Tony Kushner Agrees With Jonathan Glazer: Looks A Lot Like Ethnic Cleansing To Me

Jonathan Glazer has found strong support for his public stance on the Israel-Gaza conflict.

The Zone of Interest director visibly trembled earlier this month as he accepted the Oscar for Best International Film and called out Israels bombardment of Gaza. While hundreds of Jews in Hollywood denounced him for it, screenwriter Tony Kushner isnt one of them.

When asked Wednesday on the Haaretz Podcast if he could identify with Glazer who delivered the only Oscars speech that directly acknowledged the war in Gaza   Kushner answered with palpable bewilderment: Of course. I mean, who doesnt?

What hes saying is so simple, the Tony Award winner added . Hes saying: Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust of Jewish suffering must not be used as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people.

This is a misappropriation of what it means to be a Jew, what the Holocaust meant, and [Glazer] rejects that, Kushner, who is himself Jewish, continued. Who doesnt agree with that? What kind of person thinks that whats going on now in Gaza is acceptable.

The Zone of Interest depicts the lives of Auschwitz concentration camp commandant Rudolf Hss and his family. Intended to explore Nazi Germanys banality of evil with no escape for the viewer, it was widely acclaimed before Glazer gave his speech.

Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst, he said at the podium, adding : 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.

Glazer, who asked how the victims of Oct. 7 in Israel and those of the ongoing attack in Gaza could resist such dehumanization, has since been condemned by more than 1,000 Jewish Hollywood figures including Debra Messing, Eli Roth and Amy Pascal.

Kushner, whose Oscar-nominated script for Steven Spielbergs Munich (2005) notably wrestled with ideas of revenge and identity, said Glazers words were an unimpeachable, irrefutable statement and rejected the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.

The people that I know who are passionately involved in calls for a ceasefire, these are not people who are anti-Semites, Kushner said Wednesday, their interest is not in destroying Israel and certainly their interest is not in pogroms against Jews elsewhere.

Kushner argued the pushback against Glazer stems from the rage of those fearing for the millions of lives affected by this conflict but, as a longtime critic of Israels policies and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, notably included Palestinians in that equation.

Because before our eyes, what really looks a lot like ethnic cleansing, to me, is going on, Kushner said on the podcast. I mean, I tend to believe the people on the extreme right in Netanyahus cabinet who say, Yeah its ours now, how is that not ethnic cleansing?

Around 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas. The Israeli military has since killed more than 30,000 Palestinians  mostly women and children, according to Gazas health ministry   and is currently laying siege to Gazas biggest hospital .