by Sally Zahav
When support for Israel is considered a crime by the media and western politics, prominent Jews in the U.S. choose to turn their back and win applause from the locals. This will not stand.
I never watch the Hollywood award ceremonies. Not the Oscars, Academy Awards or any others. For me, it's enough to read about the fallout the next day - and sometimes the brouhaha that is created lasts days or weeks - witness all the media attention generated by the Chris Rock-Will Smith slapping incident at the Academy Awards presentation in March of 2022.
This year, the uproar was caused - justifiably - by the acceptance speech given by Jonathan Glazer, who won first prize in the category of International Films. Much has been said as well as written about the speech from different points of view.
Below is an article by an Israeli writer, Ran Baratz, entitled, loosely, "They Don't Get It". It appeared in the Diokan Magazine section of the March 15th issue of the Makor Rishon Newspaper. What appears below is my translation from the Hebrew of the original article.
They Don’t
Get it - by Ran Baratz
When support for Israel is considered a crime by the media and western politics, prominent Jews in the U.S. choose to turn their back and win applause from the locals. This will not stand.
Two Jews shook the Jewish world this week. One is Judith Butler, a cultural and intellectual icon of the Woke movement, the current alternative to the ‘Progressives’, who said, while taking part in a panel in France, “We can all have different views about Hamas as a political party, we may have different points of view about armed resistance. But I think that it is more honest and more historically correct to say that what happened on October 7 was not a terror attack and not an anti-Semitic attack.”
The other was Jonathan Glazer, whose film, “The Zone of Interest”, won an Oscar in the area of international films. In his emotional acceptance speech in front of the Woke industry in Hollywood, he said, “All of our choices are meant to reflect and challenge us in the present. Not to say, ‘Look what they did then’, but to say, ‘Look what we are doing now’. Our film shows where de-humanization leads at its worst. It’s 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 in battle, whether on October 7 in Israel or the continuing attacks in Gaza. All the victims of this dehumanization”. Applause and tears flooded the hall.
Allow me to insert a comment about Glazer’s film, which deals with the Holocaust and describes the life of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Hoess and his family in their home near the camp. The critics praise it, but in my opinion, it is a very boring, shallow and poor film. There is an intolerable incongruity between the plastic characters, the empty plot and banal aesthetics on the one hand, and the pomposity and self-importance of the film on the other, which is based on an unoriginal gimmick of indirect contemplation of the horror of the Holocaust. As usual with post-modern art, the weakness of creativity is to be excused by the pompous political message, which is also unoriginal and is based on the claim in Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men”.
Therefore, they who believe that Glazer’s anti-Semitic speech contradicts his film are mistaken, because the thesis of Ordinary Men is not only that the Nazis were ordinary men, but - and here is its most important message - that anyone can be a Nazi. When this theory is applied to the Jews in Israel, only the modality is different: Not that “anyone can”, but that “they” (Israelis) can. This message, intrinsic to the film, got Glazer an Oscar, and when it became explicit in this speech, it was applauded, as was he.
But let’s return to the matter at hand. Where does Butler’s and Glazer’s anti-Semitism come from? Actually, we might expect an awakening. Many Jews are experiencing shock and depression since October 7, while in the free West there are waves of pro-Hamas sentiment along with blatant anti-Semitism toward the grieving Jews. But as you see, this is what is happening.
To understand this, we need to examine the state of anti-Semitism in the world. But before we do that, let’s keep in mind that politics is, by its essence, a “game of coalition”, meaning it is built on the boundaries of cooperation. These boundaries are the key to understanding the players’ fundamental values. The factor for deciding who is a legitimate partner for cooperation and who unworthy, is the deepest expression of the true order of ideological priorities”.
As we know, the most pronounced concentration of anti-Semitism in current times is in the Muslim world, which comprises almost two billion people. And contrary to the West, it is official and explicit – religiously, ideologically and politically. Sometimes the question is asked how many people in the Muslim world are “radical”. And the answers vary, in keeping with the definition and ideological motivation, between less than one percent and 25%. From the point of view of coalition games, it is a secondary question, because when it comes to anti-Semitism, the moderate Muslim is in a coalition with radical Islam and not with its opposition. Islam is radical in part, but almost entirely anti-Semitic.
How does the West respond to this anti-Semitism? Shockingly, the Woke Left accepts it and includes it within its ideological coalition. The extent of anti-Semitism in the West is expanded by moderate Muslims that emigrate to the West, who faithfully support the radicals, and by the Left, which has created an ideological coalition with them.
What can explain the Woke Left’s coalition based on hatred? The answer is clear to anyone who has been following the dramatic radicalization of the Left. The Woke culture is totally based on a pseudo-moral world-view, which essentially, casts a simplistic distinction between “the oppressors” and “the oppressed”, “the strong” and “the weak”, which are, respectively, “the evil” and “the good”.
This distinction is false, inconsistent and absurd from an intellectual point of view. The hypocritical goal is to accuse the West of every evil and among other things, to exonerate Islam from any guilt. However, this is the ideological mainstay in the world-view of most of the Left, certainly for the youth. We saw this just a few months ago, when bin Laden’s letter went viral and was considered to be an “eye-opener”.
When the Left is in office this coalition-type anti-Semitism has significant political ramifications. Obama, Kerry and Biden were outraged by my appointment to head the hasbara system when it was revealed that I had said that their administration suffers from “modern anti-Semitism”. My meaning was clearly to a tolerance for Iran and their attempts to appease it and promote it: while Iran openly says that it intends to destroy Israel, they called it a “positive regional force”. Such a phenomenon is possible only in a coalition of the New Left, with its anti-Semitic components.
The Woke movement’s greatest success is drawing new lines in the political arena in accordance with the lines of its own distorted values. It has succeeded to label anyone who is not “woke” as a “fascist” and an “oppressor” and as such, an unworthy partner. On the other hand, anti-Semitism, when it happens in the name of “the oppressed”, is legitimate and understandable. This is how the moderate Left lives peacefully with the blatantly anti-Semitic branch of the elected representatives of the Democratic Party (known as “the Squad”), while it views Trump, a moderate rightist in the best case, as a political pariah.
The continuing radicalization of the Left in the West is very problematic and concerning. The new anti-Semitic coalition, which aggressively punishes anyone who diverges from its ranks, is the end point of the radical Woke, a blatantly totalitarian movement, which has successfully taken over the academy, the media, culture and politics on the Left. And yes, it is happening here too, in the academy, in the media, in state institutions and the legal system. Israel is also becoming Woke, and as a result, more tolerant of anti-Semitism.
Let’s close the circle. Jews in the U.S., especially among the Reform, are in a difficult situation. They are white, Jewish, woke and are suspected of the “crime” of supporting Israel. In order to shake off the guilt of deviating from their coalition boundaries, cultural leaders such as Butler and Glazer sacrifice members of their own people, the Jews, in a public ritual, on the altar of the new anti-Semitism. The applause shows that their oath of loyalty is still acceptable. The time will come when someone will make a film of this tragedy – which apparently will not win any prize in Hollywood.
Sally Zahav
Source: Middle East and Terrorism Blog
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