Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
3 April
OSCAR WINNER CONDEMNS 'ZIONIST HOODLUMS'
On this day in 1978, Vanessa Redgrave gave her Oscar acceptance speech: “You have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums”. Redgrave’s remarks referred to threats she had received from the Jewish Defence League, who objected to her funding and narrating a 1977 documentary,” The Palestinian”, about the activities of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Her Oscar was for her performance in the title role of the 1977 film “Julia,” a woman murdered by the Nazis prior to WWII.
الحائزة على جائزة اوسكار تدين الصهاينة السفاحين
3 أبريل
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 1978 ، ألقت فانيسا ريدغريف خطاب قبولها لجائزة الأوسكار: "لقد رفضتم أن تخيفكم تهديدات مجموعة صغيرة من السفاحين الصهاينة". أشارت ملاحظات ريدغريف إلى تهديدات تلقتها من رابطة الدفاع اليهودية التي اعترضت على تمويلها وسردها حكاية فيلم وثائقي عام 1977 بعنوان "الفلسطيني" حول أنشطة منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية. كانت جائزة الأوسكار عن أدائها في دور البطولة في فيلم 1977 "جوليا" ، المرأة التي قتلها النازيون قبل الحرب العالمية الثانية.
"...And I salute you and I pay tribute to you and I think you should be very proud that in the last few weeks you've stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression. And I salute that record, and I salute all of you for having stood firm and dealt a final blow against that period when Nixon and McCarthy launched a worldwide witch hunt against those who tried to express in their lives and their work the truth that they believed in. I salute you, and I thank you, and I pledge to you that I will continue to fight against anti-Semitism and fascism. Thank you."
Redgrave had played the title role in “Julia,” about an anti-Nazi operative during World War II and her friendship with the liberal writer Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda). “It was perfect symmetry,” the film’s producer, Richard Roth, said. “The two most famous left-wing women of the ’70s playing two left-wing women of the ’30s.”
While she was shooting the movie in Paris, Redgrave lived with a couple of Palestinian students who inspired her to produce and narrate a documentary called “The Palestinian.” On tour to promote “Julia,” Redgrave screened the documentary for potential distributors, and the Jewish Defense League objected, threatening to boycott 20th Century Fox, the studio behind “Julia,” unless it denounced Redgrave and promised never to hire her again.
The academy president, Howard W. Koch, “urged me not to say anything except ‘Thank you’ if I won,” she wrote in her 1991 autobiography. “I told Howard I must reserve the right to say whatever I thought was right and necessary.”
As Redgrave arrived at the ceremony, Jewish Defense League members torched her likeness and counterprotesters waved the Palestinian flag. Overseeing it all were police sharpshooters on the roof...
Redgrave’s speech started off innocuously enough, thanking academy colleagues and adding, “I think that Jane Fonda and I have done the best work of our lives, and I think this was in part due to our director, Fred Zinnemann.” But applause mixed with hooting when she said: “You should be very proud that in the last few weeks you have stood firm and you have refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world, and to their great and heroic record of struggle against fascism and oppression.”
As Zinnemann wrote in his 1992 autobiography, “In 30 seconds the temperature dropped to ice while she, smiling happily, descended the steps, gave me a big kiss and sat down.”
"I felt sorry for Vanessa,” Koch, the academy president, said. “At the party afterward, she was sitting all alone with just her two bodyguards. No one else would sit with her, and here it was her big night.”
Two months later a Los Angeles theater scheduled to show “The Palestinian” was bombed. No one was injured, and a member of the Jewish Defense League was convicted in the case.
Decades later, Redgrave had no regrets about her stance. “You do what you feel is right,” she told The Telegraph in 2012. “People get it or they don’t.”
Redgrave's director in Julia, Fred Zinnemann, also directed the iconic High Noon and many other major films. The Austrian-born Jewish Zinneman said High Noon was about conscience and uncompromising fearlessness. He says, "High Noon is not a Western, as far as I'm concerned; it just happens to be set in the Old West."
One film critic, Stephen Prince, saw that the lead character, Kane, personified Zinnemann, who tried to create an atmosphere of impending threat on the horizon, a fear of potential "fascism", represented by the gang of killers soon arriving. Zinnemann, having learned that both his parents died in the Holocaust, wanted Kane willing to "fight rather than run", unlike everyone else in the town.
Zinnemann explains the theme of High Noon and its relevance today
"I saw it as a great movie yarn, full of enormously interesting people...only later did it dawn on me that this was not a regular Western myth. There was something timely - and timeless - about it, something that had a direct bearing on life today. To me it was the story of a man who must make a decision according to his conscience. His town - symbol of a democracy gone soft - faces a horrendous threat to its people's way of life. Determined to resist, and in deep trouble, he moves all over the place looking for support but finding that there is nobody who will help him; each has a reason of his own for not getting involved. In the end, he must meet his chosen fate all by himself, his town's doors and windows firmly locked against him. It is a story that still happens everywhere, every day."
3-minute video of Vanessa Redgrave's acceptance speech