LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein urged Jews in the fight against anti-Semitism to “stand up and kick these guys in the ass.”
On Tuesday night, the famously combative Weinstein made his remarks at a gala dinner given by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, where he was presented with the organization’s Humanitarian Award.
Jews, he told the audience, “better stand up and kick these guys in the ass,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Weinstein, who has produced a litany of hit films, including the Holocaust action movie “Inglorious Basterds” and “Pulp Fiction,” reportedly urged “understanding of our Arab brothers and our Islamic brothers,” but also warned, “We can’t allow the bad guys to win. So as they say in “The Godfather,” ‘back to the mattresses,’ and back to the idea that we will not ever forget what happened to us.”
At the National Tribute Dinner, fellow Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg also reportedly announced that the Wiesenthal Center had raised another $50 million toward the construction of its long-delayed and controversial Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem. The project has been dogged by a host of problems, including two architects who have resigned as well as long-running protests that the museum is being partially built on top of the historic Muslim Mumilla Cemetery.
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