The 2024 Oscars have come and gone, and not a soul would blame you for skipping out on these “festivities.”
In between “gross” jokes and a poorly received in memoriam video, you wouldn’t have missed much otherwise.
As they often are (to floundering ratings), the Oscars were largely a chance for Hollywood elites to pat themselves on the back — something you get enough in everyday life sans a televised special.
But if you skipped out on the 2024 Oscars (again, probably the best option) you actually missed out on one of the most evil, vile and despicable award acceptance speeches, perhaps ever given.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, “The Zone of Interest” director Jonathan Glazer sparked outrage when he used his award acceptance speech to equate the Holocaust to what Israel is currently engaging in with Hamas terrorists.
In perhaps the most infuriating twist, “The Zone of Interest” (which won “Best International Feature Film”) is a German drama that explicitly looks at the horrors of the Holocaust.
But don’t listen to this writer excoriating the victory speech.
Listen to the president of the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation.
“I am 94 years old and the only member of 105 souls in my family to survive the Holocaust,” HSF president David Schaecter said in a public letter. “I miraculously survived nearly three years in the hell of Auschwitz and one year in the hell of Buchenwald.
Have you stopped watching the Oscars?
“I watched in anguish Sunday night when I heard you use the platform of the Oscars ceremony to equate Hamas’s maniacal brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s difficult but necessary self-defense in the face of Hamas’s ongoing barbarity.
“Your comments were factually inaccurate and morally indefensible.”
Those “comments,” per THR, included remarks like: “Our film shows where dehumanization 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 the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza — all the victims of this dehumanization… how do we resist?”
Yes, Glazer, whom is identified as Jewish by Shaecter, thinks there is a moral equivalency between the horrors of Oct. 7 and Israel’s ongoing campaign to root out Hamas terrorists.
You don’t need to have survived the Holocaust to see the absurdity of that comparison.
(Seriously, Google “Shani Louk” to get an idea of how savagely Hamas acted in early October.)
“The ‘occupation’ of which you speak has nothing ot do with the Holocaust,” the 94-year-old Shaecter continued. “The Jewish people’s existence and right to live in the land of Israel predates the Holocaust by hundreds of years.
“Today’s political and geographic landscape is the direct result of wars started by past Arab leaders who refused to accept Jewish people as their neighbors in our historic homeland.
“Now that several Arab countries are making peace with Israel because security and prosperity are better for all people, Iran and its terrorist proxies started another war, abetted by too many who, through naiveté or malice, blame ‘the occupation.’”
It wasn’t just Shaecter and the HSF that took issue with Glazer’s remarks.
“Instead Glazer used a common refrain from Jew-haters — that the Holocaust is the ‘get out of jail free card’ for Jews,” lamented Allison Josephs, the woman behind the only Jewish Hollywood Bureau in existence, per THR. “He blamed Jews for their own massacre by saying that ‘the occupation led to conflict for so many people,’ which is why he was refuting his Jewishness and the Holocaust being used for this purpose.
“Cillian Murphy accepted his award as ‘a very proud Irishman.’ If only we had a SINGLE Jew in Hollywood who could accept their award as a very proud Jew.”
But it was Shaecter who offered the most biting assessment of Glazer’s speech.
“Worse is that you chose to use the Holocaust to validate your personal opinion,” the HSF president continued. “You made a Holocaust movie and won an Oscar. And you are Jewish. Good for you. But it is disgraceful for you to presume to speak for the six million Jews, including one and a half million children, who were murdered solely because of their Jewish identity.
“And it is disgraceful for you to presume to speak for those of us who personally saw the world stand silent as our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins were murdered. We actually had nowhere to go – – no possible place of refuge. No country would accept us even though world leaders knew full well that thousands of Jews were being murdered every day.
“There was no Jewish nation to which we could flee.
“You should be ashamed of yourself for using Auschwitz to criticize Israel.
“If the creation, existence, and survival of the State of Israel as a Jewish state equates to ‘occupation’ in your mind, then you obviously learned nothing from your movie.”
