The 96th Academy Awards saw War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko take home an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. Through a game of chess played between soldiers on opposing sides of the war, the message of the film is clear: there are no winners in war.
Similarly, Jonathan Glazer won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film with The Zone of Interest, a film which served to highlight the dangers of ignoring the atrocities of genocide.
Despite this — and despite Hollywood’s ongoing insistence that they promote peace and equality — Glazer’s comments calling attention to the occupation of Palestine were not posted to the Oscars’ YouTube page alongside the other acceptance speeches. His comments were met with heavy backlash, including an open letter signed by over a thousand Jewish creatives, executives, and other Hollywood professionals stating that “[t]he use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland… distorts history” and “fuels anti-Jewish hatred.” The fact that some have even accused the Jewish director of a Holocaust film, made in collaboration with the Auschwitz Museum, of antisemitism speaks volumes about the lengths to which people are willing to go to avoid facing the harsh reality of the events in Palestine.
It is difficult not to think about the Western reception of the events in Palestine as being in stark contrast with those in Ukraine. Whilst the destruction in Kiev was met with an outpour of shock and sympathy, the atrocities in Palestine were met with apathy and have somehow become matters of debate. In his speech, Glazer said that Zone of Interest shows “where dehumanisation leads at its worst,” and the West’s reaction to Palestinian people suffering most certainly falls into the category of dehumanisation. Palestinian lives lost are not seen as human beings with families and likes and interests but as statistics, and more importantly, as victims of an inevitable Middle Eastern tragedy. It should not be considered controversial, complicated, or risky to speak up about genocide nor should violence against people of colour be normalized to the point of apathy. Voices like that of Jonathan Glazer are so important, and the Academy should serve to amplify rather than silence them.
I’d like to end this piece with a few words from Mahmoud Darwish, a renowned Palestinian writer and poet. Not only do they highlight a long history of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, but they remind us of the very much human cost of the war.
“The war will end
The leaders will shake hands
The old woman will keep waiting for her martyred son
The girl will wait for her beloved husband
And those children will wait for their hero father.
I don’t know who sold our homeland
But I saw who paid the price.”
“Under The Skin – Jonathan Glazer” by Ross Belot is licensed under CC BY 2.0.