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A Jewish producer of ‘All Quiet On The Western Front’ sees his family history in the Oscar-nominated Netflix film
(JTA) — The film producer Daniel Dreifuss has only one surviving photo of a distant relative: his grandfather’s cousin, who fought for Germany in World War I and died in combat two days before the war’s end.
He has a few more photos of his grandfather, who also wore the German uniform in WWI — only to be rounded up by the Nazis two decades later during Kristallnacht and thrown into a concentration camp, as even the Jews who had fought for their country were not safe from its campaign of race extermination.
Dreifuss, who was raised in Brazil after his surviving ancestors fled the war to Uruguay, held up these weathered black-and-white photos to his Zoom camera as he spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from his home in Los Angeles. One shows his grandfather’s cousin in his military uniform, the other shows his grandparents posing together, between the wars.
“Twenty years later, your country, that you just gave your health for and your cousin for and your family for, sends you to a camp,” he said. “It’s a lot of trauma to have to go through in one lifetime.”
These family stories echoed through Dreifuss’ mind when he first read the script for a proposed modern take on “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the classic 1928 novel about the German army’s hellish experiences during World War I. Nearly a century later, author Erich Maria Remarque’s descriptions of trench warfare and of the utter lack of heroism, valor or patriotism felt by its soldier protagonists resonated with Dreifuss.
“I said, ‘I know these people,’” he recalled. “Not because they are some distant relatives that I’ve heard of, but because I am the grandson of one of those kids who were in the film.”
Dreifuss’ parents met at a Jewish youth group in Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s. “My father was my mother’s madrich,” he recalled, using the Hebrew word for a youth group counselor. After they were later married, they moved to Israel partially to avoid Brazil’s military dictatorship and became left-wing political activists. They left Israel just before the Yom Kippur War and relocated to Scotland, where Dreifuss was born, before returning to Brazil to raise him.
Dreifuss had his bar mitzvah in the city of Belo Horizonte before later moving to Rio, which has a much larger Jewish community. “My family was never at all religious, but culturally Jewish,” he said, recalling Passover celebrations and gefilte fish recipes. He did not have many Jewish friends growing up, but his Brazilian friends were interested in Judaism and would attend his family’s Jewish events.
Daniel Dreifuss, a producer of Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” holds up a photo of his grandfather Max Dreifuss from 1919, recovering from his German military service in WWI. Max was sent to a concentration camp once the Nazis took power. (Courtesy of Daniel Dreifuss)
This global upbringing is reflected in Dreifuss’ interest in international film. It took a decade for him to mount his remake of “All Quiet,” which was eventually set up with a German production company and released by Netflix this past fall amid another endless military conflict in Europe. No one, he said, wanted to fund a resolutely anti-war film that refused to glorify its combatants, a film that was “never a hero’s journey, not the story of someone who came, you know, beat 1,000 people with their bare hands, triumphs and looks down on top of a hill at the end with some sweeping score.”
But that journey has been validated by the film’s impressive Oscar total, which surprised industry observers. At the nomination ceremony last month, “All Quiet” received nine total nods, the second most of any film this year, including for best picture — which the novel’s original 1930 Hollywood adaptation, directed by Jewish filmmaker Lewis Milestone, won. (This year’s Academy Awards will be held March 12.)
Considering the Nazis had once led a campaign of book burning against the source material and terrorized German movie theaters that showed the original movie adaptation, accusing it of being a “Judenfilm,” Dreifuss sees the new film’s success as a historical victory, too. “I love that my name will be associated with a story that was deemed degenerate by that regime,” he said.
When he was first presented with an early draft of the new “All Quiet” script, in 2013, Dreifuss was coming off of the success of another international historical film he had produced. “No,” a 1980s-set Chilean political drama, starred Gael Garcia Bernal as an ad executive tasked with convincing his country to vote the dictator Augusto Pinochet out of office. The film netted Chile’s first-ever Oscar nomination for international feature film, although Dreifuss himself is not Chilean.
In researching “No,” Dreifuss said, the film’s team had trouble finding Chileans who would admit to having cast their real-life vote in Pinochet’s favor — even though 40% of the population did so. “We couldn’t find one single person who supported him,” he recalled. “At some point, years later, no one wanted to say, ‘I supported it, I voted, I was on that side.’” He saw a parallel to the history of geopolitics in the run-up to WWII, when many Western countries — including his family’s adopted homeland of Brazil — were initially sympathetic to the Nazis.
When Hollywood studios turned down the proposed remake of “All Quiet,” forcing Dreifuss to turn to European financing, he saw an opportunity to mount the first-ever German adaptation of the property, which would allow the film to open up a “historical perspective” on how the aftermath of WWI led to the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.
German filmmaker Edward Berger, who also helmed several episodes of the espionage miniseries “Deutschland 83,” stepped into the director’s chair, and he also has a co-writing credit. German star Daniel Brühl, who has played many historical villains to the Jewish people in films ranging from “7 Days in Entebbe” to “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” took a key supporting role as the lead negotiator for the armistice agreements — the sole figure in the movie trying to find a peaceful resolution for his country. (The historical figure Brühl portrays, Matthias Erzberger, was vilified as a traitor by the German right and assassinated in 1921 by antisemitic nationalist radicals who were precursors to the Nazis.)
Though there are no explicitly Jewish characters in the film, Dreifuss believes it still speaks to the fate that would soon await Europe’s Jews.
“We know what followed in the decade in Germany,” he said. “So we could bring that to the film in subtle ways.”
He pointed to the armistice plotline that foreshadows how the Treaty of Versailles left Germany in a deeply disadvantaged position, creating an opportunity for Hitler’s brand of national populism. There are also scenes in which thoughtless German generals, driven by nationalistic fervor and wounded pride, send entire squadrons to their deaths mere minutes before the armistice is set to take effect. In one sequence, the film’s lead, the soldier Paul (Felix Kammerer), steals a goose from a French farming family of non-combatants and says: “It’s a hatred of the other, of not understanding, of being raised to have an enemy.”
Dreifuss is dipping into a different chapter of world Jewish history with his next project: a Showtime miniseries produced with the co-creators of the Israeli Netflix series “Fauda” that explores CIA operations in the Middle East and is partially set during the Lebanon War in which Israel had a heavy, and oft-criticized, military presence. The series will air this summer.
He has also been pitched a host of WWI and WWII-related projects in the wake of the success of “All Quiet.” But, he joked, “I would love for people to not only think of me as the war guy, or as the dictator guy.”
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‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto
The two young men who killed three people at a San Diego mosque on Monday published a conspiracy theory-filled manifesto whose primary focus was on Jews, calling them the “universal enemy.”
The manifesto’s contents also suggest they may have had additional plans to target Jewish institutions.
Authorities have identified Cain Lee Clark, 17, and Caleb Liam Vazquez, 18, as the shooters who killed a security guard and two members of the Islamic Center of San Diego. The two livestreamed the attack before both were found dead in a car by apparent suicide, blocks away from the mosque.
The three killed at the mosque were Amin Abdullah, 51, Mansour Kaziha, 78, and Nadir Awad, 57.
Jewish leaders across the country and in San Diego widely condemned the attack.
The 74-page manifesto, which contains a section written by each shooter, reveals a wide-ranging hatred rooted in white Christian nationalist ideas, including Great Replacement Theory, and fueled by the two teenagers’ own social alienation. Among the other groups attacked in the document are Muslims, women, Black people, gay and transgender people, and immigrants.
But the shooters’ deepest resentment seemed reserved for Jewish people.
‘The universal enemy’
The manifesto listed previous antisemitic shootings at the Tree of Life synagogue and Chabad of Poway among the teens’ many sources of inspiration, calling the assailant in the latter incident a “saint.” It called the Jews “the children of Satan.” It denied the Holocaust as a “complete fabrication.” Vazquez called Adolf Hitler his hero; in his section, Clark wrote out the Fourteen Words, a neo-Nazi declaration.
“Everyone has their own idea of who is to blame for all the wrong in the world,” Vazquez wrote in a section titled “The Universal Enemy.”
He printed his answer to the question four times in a row in all capital letters: “It’s the Jews.”
Authorities have said the shooters met online before realizing they both lived in the San Diego area, without specifying the platform where they met.
But the document’s cover pages also provided a clue to their radicalization, bearing the insignia of Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group that emerged during the first Trump administration.
Atomwaffen members are part of a network of mostly online extremist groups that subscribe to “accelerationism,” the idea that forcing societal collapse through an all-out race war is the only way to restore white supremacy and save civilization. The idea is propounded by a white nationalist named James Mason, author of a book called Siege that both shooters cited.
“Though officially I was not a part of any groups or organizations there are many I support, I would even go so far as to say I did it for Atomwaffen Division, Terrorgram, The Base, and North Korea,” Vazquez wrote.
Atomwaffen members have been convicted in previous antisemitic murders. In 2019, one named Samuel Woodward lured a gay and Jewish college student named Blaze Bernstein to an Orange County park before stabbing him to death. Woodward, who was 20 at the time, is now serving a life sentence, and Atomwaffen fractured into other groups in the years after his arrest.
Secondary targets
Whereas the shooters were unsparing toward Jews in the manifesto, with Vazquez calling them the “most evil creature in the world,” they espoused mixed feelings about Muslims in the document before they killed three. “I don’t hate Muslims, at least not really,” Vazquez wrote. “What I hate is the religion of Islam itself and them invading my country.”
He added that Islam “is completely contradictory to both Western morals and values and Christianity.”
But he wrote only three paragraphs about Islam and Muslims — about one page — before the section ends with the word “unfinished” in brackets.
Clark appeared more committed to the eradication of Islam in his writing. Muslims and Jews, he said, “must be isolated and exterminated.” Yet he, like Vazquez, wrote several pages denigrating Jewish people.
The shooters did not state why they ultimately targeted a mosque. Vazquez wrote their plan was to “cause as much death and destruction” as fast as possible with a “diverse” selection of targets. The document provides lines for listing three separate locations, but none of them are filled out.
“All locations were surveyed and mapped out to the best of our ability,” he wrote.
The post ‘It’s the Jews’: San Diego mosque shooters decried ‘the universal enemy’ in hate-filled manifesto appeared first on The Forward.
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Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism
Rep. Dan Goldman of New York and his primary challenger Brad Lander are wading into the contentious debate over a proposed boycott of Israeli products at a Brooklyn cooperative grocery store ahead of an expected vote next week.
In a statement shared exclusively with the Forward on Wednesday, Goldman urged members of the popular Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn to attend a May 26 vote and cast ballots against the boycott resolution — and condemned the measure as antisemitic.
“Everyone is free to criticize the Israeli government — which I do not hesitate to do — but joining a movement that was founded on the principle of the elimination of Israel will have no impact on the Israeli government or the Israeli economy,” Goldman said in his statement. “Instead, it only succeeds at shifting the responsibility for the Israeli government’s actions to American Jews — which is quintessential antisemitism.”
Goldman said that he is aligning himself with Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Congregation Beth Elohim, a progressive leader, as the debate has spilled into local politics and Jewish communal life in the progressive neighborhood.
The resolution says the boycott would persist “Until Israel complies with international law, including by ceasing unlawful discriminatory practices, in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Timoner addressed the proposal in her weekly Shabbat sermon earlier this month.
“Many simply want to see the Palestinian people be free and safe and equal, and I do too, but this is not the way,” Timoner said. “This way is wrong.
Calling it a “proxy war” to what has been dividing Americans in recent years over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one “that is laced with antisemitism, Timoner said that many members of her congregation — she and herself — would be forced to resign from their co-op membership if the resolution passes.
The rabbi’s sermon reflected the careful line she has tried to walk since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack and the war in Gaza — openly criticizing Israeli government policies while rejecting the singling out of Israel. In March 2024, Timoner attended for the first time what was then a weekly protest to call for a bilateral ceasefire and hostage deal, one that Lander attended regularly. In her remarks she said that she had held back until then from calling for a ceasefire in Gaza “because it was being used by people who celebrated Oct. 7, people who do not hold Hamas responsible, and people who want to eliminate the state of Israel — and I did not want to be associated with that.”
Timoner is a co-founder and board member of the New York Jewish Agenda, a progressive advocacy group formed in 2020 to be a voice for liberal Jews in New York. Lander is a member of NYJA’s leaders network. A Goldman campaign official noted that the congressman and Timoner have met several times privately to discuss issues affecting the district and that Goldman has attended services at Beth Elohim in the past.
Goldman, the two-term incumbent, challenged his Democratic primary rival to publicly oppose the measure as well, “to stand with our neighbors, and make it clear that this dangerous bigotry has no place in our city.”
Lander, a close ally of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told the Forward he isn’t a member of the Coop but would vote against the resolution if he were, pointing to Timoner’s sermon. “Principled people can disagree here,” Lander said in a statement that did not take a position on the resolution. “Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions are legitimate tools of advocacy campaigns. Unlike my opponent, I don’t believe all opposition to Israel is antisemitic.”
A long-running boycott fight
The proposal to boycott Israeli products has riven the Brooklyn institution’s roughly 16,000 members. It was introduced in 2024 by a local advocacy group called Park Slope Food Coop Members for Palestine. The resolution would require the Coop to boycott Israeli-made products “until Israel complies with international law in its treatment of Palestinians.”
Coop4Unity, opposing the resolution, is urging shoppers to “bring back cooperation” and “stop polarization.”
The measure is largely symbolic, given that the Coop only carries a handful of items imported from Israel, like EcoLove shampoo and conditioner. At least one, Al Arz tahini, is made by an Israeli Arab in Nazareth. The coop first considered a boycott resolution in 2012.
The debate has grown increasingly heated in recent months, erupting most recently publicly during a general meeting when a member made said “Jewish supremacism is a problem in this country,” a remark that many attendees and Jewish organizations condemned.
The comment — which received applause at the meeting — came during a second resolution that would lower the voting threshold for boycott measures from 75% to 51%.
Goldman strongly condemned the remarks in his statement on Wednesday. “That is not a critique of Israeli policy or advocacy for Palestinian rights,” he said. “It is an old and ugly antisemitic conspiracy theory that fueled the Nazis and then was used by David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.”
A heated primary over support for Israel
The boycott fight is the latest issue in an already heated primary challenge to Goldman being largely battled over Israel and antisemitism.
Last month, Lander, who has described himself as a liberal Zionist, joined some progressive House members in calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. Lander — who described Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide” — said he would apply that as well to Israel’s defensive Iron Dome system, high-tech missile interception that protects lives, property and infrastructure against assaults from Iran and allied groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Lander said that Israel has the ability to purchase its defense with its own funds.
The 10th Congressional District, which includes Borough Park and Park Slope in Brooklyn as well as parts of lower Manhattan, voted heavily for Mamdani, an outspoken critic of Israel. Mamdani is backing Lander in the primary.
Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune and former Trump impeachment prosecutor who was elected in 2022, is aligned with the mainstream positions of national Democrats on Israel: supportive of Israel’s security while finding a pathway for a two-state solution, sharply critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, and opposed to settlement expansion and settler violence.
Recent polling has shown Goldman trailing Lander in the June 23 primary.
Goldman framed the Coop dispute as about something larger than electoral politics. “It’s time we unite together on this issue,” he said, “and fight for the safe, loving, inclusive community we all deserve.”
Additional reporting by Mira Fox.
The post Rep. Dan Goldman urges ‘no’ vote on proposed Brooklyn Israel boycott, warning of antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.
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Itamar Ben-Gvir draws criticism from Netanyahu for video taunting detained flotilla activists
(JTA) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined a chorus of Israelis and Jews denouncing his national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, for posting a video that showed Ben-Gvir taunting detained activists from a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that had been intercepted by the Israeli navy.
“Welcome to Israel, we are the masters,” Ben-Gvir said in the video as he waved a large Israeli flag above the detained activists, who could be seen blindfolded and kneeling on the ground with their hands behind their backs.
Roughly 430 activists that took part in the Global Sumud Flotilla, which set sail from Turkey last Thursday, were brought to the city of Ashdod aboard Israeli naval ships on Wednesday, marking the latest in a long-running series of confrontations between Israel and activists seeking to break its naval blockade of Gaza.
In a second video posted on social media, Ben-Gvir said that the activists “came here all full of pride like big heroes. Look at them now,” appealing to Netanyahu to grant him permission to imprison them.
ככה אנחנו מקבלים את תומכי הטרור
Welcome to Israel 🇮🇱 pic.twitter.com/7Hf8cAg7fC
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) May 20, 2026
Netanyahu said in a statement that he had instructed authorities to deport the activists “as soon as possible.” But he also offered a public rebuke of Ben-Gvir.
“Israel has every right to prevent provocative flotillas of Hamas terrorist supporters from entering our territorial waters and reaching Gaza,” Netanyahu said. “However, the way that Minister Ben Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms.”
The foreign ministers of several countries, including Canada, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Italy, also condemned the videos and summoned their Israeli diplomats to answer for the display.
But some of the sharpest criticism came from within Israel, where Ben-Gvir plays a crucial role in maintaining the governing coalition while also engaging in antics that threaten to flare tensions and undercut the country’s claims that it behaves in accordance with international law.
Ben-Gvir is “not the face of Israel,” tweeted Foreign Minister Gideon Saar in English.
“You knowingly caused harm to our State in this disgraceful display — and not for the first time,” Saar wrote. “You have undone tremendous, professional, and successful efforts made by so many people — from IDF soldiers to Foreign Ministry staff and many others.”
Ben-Gvir’s videos come as his antics and rhetoric have drawn new scrutiny in recent days. Last week, he departed from longstanding norms and waved an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount, a Muslim holy site, in a show of Jewish supremacy. His oversight of Israeli prisons, where he has said he wants to see prisoners given only the minimum of food and comfort as required by law, also drew attention because of a New York Times column alleging sexual abuse of Palestinian prisoners.
Progressive groups heavily criticized Ben-Gvir’s video, saying that it was inappropriate for him to be part of the Israeli government.
“The disgusting images of Israel’s National Security Minister abusing detainees from the Gaza flotilla are not just bad optics,” tweeted Mickey Gitzin, the acting CEO of the New Israel Fund. “A government that gives a Kahanist this kind of power has already abandoned any notion of decency. These grotesque images are the real face of current Israeli policy.”
Ben-Gvir’s videos showing the treatment of participants in the latest flotilla offered a contrast to other recent interceptions in which Israel has released footage appearing to show activists being treated without force. When past arrestees from flotillas have alleged abusive treatment, Israel has denied it.
The organizers of the Global Sumud Flotilla said all of its boats had been intercepted by Israel by Tuesday evening, accusing Israel of employing “illegal, high-seas aggression.” The Israeli Foreign Ministry said no live munition was used during the operation, which it said was necessary because it will “not permit any breach of the lawful naval blockade on Gaza.”
Among the activists aboard the more than 50 boats in the flotilla was the sister of Irish President Catherine Connolly. On Tuesday, Connolly, who was elected in October and has a record of anti-Israel rhetoric, called the detention of Irish activists aboard the flotilla “unacceptable.”
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