The 77-year-old director was giving a speech at an event honoring the USC Shoah Foundation, a nonprofit he founded that records interviews with Holocaust survivors and witnesses. By this time, the Nazis had murdered about six million Jews.
He founded the organization in 1994 after the premiere of his Oscar-winning movie Schindler’s List. The University of Southern California (USC) awarded it its highest honor, the Medallion. Spielberg stated, “I am increasingly alarmed that we may be condemned to repeat history, to once again have to fight for the very right to be Jewish.” He was referring to the present situation surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict. According to Gaza’s Hamas-led health ministry, since the conflict started, Israeli military action has resulted in over 32,000 Palestinian deaths and over 74,000 injuries. Following attacks on October 7, 2018, by militants from Hamas, a terror organization that is banned in the UK, that claimed over 1,000 Israeli lives and kidnapped hundreds more, Israel replied.
