There have always been people so intent on saving their own skin that they would do anything, including hurting others or discarding their rights. Sadly, there are evil people in the world who inflict pain on others and then lie about it to coerce weak people to do their dirty work.
Refuting Judaism and Nazis
This effect has been seen in Israel, with some people demanding of Netanyahu to step aside, as if that would deliver the peace they want. There has been much talk of refuting Judaism but that will never save anyone from the Hamas terrorist agenda.
Jonathan Glazer directed a film that involved SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of the Death camp-concentration camp Auschwitz – from May 1940 – November 1943 and again from May 1944 until January 1945.
Höss tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler’s order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in Auschwitz gas chambers where more than a million people, men, women and children, mostly Jews, were murdered.
Glazer received a golden Oscar statuette for the film, ‘Zone of Interest’, in which he told the story about Rudolf Höss’ life in his home, a wall apart from the death camp.
The film is about the Höss family, happily and calmly living in a home surrounded with a garden and a vegetable patch, adjacent to the concentration camp’s walls; their daily panacea was recreation, while pathetically ignoring the ongoing extermination that Höss engineered just over the wall of their home.
Höss’ “extraordinarily” innovative murder efficiency by cotton filtered Zyklon B killed 2,000 people each hour.
Avoiding the gloomy aspect of Jews being murdered by Höss’s murder techniques, Glazer’s film did not cast one Jew. During the screening of the film one only hears the bitter cries of victims, mostly Jews, coming from behind Höss’ home wall while smoke covers the air from the crematoriums.
The Oscars
In 2000, speaking at the Oscars, the English comedian, actor, writer, producer, and director Ricky Gervais had some advice for Oscar winners.
“If you do win an award tonight don’t use it a platform to make a political speech, you’re in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about the real world.” – Ricky Gervais, 2000.
Sadly, Jonathan totally ignored that advice.
During the Oscars ceremony on March 10, 2024, when Jonathan Glazer became an Oscar statuette prize recipient, he was given the stage from which he could have mentioned the current tidal wave of antisemitism. He could have mentioned Jews fearing another Holocaust after the gruesome sample on October 7, 2023, a mini-Holocaust in Israel. He could have mentioned Jews being murdered in the Jewish state and elsewhere for being Jewish while crowds on city streets around the world yell, “gas the Jews.”
But he didn’t do that.
Instead, he used his Oscar winning night to state on stage for the world to hear, “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?,” and people in the audience cheered in approval.
Blaming The Wrong People
In his speech, Glazer blamed Israel for a non-existent “occupation.” That is an outright lie. Gaza has been occupied by the terrorist organization, Hamas, for the past 17 years.
He also said the government of Israel hijacked the Holocaust? How did they do that?
He blamed the war against Hamas on “occupation” (by Israel) as if it was not the result of the gruesome massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, so gleefully perpetrated by bloodthirsty Hamas terrorists.
Although Jonathan Glazer is Jewish, it is clear that he knows practically nothing about Israel or Gaza, or the people who live there. Most of what he knows probably came from the media, and much of that was sourced from Hamas propaganda.
Jonathan Glazer should improve his education and get his facts right, but the mainstream media will not help him to do that.
Sadly Jonathan Glazer is not the first Jew to talk of refuting Jewishness to appease those who want to eliminate Jews. During the 2000 years of their exile, Jews were often forced to refute their Jewishness in order to remain alive.
On the stage, he resembled the Kapo Jew; called “prisoner self-administration.” During the Holocaust these were members of the concentration camps prisoner functionary system that minimized costs by allowing camps to function with fewer SS personnel. The Jewish Kapos were assigned to collaborate with the Nazis to enforce Nazi rules, and often brought about the death of others.
Jonathan Glazer effectively sided with Hamas, Iran’s proxy, and their Gazan cohorts, who openly express their desire to kill, by all means possible, every single Jew.
We, Jews, somewhat understand what the Kapos faced; they faced the gut-wrenching choice to either help the Nazis or die. So I can now imagine what Jonathan would have done, feed the Nazi crocodile with the hope it would not eat him. But what happens when he runs out of food?
Postulation aside, Jonathan Glazer never faced such a life or death decision. He is a descendant of Jews who managed to escape the notorious Kishinev pogrom, the preamble to the Holocaust. They were lucky to arrive in the United Kingdom in the 1900s.
I am a daughter of Holocaust survivors, who lived through the systematic murder of Jews the Nazis perpetrated during WWII which followed the pogroms* in Russia in the 19th century. I grew up in a home in which the shadow of the Holocaust atrocities resided.
*A Pogrom is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.” Historically, the term refers to violent attacks by local non-Jewish populations on Jews in the Russian Empire and in other countries.
Parallels – Then and Now
Similar to Commandant Höss, Jonathan Glazer lives an upper echelon lifestyle in a London suburb. His parents made sure he received a fine education which handed him career opportunities. But Jonathan never lived in Israel where wars are endless and in the past two decades, rockets fired by Hamas from the south, and Hezbollah from the north, rained down on Israeli civilians at the will of terrorists.
In his safe haven, Jonathan, and most of the world, never had to hurry with children to a nearby bomb shelter. They never had to gather in trepidation in what they call a safe room. How safe that room is we witnessed on October 7, when Hamas penetrated most of them. Everyone should know what happened to the people who were hiding in those rooms. They were murdered in cold blood or kidnapped.
Jonathan Glaser thought he referenced a parallel between the horrors in his film and today’s horror in Israel, but he missed the point.
The parallel between the film and today is that Höss and his family were shielded from the mayhem going on over their wall. The Höss family totally ignored of the life-and death struggle going on. Likewise, Glazer, safe in his London home, pathetically ignore the struggle between Hamas and the people of Israel.
All he referred to is the Hamas propaganda heard via the media, and he believed it, as though it was the factual truth.
But it isn’t the truth – it is all propaganda and lies to which he subordinated to.
Lies crafted to make people care about the “innocent Gazans.”
Lies crafted to make them attack Hamas’ enemy, the government of Israel.
And Jonathan did exactly what Hamas wanted him to do.
The Hollywood crowd at the event, some of the most privileged people in the world, saw the same. They too sided with “the innocent Gazans,” against the Israeli government. They too ignored the fact that Hamas engineered the entire slaughter of Jews.
After 50+ years of propaganda, lies and obfuscation, it isn’t easy to understand what is really going on.
Many people have joined Senator Bernie Sanders, Rabbis for Ceasefire, the likes of Bar Kamsa, and their Kapo crowd who so well refute their Judaism.
Over the centuries the world got used to Jews going to the slaughter peacefully. They want Jews to agree to go quietly, without resistance.
There is one big difference for Jews now, that they haven’t had for two thousand years. Jews have recovered their own sovereign nation, Israel. Now they can rightfully defend themselves. These are stubborn Jews who now cause inconvenience to the world’s perception.
And the world apparently doesn’t like it. Jews have a tiny country, but it is theirs. They are surrounded by people who hate them. By people who want them to have nothing. By people who want them gone. Thankfully, not all are like that.
Perhaps it is for the best that some people refute their Judaism. The Jewish nation needs to know who it can rely upon when it is under attack. Now, when Israel is at war defending itself, when rockets are fired at Israeli civilians and Jews are harassed, even killed for their faith on US and European city streets, the Jewish community needs to know who it can rely on.
Too many people blame the Jews for Hamas atrocities that brought the war to them. Without even mentioning the hostages taken by Hamas as bargaining chips. Or the hostages being tortured, raped or murdered in captivity.
Whilst the Jewish blood that poured out during the October 7 massacre is barely dry, they closed their hearts to those communities who suffered the atrocious blow.
And have no illusion, refuting one’s Judaism did not save anyone from Höss’s death camp, just as it did not save the intellectual German-Jews who saw themselves more German than Jews. It did not save the Lefty Jews, the peace proponents of Southern Israel’s Kibbutzim. Their members were brutally attacked and murdered by the Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023.
Perhaps someone may have the opportunity to produce another Oscar contender movie about the lifestyle of the Nazi-like terrorist Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas commandant and his extended family. Just like Höss, Sinwar escapes reality. He hides not behind walls but deep in terror tunnels. The Israel Defense Forces could provide enough material for this script.
