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Tony Kushner
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Tony Kushner supported Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar acceptance speech, describing the British director’s comments at the ceremony as an “irrefutable and impeccable statement.”
Talking about the Haaretz Podcast which premiered Wednesday, Kushner, a four-time Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, was asked about his feelings on a number of issues related to the Israel-Gaza conflict and brought up Glazer’s speech, which has been attacked by some Jewish figures in Hollywood and was the subject of a recent open letter signed by 1,000 people.
During the podcast, Kushner, who is in Israel to promote a production of angels in america in Tel Aviv, brings up the blowback of Glazer’s Oscar speech, a speech he described as “kind of a really impeccable, irrefutable statement.” The playwright is then asked if he agrees with Glazer’s comments, to which Kushner replies, “Of course, I mean, who doesn’t?”
Kushner explains: “What (Glazer) says is so simple. He is saying that Judaism, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering should not be used as an excuse for a project to dehumanize or massacre other people.”
“This is a misappropriation of what it means to be Jewish, of what the Holocaust meant, and he rejects it. “Who doesn’t agree with that?,” he continues.
“What kind of person thinks that what is happening now in Gaza is acceptable?” Kushner asks. “And if you find yourself saying out loud and in public, ‘oh, what they’re doing is fine with me,’ because you feel like the only option for you, because you’re Jewish, is to defend everything that Israel. You know, it’s a Shame on you.”
Early in the podcast, Kushner, who has long been a critic of Israel’s, and particularly Benjamin Netanyahu’s, policies and treatment of the Palestinians, addressed accusations that calling for a ceasefire was anti-Semitism. “The people I know who are passionately involved in calls for a ceasefire are not anti-Semitic, their interest is not in destroying Israel and certainly their interest is not in carrying out pogroms against Jews elsewhere.”
“What really interests them, and the passion and anger that is being seen, is that there are thousands of lives at stake, tens of billions of lives are at stake. Because before our eyes, what really looks to me like ethnic cleansing is happening,” Kushner says. “I mean, I tend to believe the far-right people in Netanyahu’s cabinet who say, ‘yeah, it’s ours now,’ how is that not ethnic cleansing?”
Kushner said he wanted “Israelis to be able to live in peace and security,” but added that “the treatment of the Palestinians, as many Israelis have been saying for decades, the occupation of the West Bank and the imprisonment of people in Gaza, and the “Checkpoints, the wall and all that really don’t make Israel safe.”
More to come…