Tony Kushner Defends Jonathan Glazer’s Oscars Speech: ‘Who Doesn’t Agree?’

Acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner has pushed back against critics of Jonathan Glazer’s speech at the Oscars about Israel’s war in Gaza.

Kushner told the Haaretz Podcast on Wednesday that he viewed Glazer’s remarks as an “unimpeachable, irrefutable statement.” Glazer, who made the comments after winning an Academy Award for The Zone of Interest, has been condemned by some for saying he and his colleagues “refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.”

Kushner, who has himself been nominated for four Academy Awards, was asked on the podcast if he found himself identifying with what Glazer had said. “Of course!” he answered. “I mean, who doesn’t? What he’s saying is so simple. He’s saying: Jewishness, Jewish identity, Jewish history, the history of the Holocaust, the history of Jewish suffering must not be used in a campaign of—as an excuse for a project of dehumanizing or slaughtering other people,” Kushner said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.