{"id":1573670,"date":"2024-03-26T05:55:26","date_gmt":"2024-03-26T05:55:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=317119"},"modified":"2024-03-26T05:55:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T05:55:26","slug":"close-up-of-death-culture-1000-in-entertainment-biz-proclaim-support-for-gaza-slaughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/26\/close-up-of-death-culture-1000-in-entertainment-biz-proclaim-support-for-gaza-slaughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Close-up of Death Culture: 1,000 in Entertainment Biz Proclaim Support for Gaza Slaughter"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Poster for the film The Zone of Interest directed by Jonathan Glazer<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, Variety<\/i> reported that \u201cmore than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer\u2019s \u2018The Zone of Interest\u2019 Oscar speech.\u201d The angry letter<\/a> is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers\u2019 own loved ones.<\/p>\n

A few ethical words from Glazer while accepting his award provoked outrage. He spoke of wanting to refute \u201cJewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,\u201d and he followed with a vital question: \u201cWhether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?\u201d<\/p>\n

Those words were too much for the letter\u2019s signers, who included many of Hollywood\u2019s powerful producers, directors and agents. For starters, they accused Glazer (who is Jewish) of \u201cdrawing 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, that accusation embodied what Glazer had confronted from the Academy Awards stage when he said that what\u2019s crucial in the present is \u201cnot to say, \u2018Look what they did then,\u2019 rather, \u2018Look what we do now.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But the letter refused to look at what Israel is doing now as it bombs, kills, maims and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where there are now 32,000<\/a> known dead and 74,000<\/a> injured. The letter\u2019s moral vision only looked back at what the Third Reich did. Its signers endorsed the usual Zionist polemics — fitting neatly into Glazer\u2019s description of \u201cJewishness and the Holocaust\u201d being \u201chijacked by an occupation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter even denied that an occupation actually exists — objecting to \u201cthe use of words like \u2018occupation\u2019 to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years.\u201d Somehow the Old Testament was presumed to be sufficient justification for the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, most of whose ancestors lived in what\u2019s now Israel. The vast majority of 2.2 million people have been driven from their bombed-out homes in Gaza, with many now facing starvation due to blockage of food.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s extreme restrictions on food and other vital supplies are causing deaths from starvation and disease as well as enormous suffering. In early March, a panel of U.N. experts issued a statement<\/a> that declared: \u201cIsrael has been intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October. Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys.\u201d (So much for the anti-Glazer letter\u2019s claim that \u201cIsrael is not targeting civilians.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Last weekend, on Egypt\u2019s border at the crossing to Rafah, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: “Here from this crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all. A long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other. That is more than tragic. It is a moral outrage.”<\/p>\n

But there is not the slightest hint of any such moral outrage in the letter signed by the more than 1,000 \u201ccreatives, executives and Hollywood professionals.\u201d Instead, all the ire is directed at Glazer for pointing out that moral choices on matters of life and death are not merely consigned to the past. The crimes against humanity committed by Nazi Germany against Jews are in no way exculpatory for the crimes against humanity now being committed by Israel.<\/p>\n

What Glazer said<\/a> in scarcely one minute retains profound moral power that no distortions<\/a> can hide. Continuity exists between the setting of \u201cThe Zone of Interest\u201d eight decades ago and today\u2019s realities as the United States supports Israel\u2019s genocidal actions: \u201cOur film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst. It shaped all of our past and present. 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?\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the movie\u2019s focus is on the lives of a man and a woman preoccupied with career, status and material well-being. Such preoccupations are hardly unfamiliar in the movie industry, where silence or support for the Gaza war are common among professionals — in contrast to Jonathan Glazer and others, Jewish or not, who have spoken out in his defense<\/a> or for a ceasefire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat he was saying is so simple: that Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering, must not be used in the campaign as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people,\u201d the playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner said<\/a> in an interview with an Israeli newspaper days ago. He called Glazer\u2019s statement from the Oscars stage \u201cunimpeachable and irrefutable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even without signing the open letter that denounced Glazer\u2019s comments, some in the entertainment industry felt compelled to assert their backing for a country now engaged in a genocidal war. Notably, a spokesperson for the financier of Glazer\u2019s film, Len Blavatnik, responded to the controversy by telling<\/a> Variety<\/i> that \u201chis long-standing support of Israel is unwavering.\u201d<\/p>\n

How many more Palestinian civilians will Israel murder before such \u201csupport for Israel\u201d begins to waver?<\/p>\n

The post Close-up of Death Culture: 1,000 in Entertainment Biz Proclaim Support for Gaza Slaughter<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Variety reported that \u201cmore than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer\u2019s \u2018The Zone of Interest\u2019 Oscar speech.\u201d The angry letter is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers\u2019 More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Close-up of Death Culture: 1,000 in Entertainment Biz Proclaim Support for Gaza Slaughter<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1573670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1573671,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1573670\/revisions\/1573671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1573670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1573670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1573670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}