The two-time Oscar winner for Best International Film and Best Sound was the British film ‘Area of Interest’, about the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The film’s director and screenwriter, Jonathan Glazer, made a statement at the awards ceremony regarding the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. He claimed that there is a moral equivalence between the Nazi regime, which sought to exterminate the Jews, and the people of Israel, who have for years resisted the urge to destroy it: “Our film shows what dehumanization leads to,” he noted. – “It has shaped our entire past and present. The victims of 7 October in Israel or the victims of the ongoing war in Gaza are all a consequence of dehumanization.” 

Glazer used the Oscar ceremony to equate Hamas’ shocking brutality against innocent Israelis with Israel’s required self-defensive actions in the face of the Hamas ideology’s cruelty.

In the struggle against the humanistic ideals promoted by the followers of all Abrahamic religions, radical Islamists are ready to kill, burn, rape, and behead, as they did to the German-Israeli young woman Shani Luk. The photo of her lying unconscious in the back of a Hamas pickup truck that was taking her to Gaza spread around the world as a symbol of both horror and desperate hope that maybe she was still alive at the time. For some time, Shani’s relatives and acquaintances in Germany and Israel kept this hope and prayed, but then the girl’s skull was found and identified. What an incomprehensible barbarity it is that drove someone to cut her head off.

Moreover, the UN Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Pramila Patten, said on 4 March in a report issued following a 17-day visit to Israel that the team of experts she led had found “clear and convincing” information on the rape and sexual torture suffered by hostages taken during the 7 October terrorist attack on Israel.

Victims of radical Islamist brutality emphasize the ruthlessness and immorality of terror, which Glazer attempts to justify with his statements.

In response to Glazer’s Oscar acceptance speech, more than 450 Jewish Hollywood professionals signed an open letter saying, “…Every civilian death in the Gaza Strip is tragic. Israel is not attacking civilians. It is acting against Hamas. The moment Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders, the heartbreaking war that began after the Hamas attacks of 7 October will end. Using words such as “occupation” to describe the Jewish people defending their ancient homeland and a recognized state is just a history distortion. Such statements lend authenticity to the current blood libel that fuels the growing anti-Jewish hatred around the world, including in the United States and Hollywood. The current climate of rising anti-Semitism only underscores once again the need for a Jewish state of Israel – a place that will always welcome us. Which is what no state did during the Holocaust, depicted in Mr Glazer’s film.”

Len Blavatnik, who financed the film and was on stage at the award ceremony, distanced himself from Glazer’s message. His spokesman told the famous American film magazine Variety: “His (Blavtnik’s) longstanding support for Israel is unwavering.”

President of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, M.Mirilashvili, noted: “The talented film director at the ceremony in Hollywood insulted the memory of those who died during the Holocaust and on 7 October in Israel. Glazer’s words downplay the Shoah and justify crimes of the most heinous kind and thus give new strength to the supporters of terror. Outside of any connection with political views, Glazer’s speech, an example of self-loathing, is worthy of condemnation, which has been done by many prominent figures in the world film industry.

Israel has become the collective image of the Jewry. The Israelis, descendants of the Biblical Jews, eternal wanderers of history, victims of pogroms and blood libels, who for hundreds of years did not have their statehood but who created their state on the land of their ancestors, are once again on the front line of the struggle for human values, the foundations of Western civilization, against barbarism and the ideology of death. We will fulfill our mission, no matter what it takes, as we always persistently did”.