↓
 
Home » Hollywood’s cause du jour now seems to be supporting Hamas through a ceasefire

Hollywood’s cause du jour now seems to be supporting Hamas through a ceasefire

The New Neo Posted on by

The trend-setting accessory of the evening last night at the Oscars was a little pin that has been described in several different ways. I had trouble finding a closeup, but here’s the way it was described by those advocating its wearing:

Several stars including Grammy winner Billie Eilish and Oscar nominee Mark Ruffalo wore red pins representing Artists4Ceasefire, five months into the Israel-Hamas war. More than 30,000 people have been killed since the war in Gaza began in October.

The pins feature an orange hand with a black heart inside, surrounded by a red circle.

“The pin symbolizes collective support for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, the release of all of the hostages and for the urgent delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza,” the group said in a press release.

In other words, they wish unicorns to come down from the sky and make everything bad go away – including Israel, actually, because that’s what a ceasefire would accomplish by facilitating the next massacre of Israelis. There was a ceasefire supposedly in place on October 7, something of which these celebrities may be unaware (or about which they may not care). In addition, Hamas has zero intention of returning the hostages unless Israel essentially surrenders.

So, why is the heart black? Why is the hand orange – or red, depending on the photo and the description? The group promoting this doesn’t seem to be saying, but you can get a better look at the symbol at their site here – where the hand looks like a slightly more orange shade of red than the background. I don’t know who designed the pin, or why those symbols were chosen. But the red hand held up in that way has a barbaric history:

Is the pin a deliberate reference to this horrific incident, and if so do the “stars” even know? Or is the symbolism merely a coincidence?

From an op-ed in the Times of Israel:

And I wonder if the designers knew about [the Ramallah lynching]. I wonder if they knew but didn’t care. I wonder, also, if it was done on purpose… I’d like to think it wasn’t, but I wonder… I wonder if the celebrities wearing the pins knew the history of the Second Intifada which nearly brought us to our knees in Israel, or about the lynching in Ramallah and those horrible hands out the window red with human blood and if they did know about any of this, I wonder if they made the connection and just didn’t care.

It’s the old “fool or knave?” question, and you really can hardly go wrong by answering “both.” And lest you think what these Oscar celebrities do doesn’t matter, it both reflects and adds to the current fashion of supporting a terrible cause – one that desires, among other things, the destruction of Western culture and liberty. No, these people don’t make policy (the Biden administration does, and they are in solidarity with it). But these people make the anti-Israel position even more fashionable.

And then there’s the “as a Jew” remarks by someone named Jonathan Glazer:

Unless you’re a film buff, you may not have heard of Jonathan Glazer before his viral moment at this year’s annual Academy Awards ceremony. After “The Zone of Interest”—a highly-praised film about the commandant of the Auschwitz death camp that is very loosely based on a Martin Amis novel with the same title—was named the winner of the Oscar for Best International Feature Film, Glazer … read the following prepared statement:

“Our film shows where dehumanization leads at its worst. It’s shaped all of our past and present. Right now, we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness in a Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza—all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

“Resist” – as though they are being persecuted and have to go undercover to bravely fight against a Nazi occupation. What this guy is really saying is “don’t hurt me, I’m a good Jew; one who has refuted my Jewishness by making no moral distinctions whatsoever.” Glazer would no doubt have been against bombing Germany during World War II.

As Jonathan Tobin writes:

The tortured syntax of [Glazer’s] comments notwithstanding, what Glazer said wasn’t merely deeply offensive. It marked a new low in Hollywood’s descent into fashionable rationalizations of hatred for Jews. It also showed us how the new woke antisemitism works, especially when its standard-bearers are Jews with little or no connection to their heritage. As such, it was the quintessential “as a Jew” moment in which persons invoke their Jewish identity to denounce other Jews. …

Those, like Glazer, whose efforts are aimed at helping contemporary practitioners of Jewish genocide survive and win—and do so “as Jews”—are a disgrace and deserve to be remembered throughout history with opprobrium along with the worst examples of those who betrayed their own people. They also illustrate the moral depravity of artists and intellectuals who have been captured by an ideology that enables a virulent form of antisemitism that masquerades as advocacy for human rights.

Indeed – particularly the part about masquerading as advocacy for human rights.

I watch very few movies these days, and it’s been a long time since I cared one whit about who gets an Oscar – except that I used to be interested in the fashions at the ceremony. I don’t even care about that anymore, but here’s a link to Women’s Wear Daily‘s idea of the worst-dressed.

Comments

Hollywood’s cause du jour now seems to be supporting Hamas through a ceasefire — 28 Comments

  1. I stopped caring about what entertainment celebrities think years ago, and I have no interest in the Oscars, either the winners list or the event. I looked at the fashions briefly. Compared to last year, there seemed to be slightly fewer women there dressed like expensive streetwalkers, but only slightly fewer. Why bother?

  2. I suspect that most of the celebrities wearing those pins are more fools than knaves. These celebrities exist in a curated bubble with little to no contact with reality. Inside this bubble any information that may contradict the prefered worldview is to be dismissed as misinformation. There are no real consequences for being wrong. In fact, more often than not they are richly rewared for it. Their ignorance and vapidity are luxury goods that most people can’t afford.

  3. “It also showed us how the new woke antisemitism works, especially when its standard-bearers are Jews with little or no connection to their heritage”.
    These are secular, godless Jews, an ethnic entity, not a 3700 year-old religion, the origin of monotheism.
    They are to be despised.

  4. so this meshugenah, (is that the right word) who does a film about auschwitz, a place committed to death, cannot recognize that gaza is a place committed to murder as its defining proposition,

  5. Fools can cause more harm than knaves. Hollywood has long been full of them, including the pro-Stalinist crowd that quivered during the House Committee hearings on anti-Americanism, but did not renounce their ardor for communism, instead pled the Fifth.

  6. I am so very angry, and very scared today. Any comment here would be inappropriate for me to make right now.

  7. To be fair if I read Glazers comments correctly it’s not that he’s refuting his Jewishness as many are saying. Rather he is refuting his Jewishness being hijacked by an occupation. Either way this is a man who has broken with his Jewish heritage.

  8. I stopped watching the Oscars long ago when they gave Leni Riefenstahl an award for her pioneering career making movies. Her most famous was “Triumph of the Will” which glorified Hitler. Its famous opening scene was a tracking shot from below of Hitler’s plane flying overhead to a mass meeting and which they actually showed during the ceremony

    The behavior of the attendees re Gaza shouldn’t surprise anyone. The business of acting involves synthesizing emotions. Do it enough and it gets hard to separate reality and fantasy.
    .

  9. A semi off topic question, but I wonder how many people ” still have a television “.

    Now of course with all the versions of audio-visual media available, that could mean several different things, so I should stipulate options:

    1. “I have a conventional dedicated television receiver [CRT, flat screen, or smart TV] which I use to watch both broadcast and pay content, either through a pay service provider alone or by switching back and forth. But in any event, I watch some traditional network content by one means or another.

    2. I watch pay content in one form or another only, on a smart or other tv receiver hookup, but never watch network content.

    3. I have a TV but only use it for prerecorded content.

    4 I have no traditional television reception device which is hooked to cable or digital antennae equipped, and use a monitor or receiver only to access selected content through wired or satelite Internet.”

    My guess is that no one much under 80 would say selection 1 describes their habits, other than someone who has kept a service out of decades long habit

    And I personally know nobody who watches any netwotk content at all other than an older cousin in his 70s who seems to have fallen into the lounge chair viewing habits of his parents, as his own health also collapsed.

    Football playoffs, might qualify as an exception for #4 and which does not violate the rule. However “Judge Judy” or the Oscars on cable obviously would.

  10. I guess I have forgotten to mention that with cellular data plans dropping in price, it makes sense just to use your cell phone as a hotspot and connect your computer to the Internet through that. Don’t know if the latest large screen smart tv models can connect in that way, as your wifi capable desktop computer can. [I think I got the steps right. Have only rigged the computer up that way a couple of times as a test]

  11. Is there anything more suicidality stupid than to support a ’cause’ that would celebrate your disembowelment with the eager consumption of your raw organs?

    The irony is literally biblical in its satanic depravity.

  12. Geoffrey Britain:

    I doubt very much those Hollywood folks have a clue what happened during the Ramallah lynching.

    On the other hand, they probably do know what happened on October 7 – or, at least, much of what happened.

  13. “The Zone of Interest” might be a good film, doing the easy “brave” work of “resisting” the Holocaust and the Nazis, but Glazer is not a brave man taking a brave stand against dehumanization, but a cowardly man hijacking his own Jewishness for the cowardly purpose of looking fashionably good to those who hate Jews or have no problem with it.

    Glazer will pay no price, at least not in this world, for his faux-resistance. He will be rewarded.

    Smart move, hold the courage.

  14. I can’t help loving Hollywood. I just love a good movie – I believe it is the art form of our time. I reconcile this by always knowing that everything neo says at 7:29 is true. Vapid.

  18. Reckoning with October 7: Sexual Violence, Feminism, and the Hamas Massacre, Israel Update, special episode (42:08): https://rumble.com/v4igk0o-reckoning-with-october-7-sexual-violence-feminism-and-the-hamas-massacre.html

    “These are the opening remarks by the three distinguished speakers on this panel, Batya Ungar-Sargon, Mariam Memarsadeghi, and Nina Power. The Webinar was moderated by Gabriel Noah Brahm at the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s yearlong series reckoning with the response to the atrocities on October 7.”

  20. The [election for the U.S. President], is going to happen around November 5, 2024.

    I’m sure that Biden, + some people in the Congress, would like the war in Israel, to end before that election takes place.

    (Ending the war would be a very good achievement, to talk about, in the election’s ads.)

    So I’d like to ask:

    is it possible that Biden, or any other nation’s President, or anyone else- can [stop] the war in the next 9 months?

    I think that ending this war in 9 months, is very unlikely.

    What do you think?

  21. “And then there’s the “as a Jew” remarks by someone named Jonathan Glazer”

    Yes, I know that ” it’s complex”.

    And that Judaism is a religion and a sort of ethnicity too. And that Jews might or might not be religious, or not even theists, or even minimal keepers of any ritual laws or traditions. But that somehow, they are still Jews because Jews are ” a people, too”; and for some reason no Jew seems willing to tell another ostensible Jew – to his face, not in some roundabout way – that “You’re out you damned miscreant! Disowned and ostracized now and forevermore”.

    How can anyone – speaking of Jews here as ” insiders” – live like that, with shifting predicates making some mysterious claim on your sense of fellowship? How can anyone else not Jewish be expected to make sense of it or work out a rational accommodation when from the outsider viewpoint, “You just won’t give the bastard up, even if he’s an enemy of the God who ostensibly defines the people.”

    Who is God in that instance? God, or “a people”. To whom is one’s allegiance? To God or to the notion of a people?

    I don’t get it. I know the objection is to his leveraging his membership to make an invidious claim.

    But what is actually needed is for someone to step up and cancel his membership card. At least vis-a-vis themselves and their own.

  22. TR:

    I think Israel can and will end this war in nine months. They will do so by winning, which won’t please Biden, the Dems, the ceasefire folks or the pro-Palis.

    But then Israel will have to win whatever comes after.

    I don’t know about that.

  23. Hi DNW,

    I agree with one point that you have made, + that is, an I’m talking in theory, right now:
    whether someone [believes in the God(s), of- the Christians, the Muslims, or the Jewish people], or not…or in none- [I think]- by what is written about those Gods, by their believers, is- God does not take sides in a war.

    The God(s) of [the Christians, + Muslims, + the Jewish people] is, by these believers’ words- a person who sees all people as equals, and he loves them all equally.

    A god who loves all people would not say: I’m on [your] side, as you do a deadly war on people A,

    …and he would not say: I’m on [your] side…people A, as you do your deadly war on people B.

    Others can disagree, butas I understand it- a god who loves all people equally, and who wants them to stay alive, would not take sides in a war, or in any other type of deadly combat.

  24. DNW:

    You write:

    … for some reason no Jew seems willing to tell another ostensible Jew – to his face, not in some roundabout way – that “You’re out you damned miscreant! Disowned and ostracized now and forevermore”.

    Are you kidding me? Plenty of Jews say all sorts of things to other Jews – including that and just about everything else under the sun. Did you ever hear the expression: “Two Jews; three opinions”?

    There is no pope for the Jews, no grand head of the whole thing who makes such decisions. Nothing even remotely like that.

    You also write:

    Who is God in that instance? God, or “a people”. To whom is one’s allegiance? To God or to the notion of a people?

    Once again, it depends who you ask: ultra-Orthodox Jews (and if so, which group?), Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Reform Jews, secular Jews, anti-Semitic Jews?

    As a religion, Judaism is extremely decentralized.

  25. “1. “I have a conventional dedicated television receiver [CRT, flat screen, or smart TV] which I use to watch both broadcast and pay content, either through a pay service provider alone or by switching back and forth. But in any event, I watch some traditional network content by one means or another.

    “2. I watch pay content in one form or another only, on a smart or other tv receiver hookup, but never watch network content.

    “3. I have a TV but only use it for prerecorded content.
    I
    “4 I have no traditional television reception device which is hooked to cable or digital antennae equipped, and use a monitor or receiver only to access selected content through wired or satelite Internet.””

    We have most of a dozen TVs now, between 3 homes. Tend to have 2 1/3 input streams – cable/satellite, Internet, and over the air. Don’t remember the last time we used that, but JIC. All of the TVs take multiple inputs, and many provide for the standard content apps. And, in extremis, I can throw my iPad screens onto most of the TV screens. Big TVs have gotten so darn cheap, that using a monitor or handheld screen seems such a waste.

    I Record most everything that we are interested in watching, but my wife does try to watch her soaps live (ish). If she misses though, I have them recorded (from at least 2, maybe 3, input streams). Interestingly, they may be preempted in Las Vegas, but not in PHX, so watch that version.

    She is very resistant to change (but I am the one over 70), and doesn’t do well navigating for things to watch. So, yes, pure streaming might be better, but doesn’t work for her.

    Oh, and as for Internet, at two of our homes, I run two sources, into a 2×3 mux that provide for redundancy and load balancing. Thinking of adding StarLink to the fiber in MT this summer. JIC.

  26. “You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

    Insofar as the wrong venue and the wrong audience goes, perhaps.

    But the fuel for the comment which was only catalyzed by the quoted remark, was actually provided a number of days ago in one of those articles linked by your readers, I think, to a Tablet, or Jerusalem Post or Haaretz article; one, purportedly explaining what Jews were conceptually, and differentiating them from Christians and from their Christian style psychosocial and metaphysical orientation and identity.

    The, or a similar phrase to, the “Jews are a people” was presemted as defining and taking precedence.

    That formulation then, does not assume that there are not disagreements among Jews.

    What it does seem to indicate however is that there is little possibility of an absolute existential estrangement from others who claim to be Jews: as if they cannot have their Jewish credentials revoked no matter what they do to undercut other Jews.

    Yes, there is no “Pope of the Jews”, no authentic Sons of Israel credentialing organization requiring dues paid in full, no Debretts Peerage, or DAR equivalent, but there must be someone of influence willing to do more than argue with these traitors. Some way to brand them with the mark of Cain.

    Now I know that that idea will itself will upset a lot of your sensitive Christian readers who are shocked at the idea of someone really being cast into the outer darkness – in this life or the next.

    But I don’t see any other suitable remedy.

    They have to be read out of the clan, full stop.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑