Our film shows where dehumanisation 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 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack in Gaza.’

A Holocaust survivor has penned an open letter denouncing the “factually inaccurate and morally indefensible” comments.

Written by Holocaust Survivor’s Foundation (HSF) president David Schaecter and signed by 18 members of the organisation’s US executive committee, the letter attacks Glazer’s use of his platform “to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defence in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity”.

Also:

In a statement posted Monday morning on X (formerly Twitter), the Anti-Defamation League wrote: “Israel is not hijacking Judaism or the Holocaust by defending itself against genocidal terrorists. Glazer’s comments at the Oscars are both factually incorrect & morally reprehensible. They minimize the Shoah & excuse terrorism of the most heinous kind.”

A spokesperson for the World Jewish Congress called Glazer’s comments “an affront to the memory of those who endured the horrors of the Holocaust. There is no comparison between the Nazis’ attempt to annihilate the Jewish people and the defensive war that Israel is waging in response to the October 7th attacks carried out by Hamas.”

It's so badly expressed. Whatever he was trying to say, "refute" doesn't work. "Refute their Jewishness"? What does that mean? Deny their Jewishness? Withdraw their Jewishness? I suppose it's something like: object (in strong terms) to the support their Jewishness implies to the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation etc. etc… But then, what occupation? Gaza, now? Or the whole Israel project? And in what way is the Holocaust being hijacked? By whom? Again it's unclear, but the implication has to be: Israel – the state of Israel. Whereas from any sane perspective, surely, the only way the Holocaust is being hijacked at the moment is the constant obscene Free Palestine insistence that Israel is now carrying out its own Holocaust, its own genocide, against the Palestinians.

But Glazer chose not to go that way.

It's hard to disagree with Nicole Lampert: he couldn't resist playing the good Jew in front of the Hollywood crowd:

I understand why he would want to perhaps use this moment of success to talk about war. I empathise with why he would want to point out how each side in every war dehumanises the other. But by linking the Holocaust and Gaza he has trampled on the six million dead and the particular pernicious way in which they were slaughtered.

And by doing it As A Jew he wins double plaudits from Jew haters while leaving the rest of us – already labouring under a tsunami of antisemitism – feeling like we have been punched in the stomach. Betrayal is so much harder when it is one of your own. It really hurts.