Javier Bardem gave a lengthy and eloquent assessment of Israel’s current military attacks in Gaza this morning during a press conference at the San Sebastian Film Festival.
Bardem is in town to finally pick up his 2023 Donostia award for career achievement after he was unable to attend the festival last year due to the US actors’ strike.
He began his answer to a question about politics and Israel by saying “What is happening in Gaza is totally unacceptable, it is terrible, it is dehumanizing. I believe that this Israeli government is the most radical government that Israel has ever had.”
Bardem continued to say that he believed the country’s government “is committing crimes against humanity.”
“Obviously, the atrocious, terrible, and reprehensible attacks on October 7th, do not justify this massive punishment that the Palestinian population is suffering,” he added.
“The impunity that the current Israeli government enjoys in its actions in Gaza and the West Bank has to change. I think that countries like the United States, Germany, and England in particular have to rethink their unconditional support when we see crimes. Prohibiting the entry of food, water, medicine, and electricity, as UNICEF says, is a war against children, and continues this trauma for generations.”
The No Country for Old Men actor and Oscar winner said he knows nothing he says will change anything but he believes as a society we have a “moral and ethical obligation to denounce that which we consider unjust.”
“Israel’s extreme right-wing nationalist government is not at all representative of the Jewish community or Israeli society,” he added. “It is our responsibility to be able to observe and denounce those situations that we consider unacceptable, and to ask the International Criminal Court, the international justice of the United Nations, to condemn and judge those responsible. In this case, Netanyahu. To give unconditional support is more than giving wings to the abuse of international law.”
Bardem was given a rousing round of applause from the journalists in the room following his statement.
In August Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that more than 40,000 Palestinians, at least 16,456 of them children and over 11,000 women had been killed as a result of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. The attacks began following October 7 after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people.
