Posted on 03/05/2004 1:17:40 PM PST by presidio9
It's an age-old story with a modern twist: Even as the boy is being devoured by a real wolf, he continues to point to one that is, if not imaginary, at least toothless.
To some Jews, indirect anti-Semitism is worse than deadly anti-Semitism. Because it's the former that ineffectual groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center can fight. It's rather like looking indoors for a quarter that was lost outdoors — because the lighting is better.
If some Jews were upset over The Passion of the Christ even before seeing it, it's because we gave the exclusive contract on anti-Semitism to Muslims. But why rob Gibson of the benefit of the doubt we gave Arafat? True, the film depicts an imaginatively unflattering Jewish role in Christ's crucifixion — beyond what the Gospels suggest. So yes, Mel Gibson is his father's son. But any Jew who supported the Oslo Peace Process — and there were more of us than readily admit now — should be keeping a low profile amid The Passion. Unless blowing up Jews is more forgivable than Mel's movie. It's certainly easier to point the finger at the Christian, if you want to keep that finger.
When a movie like The Passion of the Christ comes along, it's the professional Jew-defender's dream come true. Mouthing off about Mel is basically a paid vacation for these types, who even with all the Jewish financial contributions from over the years at their disposal weren't doing their job — not during Crown Heights and not during seven years of genocide bombings in Israel leading up to the second Intifada in 2000, which managed to catch them off-guard. Only then did they kick into gear, as unabashed anti-Semitism exploded throughout the Middle East and resurged in Europe. Only then did it occur to organized Jewry that they forgot to equip a generation or two of college students to fight, much less preempt, the anti-Semitism they would encounter at their left-wing college campuses. Where did all that Jewish money go? To the NAACP, gay rights, injured Palestinian children and Albanian Muslims.
One need only look at Elie Wiesel, the picture of timeless Jewish suffering, to understand the farce that is Jewish outrage today. When three genocide bombs went off in a single week in Israel last year, where was Elie? Elie was in Romania, giving a speech to a village to remind them that 60 years ago "Jews were killed here too." Understandably, Wiesel survived a horrific Holocaust experience, but he devotes his energies to past threats, choosing to remain a universally sympathetic figure rather than a useful one. He and the rest spent the past decade looking for cheap Holocaust analogies everywhere except Israel, where a more literal parallel was in the making. These days, these types seem to come out only when it's safe, like when Jesus is involved. Tragically, the Jewish people reserve greater scorn for the guy wanting to save them from hell than the one trying to send them there.
If Jews spent less time worrying about ancient hatreds and more time worrying about the glaring contemporary ones, we wouldn't have come to a point where the legitimacy of Israel's very existence is regularly questioned and where the Jews get blamed when Muslims bomb America. While Jews worry about things like intermarriage, a sleepy KKK, an Austrian named Haider, a second president named Bush, and now a movie about Christ, the real threats spiral out of control.
Despite building careers on six million dead, the professional defenders have shied away from the harder fights. So along comes Mel to give them some relevance and put them back in business.
And to put media indignation over anti-Semitism back in business. Both Mel and the Jews should feel used. There's a reason the controversy got as big as it did. The liberal media acting like they care whether someone is anti-Semitic or not is not only insulting but insidious as well. The plan is to keep the Passion ruckus they raised in their pocket, for fuel in countering accusations of anti-Semitism the next time they diminish terrorism against Israelis, the next time they misrepresent Israeli raids of terror camps as massacres, and the next time they demonize Israelis for building a wall to stay alive. All they'll have to say is: "We can't be anti-Semites. Just look at the hell we gave Mel!" The very fact that the notoriously anti-Semitic and anti-Israel New York Times took the lead a year ago in condemning Gibson's film and family should be telling.
Networks and newspapers are dutifully up in arms over whether a movie will be offensive to Jews, and they give front-page space to recovered paintings stolen from Jews by Nazis, but whom have they let know that the Palestinian Authority televises sermons with titles like "Blessings to Whomever Saved a Bullet to Stick in a Jew's Head"? Or that Mein Kampf hit No. 6 on the Palestinian bestseller list a few years ago? Or that Palestinians brew terror plots against Americans? By the same token, did any reporters take to task antiwar protesters who held up placards comparing Israelis to Nazis? Only the likes of Pat Robertson's 700 Club exposes what the Jew killers are up to week to week.
The elites and their media are using Mel to wash their hands of the Jewish blood they accumulated when their sympathies enabled the violence to escalate from brick-throwing at Israeli soldiers to the first suicide bombing against Israeli civilians in 1994 — and all the bombings since.
The media of the elites know well that it's not the anti-Semitism that yells "Christ killer" which kills today, but their enlightened anti-Semitism and Islamic anti-Semitism that do. Behold the unholy alliance between the two: The Passion is their opportunity to put a rift in the rival alliance between Christians and Jews. It's a chance to further the Left's war against religion, and the Muslims' war against religion that isn't theirs.
By going after The Passion of the Christ the media are using Jews to attack Christianity, the ultimate target of extermination by the Left and its Islamic friends. (Neatly enough, immediately following the Diane Sawyer interview with Mel Gibson, ABC announced a report that thousands more molestations took place within the Catholic Church than previously estimated.)
The feigned indignation over whether Mel Gibson is calling Jews Christ killers is transparent, not to mention ironic. Jesus was a Jew, so calling someone a "Christ killer" is essentially calling him or her a Jew killer.
And the last time I checked, the secular world doesn't have a problem with those.
Inyokern is unable to wrap his tiny brain around the idea that the Son of God's presence here meant that He no longer had a "Chosen People." Therefore, there was no reason for His disciples to hang around in Isreal.
Another personal attack. People usually engage in personal attacks when they cannot debate the facts.
Disputing is different from mocking
Its bad form to make false accusations of wife-beating and then try to reclaim the moral high ground.
When you address the logical rebuttals that have been presented to you instead of constantly shifting tacks and trying to attack Christ from different angles, you will might demonstrate a capacity for reason. Until then, I'm just calling them like I see 'em. You lie. You repeat your lie. Then you tell new ones.
The first "personal attack" you accuse me of is an observation that religion for you consists of celebration victimization and weak attacks against Christ. You have yet to disprove this.
Oh please. Are you telling me you have never heard the expression, "Are you still beating your wife?" It is a joke about loaded questions.
You have really never heard that before?
LOL. I thought you claimed to be Jew who had read the New Testament. Perhaps you missed this?
"Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught." Luke 1:3-4
Nope. Never heard it before in that context. Regardless, it is, of course, a personal attack. But instead of quibbiling, why don't you either real issues, or, better yet, actually do your homework. Case-and-point: You claim Christ was not a real person, and Josepus' account of him was forged by Romans later. Unfortunately, Christ appears on seperate arabic translations of Josephus, so your ignorance is exposed once again.
So, I suppose story in the Bible that is not given a precise date never happened?
In Roman times, there were calenders. Dates were known. Years were known. If Jesus had really been crucified, the Jerusalem church would have kept track of the year in which it happened and observed the date every year.
I see. So instead of making up a specific date, which, in early times, would have been completely unverifiable one way or another, but which would have lended veracity to the Story, your conspirators purposefully chose to leave the date ambiguous?
You can't stay out of your own way. Your arguments are now contradicting your point of view. Isn't it more plausible that rather than choosing to omitt a date all four authors neglected to include one, because it just wasn't important to them?
The date of the most important event in history (according to them) was unimportant?
You said hte Gospels never specifically claim to be recording historical events. I provided a direct quote from Luke where he claims just that. Don't fight it. You're wrong as usual.
Dates in general. Note that they also do not give a specific date for Christ's birth or the destruction of the Temple, two other dates of major significance for Jesus's disciples. These were common men, not historians. Since dates later commanded a lot of historical significance, it makes no sense whatsoever that if the Gospels were fabricated, as you claim to believe, the collaborators would not have come up with a date. The fact that no date is provided only adds to the plausibility.
Nope. I'm Catholic, but that doesn't mean we can't still be friends.
Luke was not a common man, nor was James. Don't you think Luke could have just asked James, "When did your brother die?" Or could it be that Luke never met James? Could it be that Luke was never in Judea?
By the way, Luke does provide at least one date:
Luk 3:1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,Luk 3:2 Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.
So, Luke provided dates when he knew them. He provided the relatively unimportant date of the beginning of the ministry of John the Baptist, but not the crucial date of the crucifixion of Jesus. Does that make sense to you?
The fact that no date is provided only adds to the plausibility.
No, it leads me to believe there WAS no date.
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