Tony Kushner has come out in assist of Jonathan Glazer‘s Oscars acceptance speech, describing the British director’s feedback on the ceremony as an “unimpeachable irrefutable assertion.”
Talking on the Haaretz Podcast which was launched Wednesday, Kushner, a four-time Academy Award nominated screenwriter, was requested about his emotions about quite a few subjects associated to the Israel-Gaza battle and introduced up Glazer’s speech which has been attacked by some Jewish figures in Hollywood and was the topic of a current open letter that has signed by 1,000 individuals.
Throughout the podcast, Kushner, who’s in Israel to advertise a manufacturing of Angels in America in Tel Aviv, brings up the blowback to Glazer’s Oscars speech, a speech which he described as “actually form of unimpeachable, irrefutable assertion.” The playwright is then requested if he agrees with Glazer’s feedback, to which Kushner says, “After all, I imply, who doesn’t?”
Kushner explains, “What [Glazer’s] saying is so, is so easy. He’s saying Jewishness, Jewish id, Jewish historical past, the historical past of the Holocaust, the historical past of Jewish struggling should not be used as an excuse for a undertaking of dehumanizing or slaughtering different individuals.”
“It is a misappropriation of what it means to be a Jew, what the Holocaust meant, and he rejects that. Who doesn’t agree with that?,” he continues.
“What sort of individual thinks that what’s occurring now in Gaza is suitable?,” Kushner says. “And if you end up saying out loud and in public, ‘oh it’s high-quality with me what they’re doing,’ since you really feel that it’s the one alternative for you, since you’re a Jew, is to defend all the things that Israel does, , disgrace on you.”
Earlier within the podcast, Kushner, who has been a very long time critic of Israel’s, and significantly Benjamin Netanyahu’s, insurance policies and remedy of Palestinians, addressed accusations that calling for a ceasefire was antisemitism. “The folks that I do know who’re passionately concerned in requires a ceasefire, these aren’t people who find themselves antisemites, their curiosity just isn’t in destroying Israel and positively their curiosity just isn’t in pogroms in opposition to Jews elsewhere.”
“What they’re actually all for, and the eagerness and the trend that you simply’re seeing, is as a result of 1000’s of lives are at stake, tens of 1000’s tens of millions of lives are at stake. As a result of earlier than our eyes, what actually appears rather a lot like ethnic cleaning, to me, is occurring,” Kushner says. “I imply, I are likely to consider the individuals on the intense proper in Netanyahu’s cupboard who say, ‘yeah it’s ours now’, how is that not ethnic cleaning?”
Kushner stated he needed “Israelis to have the ability to reside in peace and safety,” however added the “remedy of the Palestinians, as many Israelis have been saying for many years, the occupation of the West Financial institution and the imprisonment of individuals in Gaza, and the checkpoints, and the wall, and all these items truly doesn’t make Israel protected.”