On video: Oppenheimer being announced as the best film of 2023/courtesy of AMPAS© 2024, yes and +STING
It is likely that Jonathan Glazer was the only Oscar nominee in the foreign film category (or as it is politically correct: "International Film") who even bothered to write a speech, since he was the clear favorite to win the golden statuette.
Still, he was excited.
The British-Jewish director's hands were shaking as he read his winning speech.
It could have been a beautiful story about a creator who became famous at all as a director of music videos for Radiohead, Jamiroquai and Nick Cave - and reached at the age of 58 with his fourth film in total a peak that any filmmaker can dream of: winning an Oscar.
But instead of a beautiful story, we got a predictable storm.
First, since Glaser's words have been misquoted by quite a few clickbait-hungry media outlets, let's address the sentence that caused a stir.
"We stand here as people who oppose the appropriation of Judaism and the Holocaust by an occupation that led to a conflict that harmed so many innocent people. Whether these are the victims of the October Shi'a in Israel or the ongoing attack in Gaza."
Basically, he is saying something that we have heard for more than fifty years in different variations, from different parts of the Israeli left: the occupation corrupts.
Glazer's words are impolite, annoying in the post-October 7 reality, and mostly far from accurate.
In the context of Glaser's film, which depicts life outside the walls of Auschwitz, they evoke a startling connotation.
But in the end, they are just words.
A decorated director's opinion.
You can argue with him, you can ignore him.
We all know that Glazer's words could have been said by quite a few Israelis, certainly in the months leading up to the October 7th massacre, and they would not even have been considered particularly extreme.
Imagine a political activist against the legal coup taking the stage at Kaplan on October 6 and charging that the messiahs who are trying to drag Israel into a bi-national state for religious reasons are trying to hijack Judaism for political purposes.
Before the war it wouldn't even get a push.
Today?
It turns out to be an auto-anti-Semitic statement.
misquoted.
Glaser with the Oscar/GettyImages, Arturo Holmes
All the news broadcasts in Israel referred to Glazer's win and his speech.
I randomly watched 7 different programs on channels 11, 12, 13 and 14 and in none of them did they refer to the essence of things, but only to their resolute condemnation.
If anyone thought that Lucy Aharish or Raviv Drucker would try to add a little depth to things, they were mistaken, yet both deserve a commendable mention for simply delivering what they said without embarrassing themselves along the way.
These things cannot be said, for example, about Kobi Mehat, the host of the program "13 at noon", who compared Glazer's speech to the fact that quite a few stars came to the ceremony with the red pin of "artists4ceasefire" which represents a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Those who claim that this is a hypocritical reading by millionaires disconnected from Hollywood about a war zone they don't really know anything about are probably not wrong, but it is worth noting that in the letter signed by the artists in question, there is an explicit demand for the return of the Israeli abductees.
More in Walla!
The Oscar winning speech that linked the Holocaust to Gaza was banal and embarrassing, but it had one positive point
To the full article
Still, Mahat took the matter a step further and said that Billie Eilish, a creator who at the age of 22 has already won her second Academy Award, is nothing more than a useful idiot for choosing to wear the pin that calls for a ceasefire.
Glazer, unlike Eilish, knows what he's talking about.
What do you mean why?
She is a stupid girl and he is a Jewish man, he should know better than to say something bad against Israel, and in English!
It is not clear if Kobi Machat even knows who Billie Eilish is, but perhaps it would have been better if he had Googled the social and political activities of the singer, who harnesses her tremendous popularity, especially among young audiences, to social activism.
You can say she's wrong, and explain the naivety of calling for a ceasefire with a terrorist organization like Hamas, but from here to calling her a "useful idiot" is a bit, well, idiotic.
Eilish/Reuters
Even in the main edition of Channel 13, they repeated more or less the same approach.
In short: hypocritical Hollywood applauds the director who speaks against the occupation, and wears a pin in favor of a ceasefire - instead of wearing the yellow pin for the return of the kidnapped.
The explicit line "Oppenheimer was the big winner of the Oscar ceremony, while the Israeli propaganda was the big loser" was said almost word for word in the edition of both Network 13 and Keshet 12. This is probably how these channels got used to telling their viewers only half of what is happening in this war.
The truth is that in the current state of public opinion in the US, where images of the destruction in Gaza are broadcast around the clock, the call for a ceasefire that includes the return of the abductees is almost a victory for Israeli propaganda.
As usual, Channel 14 managed to address an angle that no one in the world would even think of attacking, and they were angry that at the end of his winning speech, Glazer dedicated the award to a woman named Alexandra.
For background: Aleksandra is a 90-year-old Pole who Glaser met in Auschwitz while doing research for the film.
As a child, Alexandra joined an underground partisan movement that used to sneak food to the Jewish prisoners in the camp.
In the film, her image is shown in negative photography, so she glows in the dark.
It's a pretty obvious artistic choice: even in a place as dark as Auschwitz, there are good souls who shine some light in the darkness.
Glazer chose to dedicate the award to Alexandra, who passed away in the meantime, whom he defined as a woman who "shined in her life as her character shines in the film".
It was too much for a Southerner at the "Patriots" panel who seriously questioned why Glaser dedicated the film to "The German Girl" and not to the Jews.
To Drumi's credit, she didn't even try to show that she understood what she was talking about, revealing that she hadn't seen the film and referring to Glaser as "an actor who was currently starring in a film about Auschwitz."
Luckily for her, Yotam Zamri was there on the panel to correct her and make it clear to her that the real problem with Glaser is "that in the end he is on the side of the Nazis".
Why lie to viewers?
Levy/screenshot, News 12
Amazingly, and perhaps not amazingly at all, the one who managed to bypass Channel 14 when it came to distorted coverage of the event was News 12. Both in the headlines of Yonit Levy's edition and in the article itself that covered the event, Glazer's speech was translated in a completely false way.
"Right now we stand here as men who deny their Jewishness," reads the opening banner of the edition watched in Israel.
This is indeed a strong title, but it is a sentence that Glaser simply did not say.
If anything, he said the complete opposite: he is so connected to his Judaism, that he does not agree to be used for political purposes.
If this gross mistake, which was repeated several times in Beshet 12, had happened on Channel 14, then we would surely have mocked the lack of professionalism of the channel's editorial board, which repeatedly missed the serious mistake in the translation.
We would call the event "Fadiha" and move on.
But Channel 12 does not have this privilege.
On the channel that is watched in Israel, "fadihts" are not supposed to occur, and if they do happen - they are corrected immediately, not broadcast over and over again.
You have to be more naive than Billie Eilish to believe that this is just a writer's mistake.
Apparently the reporters and editors of News 12 surfed the social networks during the day and saw this "mistake" being spread and causing a stir - and signed the bargain.
Bottom line: 12 News editors simply chose to lie to viewers.
In the end, it is much easier to refer to the made-up quote they attached to Glaser (he doesn't want to be a Jew at all! He is clearly against the war!) than to explain to viewers that Israel's image in the world, including among Jews, is not positive to say the least.
If they did that, maybe they should have explained to Channel 12 viewers that the world sees all kinds of images in the news broadcasts that in the broadcast watched in Israel are simply "saved" from the Israeli viewer every day.
Complexity is complicated, while shouting "anti-Semitism" at anyone who dares to express criticism is so easy.
More on the same topic:
The Oscar ceremony
Oscar 2024
Kobi Machat