Director Jonathan Glazer was warmly received when he delivered a repulsive and ignorant acceptance speech at the Oscars on March 10 after his Holocaust film “The Zone of Interest” won the best international film award. With producer James Wilson and financier Len Blavatnik standing with him, Glazer said: “All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present, not to say look what they did then, but rather look what we do now. 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 and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people. Whether the victims of October — 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?”

Despite the positive reaction this fatuous virtue-signaling outburst attracted from the Hollywood glitterati, more than 450 Jewish artists and executives signed an open letter denouncing the speech. The group’s statement says: “We refute our Jewishness being hijacked for the purpose of drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination.”

Four-hundred and fifty! That’s impressive…well actually, it’s pathetic as well as telling. Although Hollywood and the film, built by Jewish immigrants, still has a dominant proportion of powerbrokers, stars and icons that identify as Jewish, The 450 names are stunningly thin on A-listers. I recognized just a handful of actors, and none of them—Debra Messing? Bret Geller? Julianna Margulies?—qualify as major stars. Where was Michael Douglas? Adam Brody? Jennifer Connelly? Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jake Gyllenhaal , Jonah Hill,Natalie Portman, Jack Black, Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlet Johannsen…Stephen Spielberg?…and hundreds of others with the professional thwack to have some real impact? Except for the relatively few brave souls who signed on, I presume they were hiding if they understand that those popular Artists4Ceasefire pins so prominent at the Oscars were a badge of stupidity—Don’t want to lose out on any big opportunities by alienating the Pro-Palestinians!—or didn’t sign the letter because they are knee-jerk Democrats who agree with the Biden Administration’s cynical, “Let’s give Israel money to fight it war but call the Jews inhuman and accuse them of genocide for actually trying to win” policies.

The letter is throbbing evidence of how peer pressure and cultural rot makes people weak, cowardly and complicit members an unethical majority.