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breaking the silence
Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer Speaks Out Against Israel's Hijacking of Holocaust to Justify Gaza War
"Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst," said Jonathan Glazer, director of The Zone of Interest.
Mar 11, 2024
The 96th annual Academy Awards on Sunday evening were marked by a number of statements—some vocal and some sartorial—in favor of Palestinian rights and against Israel's occupation and bombardment of Gaza, with filmmaker Jonathan Glazer directly addressing Zionists who have "hijacked" the Holocaust to justify relentless attacks on civilians.
Glazer accepted the award for Best International Feature Film for The Zone of Interest, his film about a Nazi commander who lives with his family just outside the walls of Auschwitz concentration camp, where gunshots and other sounds of the extermination of Jewish prisoners are audible from the commander's garden.
Glazer and producer James Wilson were adamant as they accepted the award that The Zone of Interest should not be viewed as a film about past events, but one that was "made to reflect and confront us in the present."
"Not to say, 'Look what they did then,' rather 'Look what we do now,'" said the director. "Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst."
"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.”
'Zone of Interest' director Jonathan Glazer spoke out about Israel's weaponisation of the Holocaust in his Oscar… pic.twitter.com/SM9JfhxvrO
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) March 11, 2024
Glazer then noted that both he and Wilson are among many Jewish people who object to the Israeli government's perennial claim—supported by Western countries including the U.S.—that Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and subjugation of Palestinian people is necessary to provide Jewish people with safety from the kind of persecution that ultimately led to the Holocaust.
"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," continued Glazer. "Whether the victims of October 7 in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization—how do we resist?"
Glazer's comments were immediately decontextualized by right-wing commentators including Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, who claimed the director displayed "moral rot" by telling the audience he refuted "his Jewishness."
"You're lying about what they said by adding a period in the middle of their sentence,"
said Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of the Jewish-led Palestinian rights group IfNotNow, which has frequently been accused of antisemitism by pro-Israel groups for objecting to Israeli apartheid. "They clearly meant they refute the way their Jewishness has been hijacked. You're supposed to be a journalist."
The Israeli group Breaking the Silence (BtS), run by veterans of the Israel Defense Forces who now object to the occupation, compared the outraged reaction to Glazer's speech to the aftermath of Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham's comments at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he spoke out against the subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank.
Abraham was immediately denounced as antisemitic by Israeli media and received death threats, while the German government announced it would open an investigation into the filmmaker's comments.
"These 'misunderstandings' aren't new," said BtS regarding the response of Ungar-Sargon and others.
"It's possible to oppose the killing of innocent civilians in Gaza and still care for the safety of Israeli hostages," added the group. "One can worry about Israelis who were evacuated from their homes after October 7 and still be horrified by the conditions in which so many are currently living in Gaza. We refuse to let this harsh reality make us less human, and that we refuse to accept the ease with which the blood and lives of civilians is used as a justification for political ideologies, or as a bargaining chip. Empathy is not a zero-sum game."
Other than Glazer's speech, most commentary about Israel's assault on Gaza—now in its sixth month and having killed at least 31,045 Palestinians as the Israeli government blocks nearly all humanitarian aid from reaching the population—was made through Oscar attendees' clothing choices.
Several actors and filmmakers wore red pins in support of Artists4Ceasefire, which toldThe Hill that members showed "collective support for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all of the hostages, and for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza."
Musician Billie Eilish, director Ava DuVernay, and actors including Ramy Youssef, Mark Ruffalo, Riz Ahmed, and Mahershala Ali were among those who wore the red pins.
Billie Eilish, Ramy Youssef, Ava DuVernay and other celebrities wore red pins at the Oscars in support for a cease-fire in Gaza. The design featured a single hand holding a heart and was organized by the group Artists4Ceasefire. pic.twitter.com/sj6HBzsoYi
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 11, 2024
"We're all calling for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza," Youssef told reporters. "We're calling for the safety of everyone involved, and we really want lasting justice and peace for the Palestinian people... We really want to say, just stop killing children."
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Israeli Groups Slam Netanyahu Government for Flouting ICJ Ruling
"We condemn the fact that Israel has so far failed to change its behavior."
Mar 11, 2024
A dozen Israeli human rights organizations have backed an open letter condemning their country's government for continuing to obstruct the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, despite the legally binding order issued in late January by the United Nations' highest court.
The International Court of Justice's (ICJ) interim decision states that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in the Gaza Strip and instructs the country's military to ensure the delivery of aid to Gaza's population, most of which is under growing threat of starvation and disease.
"The ICJ order is a legal obligation to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza," reads the Israeli groups' letter, which was first reported by The Guardian on Monday. "It must be abided by, not only to ease the urgent suffering of civilians but for the sake of humanity as a whole."
Both the Israeli government and ordinary Israelis have blocked food and other desperately needed aid from entering Gaza in recent months, intensifying what's been described as one of the worst humanitarian emergencies in modern history.
The World Food Program said last week that there's enough food sitting just outside Gaza to feed the territory's entire population as children inside the territory starve to death.
"Israeli conduct has consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza."
In their new letter, Breaking the Silence, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and other Israeli human rights groups "condemn the fact that Israel has so far failed to change its behavior based on the measures imposed by the ICJ, as well as the fact that humanitarian aid to Gaza dropped by 50% in the month following the ruling."
"We call for an immediate cease-fire, which must include the return of the hostages. We urge the Israeli government to comply with the ICJ order and implement the court's provisional measures, which are essential to mitigating and overcoming the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza," the groups wrote. "Moreover, we call on the international community to use its collective influence to promote and support an immediate cease-fire and the implementation of the provisional measures, and to increase its efforts to ensure that the Israeli hostages are returned from Gaza."
Israel reportedly provided a mandatory self-assessment on its compliance with the ICJ ruling to the court late last month, but the report has not been made public. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch issued separate statements on February 26 accusing the Israeli government of defying the ICJ order by systematically impeding the delivery of humanitarian aid.
In a report released last week, Refugees International noted that "despite its claims to be facilitating humanitarian aid," evidence on the ground "shows that Israeli conduct has consistently and groundlessly impeded aid operations within Gaza, blocked legitimate relief operations, and resisted implementing measures that would genuinely enhance the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza."
"Israeli authorities have consistently failed to take effective action to improve aid delivery," the report states. "Even with high-level interventions by U.S. and U.N. officials, this refusal reflects an unwillingness to facilitate aid delivery, echoing historical precedents of aid denials in Gaza."
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IDF Veteran Decries Impunity for Troops Killing Record Number of West Bank Children
Ori Givati, a member of the veterans' group Breaking the Silence, said holding Israeli troops accountable means raising "questions that we will not have good answers for if we want to continue the occupation."
Dec 20, 2023
Even before Israel's obliteration of the Gaza Strip killed, maimed, or left missing around 30,000 children—and counting—Israeli occupation forces were killing Palestinian minors in record numbers in the West Bank with impunity, a situation one former Israel Defense Forces combat soldier described in detail on Wednesday.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 499 Palestinians including 108 minors—104 boys and four girls—were killed by Israeli bombs, bullets, and so-called "less lethal" projectiles between January 1 and December 7 of this year. That's the highest number since OCHA began tracking such casualties in 2005 and shatters the previous record of 36 minors killed in 2022.
Ori Givati, advocacy director at Breaking the Silence—a whistleblower organization of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veterans opposing their country's illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem—told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in an article published Wednesday that it's "very rare" for Israeli troops to face punishment for killing any Palestinian civilian.
Givati said the IDF evades accountability by classifying incidents of civilian harm as unintentional or "operational errors."
He also said that Palestinian civilians including children are viewed by the IDF as "legitimate targets" due to generations of oppression and dehumanization by Israel.
A report published in August by Human Rights Watch (HRW) found that "the Israeli military and border police forces are killing Palestinian children with virtually no recourse for accountability."
Some of the children highlighted in the report were killed after throwing rocks or Molotov cocktails at heavily armored IDF vehicles.
Bill Van Esveld, an associate director for children's rights at HRW, told CBC that these minors did not pose a serious enough threat to Israeli troops to justify their "spraying the whole area with automatic gunfire" in response.
Last month, IDF troops shot and killed two children—one of them 8 or 9 years old—as they were running away during a raid on the Jenin refugee camp. An IDF spokesperson said Israeli troops opened fire with live rounds after "explosives" were thrown at them by one of the children; CCTV footage showed the slain boy holding an object about the size of a firecracker.
Critics have noted that Israel has a legal obligation under the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict and the Geneva Conventions to treat all minors—even those taking part in hostilities—as protected victims.
Under the Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, clarified by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 37/43, all Palestinians have the legal right to violently resist Israeli occupation. The 1982 resolution reaffirmed "the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity, and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle."
Givati also blamed IDF training for the high number of Palestinian child casualties, explaining that "as soldiers in occupied territories, we are not trained properly to operate as a policing force in the West Bank, which is what the military is at this moment when we have military law and a military occupation."
The veteran said there is danger of a chain reaction if the IDF started holding soldiers accountable for harming Palestinian civilians.
"That will very quickly lead us to ask very big questions about the occupation in the broader perspective," he said. "We will [have] questions that we will not have good answers for if we want to continue the occupation, which is what Israel is currently pursuing."
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