MEL YOU FRICKIN' SELF-DELUDED ANTI-SEMITIC EGOMANIAC

Well, sure, I've got a lot of passion over this movie. I've seen clips and read reams about it. It depicts Jews clamoring for Christ's crucifixion. Some who've seen the whole movie say it distinguishes between the Jewish priests and the Jewish people at large. That difference will be lost on those who seek affirmation for their overt or latent anti-Semitism.

That Gibson also portrays the historically brutal and ruthless tyrant Pontius Pilate as a man caught up in events he didn't support but had to implement is equally egregious. Pilate was not a nice guy, whereas in the movie he comes off almost sympathetic--in a scene from the Gospel of Matthew, after his final attempt to save Jesus fails, Pilate washes his hands and says to the Jewish crowd, "It is you who want to crucify him, not I. ... I am innocent of this man's blood."

Caiaphas and most Jewish authorities are clearly among the bad guys. They arrest Jesus by stealth, spit on him and have him scourged and find him guilty of blasphemy in a mock trial. In an extrabiblical cinematic touch, Jewish soldiers knock Jesus off of a wall, and it is only the chains around his body that stop his fall just before he hits the ground.

He is so badly wounded by the time he gets to Pilate that the Roman ruler says, "Do you always punish your prisoners before they're judged?" It is the Jewish leaders who incite the crowd to yell, "Crucify him, crucify him" in the face of Pilate's repeated attempts to release Jesus. The leadership at times even seems to take pleasure in the torture Jesus is forced to endure.

Gibson did cut a controversial scene that drew objections from Christian and Jewish leaders alike -- the so-called "blood curse" from the Gospel of Matthew that has been abused for centuries to hold all Jews accountable for the death of Jesus.

But he filmed it, and only cut it under pressure. And he added a few scenes that
show Jesus commanding his followers to love all people and declaring he faced death "of my own accord."

Oh, that's better.

But forget the movie for a minute. Let's look at Mad Max himself

Gibson's dad is overtly anti-Semitic, and is a Holocaust denier. The filmmaker gets prickly when asked about his father, and closes off discussion about him in interviews. Nor does he distance himself from his Dad's positions.

In an interview with Peggy Noonan, forthcoming in the March issue of Reader's Digest, he says, "My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life."

Oh so? The Holocaust never happened?

Noonan offered him a chance to end any speculation about his views on the Holocaust: "You're going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?"

Gibson's reply: "I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."

Well Well Well. War is horrible. "Some of them were Jews in concentration camps." Nothing special, just part of the mix among tens of millions.

George Mason University law professor David Bernstein points out that Holocaust "revisionists" typically do not deny that Jews were killed; they simply minimize the killing, portraying it as another part of the overall death toll of World War II rather than the systematic extermination campaign that it was. In Bernstein's opinion, "Gibson is skirting pretty close" to this kind of minimization.

And Cathy Young in Reason says, "Given an opportunity to state clearly that the Holocaust happened and that it was a horrific crime, Gibson, instead, chose to hedge--to give a "yes, but" answer, to gloss over the Nazi extermination of the Jews and quickly move on to other victims of other regimes. This may not signify anti-Semitism, but it certainly signifies a frightening moral obtuseness."

Mel, you can act hurt or offended all you want when accused of anti-Semitism, but with friends like you, the Jews don't need enemies. Polls done before the release of this movie report that while six in 10 Americans believe Bible stories are literally true*, only 8% believe Jews are responsible for Jesus' death. 80% say Jews are not responsible. I'd like to see results of those polls if retaken after this movie has its run.

In some mid-eastern or Arabic countries, it's not hard to imagine that those percents would be reversed, if they even cared who killed Jesus--which fortunately they do not. But anyone want to bet that this movie won't get used by the Palestinians and Islamic extremists to support their own home-grown anti-Semitism; or that the Christian rightwing Jew-haters all over Europe won't do the same?

So, Mr. Gibson, while you fire up the passions of those who want me at best marginalized and at worst dead, here's my passion: you are persona non grata in this house and the house of the Jews. You can't escape the ignominy of your actions with a turn of phrase. I'll never be able to see you in a film--new or old--without thinking of your "moral obtuseness." Never again. So I won't see you.


*Six in 10 believe Bible stories are literally true? Jesus H. Christ!