'Protection squad' for Gibson's Jesus (Security detail hired for James Caviezel)

World Net Daily ^ | 3-8-04

[TigersEye]

Let's hope he doesn't get too friendly with them and invite them to dinner at some Italian bistro. With all the wine and bread and olive oil it might turn into a party he'll never forget.

[hosepipe]

WoW...Needing security for the movie Passion of Christ ?..

Imagine what he'd need after filming the book TREASON by Coulter.. The liberals would go nutz after pulling the rug out from under the base of their agenda... the only thing that would keep Mel safe would OUR PRAYERS... and with the name hes getting for directing that movie could'nt be ignored, EASILY..

[Shermy]

Gibson, interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, was asked if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. "There is no salvation for those outside the (Catholic) church," Gibson replied. "I believe it... Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She's a much better person than I am. Honestly. She's, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it's just not fair if she doesn't make it; she's better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it."

Yes, he backtracked later, but I think what he says first is closer to what he truly believes, as with anyone's statements.

[ladyjane]

I don't understand your response. Mel Gibson, the actor and his family possibly need security guards and the unspoken issue is (are)those who hate Israel and want to destroy the Jewish people? Could you elaborate? It doesn't seem to make sense.

[ladyjane]

I don't understand your response. Mel Gibson, the actor and his family possibly need security guards and the unspoken issue is (are)those who hate Israel and want to destroy the Jewish people? Could you elaborate? I don't follow this logic.

[isthisnickcool]

Distracting and troll bait is all it is.

I've only seen it used in the context of making fun of morons that blame "the Jews" for all sorts of things. That's the only context I'd ever use it in. And just did.

I see your point in that some might think that the term might be used by some people as interchangable for "Jews". I find that as repulsive as you seem to. So, I'll refrain from using it since people may take it wrong and the moderator made things clear.

[af_vet_1981]

I don't understand your response. Mel Gibson, the actor and his family possibly need security guards and the unspoken issue is (are)those who hate Israel and want to destroy the Jewish people? Could you elaborate? I don't follow this logic.

If you have been around stars you quickly learn they all need security. This movie is more likely to heighten the risk to Mel and company because of the subject matter. It could be anyone, even a Jew. G-d willing, not a hair on anyone's head will be harmed.

Similarly, Abe Foxman probably is more at risk as well.

There is a wider tapestry being woven here. There is a real and present danger to Jews in Israel and around the world. The larger risk is that an evil spirit will enlist more of those who claim the name of Christian in a new crusade against the Jews.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

I think it happened as Mel was leaving the Letterman Show.

[don-o]

I see your point in that some might think that the term might be used by some people as interchangable for "Jews". I find that as repulsive as you seem to. So, I'll refrain from using it since people may take it wrong

This is so fine, nick.

When I get out of line, I hope I react as well as you have.

[Victoria Delsoul]

According to the report, a mob of protesters has already screamed "anti-Semite" and hurled a bucket of lamb's blood at Gibson in a New York street. Charges of anti-Semitism dogged the filmmaker for months prior to the movie's Feb. 25 opening.

The Express reports Caviezel, 35, and his wife, Kerri, are protected whenever they leave home. Studio executives reportedly are concerned the film's principal figures could be targets for assassination.

And those threats aren't coming from Christians but from the Left, and the non-believers. These people who screamed anti-Semite have no problem attacking Christians. You see, we should be tolerant to their intolerance.

[ultima ratio]

There is plenty of anti-Christian bigotry among Jews and it should be addressed honestly. Instead, it is ignored, as if it did not exist. It's no secret Hollywood, for instance, is an industry largely run by Jews; neither is it a secret that Christianity has been targeted--the Catholic Church in particular--for decades in films. It would take pages just to record the list of movies which deliberately peddle negative images of Christians and Christianity, half a dozen last year alone.

But aside from the pop culture, Jewish intellectuals, novelists, historians, even museum curators, have often shown themselves just as bigoted. Typically, its commonest cheap shot is to causally link Christianity to the Holocaust. Krauthammer, the columnist, is the latest to pour vitriol on Christians by publicly making this claim. A Jewish Berkeley professor of theology recently--only about three weeks ago--in speaking to a journalist about Gibson's film, showed her contempt for Christians by calling the New Testament a "nasty little document." And Jewish revisionist scholars routinely publish works trashing Catholic popes for having been somehow in league with Hitler--or for not having done enough to prevent the Holocaust--despite mountains of evidence to the contrary. It is all very tiresome, unjust and totally bigoted--and it has gone on for decades.

Krauthammer in particular got to me. I was shocked at the level of unconscious prejudice he showed. Another shock was listening to the comedian Jackie Mason recently. His language was a torrent of anti-Christian vitriol--I'm sure he believed the paranoid drivel he was spewing. My own view is that the Jewish community takes it as received opinion that European anti-Semitism is attributable to Christian teaching and this caused the Holocaust. This is sheer nonsense, since Hitler had nothing to do with Christianity. It would be just as outrageous for me to claim that Judaism was the cause of the slaughter of countless millions of Christians in Bolshevist Russia. It is the same difference--but some Jews can't see this. They still insist on attributing anti-Semitism to Christianity per se. This is profoundly offensive.

[af_vet_1981]

There is plenty of anti-Christian bigotry among Jews and it should be addressed honestly. Instead, it is ignored, as if it did not exist.

I'll address it. It is the result of many centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Most Jews perceive that Christianity and the Cross did this to us over and over again. How are Jews to discern the difference between a CINO and a genuine Christian ?

It's no secret Hollywood, for instance, is an industry largely run by Jews;

You left out the White House. It is important that you include the WH in the industries largely run by Jews...
And the banks, and the factories, Oh. This never stops.

I simply don't understand how someone can claim to love G-d and have so much envy, anger and perhaps even hatred for the people on whom He chose to place his name. Such a small nation, so much suffering, so few allies.

[ultima ratio]

I would answer, Yes, but. There are other tensions besides these, perhaps having to do with the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. For the most part tolerance is putting up with somebody totally at odds with you--and this is certainly possible, despite differences. And so is friendship, as long as we keep religion out of it.

[ultima ratio]

Nonsense. Nobody said the Jews run the White House. I said HOLLYWOOD--and if you deny it, then you are being less than honest. The Jews built the town and they run it. If you are going to leap to conclusions and call me a bigot for being honest about something like this, then we can't have a dialogue.

You see what you're doing? You're taking a FACT and making me out to be a bigot for stating it. That is irrational. How the hell can we have a discussion when you leap to such an irrational conclusions. I don't think the Jews run the White House or the banks or anything else. And if they did, more power to them. But they DO run Hollywood!

[ultima ratio]

I apologize for my testy reply in the last post. I was exasperated needlessly by what I took to be your jumping to conclusions.

[Kryptonite]

---"It [anti-Christian bigotry] is the result of many centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Most Jews perceive that Christianity and the Cross did this to us over and over again. How are Jews to discern the difference between a CINO and a genuine Christian ?"---

Well, there we have it. Anti-Christian bigotry not only exists, it is present in "most Jews". And the only way to weaken it is to become a christian in name only.

That is exactly the message I've been discerning for a month now. Thank you for stating it yourself.

[af_vet_1981]

I said HOLLYWOOD--and if you deny it, then you are being less than honest. The Jews built the town and they run it.

Hitler was baptized a Catholic. He had Catholic religious training. He was confirmed. Although he stopped practicing his religion and became an enemy of the Catholic Church, he even attended the Passion Play in Ober Ammergau to cheers. He wanted to preserve that play for all generations --and if you deny it, then you are being less than honest.

Germany had received the Gospel for centuries. For centuries it persecuted Jews. Half of the German voters chose the Nazis in 1932, and that was well after Hitler published his book.

Pat Buchanan published a book too in which he admired Hitler and bemoaned the fact the U.S. fought Germany in WWI. I suppose he was just being honest about his beliefs.

Jewish businessmen played a major role in creating the Hollywood studios in the early 1900's.

MGM, Fox, Columbia, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Brothers were all started and led by Jews, almost all of them recent immigrants who were born in poverty in Eastern Europe. In his history of Hollywood, An Empire of Their Own, Neal Gabler writes that in the movie industry there "were none of the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out."

Very quickly, anti-Semites attacked the movie industry as a Jewish conspiracy to undermine "Christian" and "American" morals. Such beliefs in Jewish control, power, and conspiracy are traditional elements of anti-Semitic thinking. The role of these "Hollywood Jews" has been debated for years, but one thing is agreed on: most of them avoided identifying themselves as Jews at all, since their major desire was to assimilate and be accepted by the non-Jewish white establishment.

In more recent times, the role of Jews in Hollywood has become less central, but individual Jews are still leaders in the industry. Some African Americans, angered by negative images of Blacks in movies and by the small number of major Black directors and producers, have raised charges that Jews in Hollywood are both stereotyping and also unfairly excluding Blacks. Hollywood leaders have responded that there is no conspiracy controlling Hollywood and that Jews in the industry have been leading supporters of liberal causes, including civil rights and the expansion of Black participation in the industry.

[af_vet_1981]

Well, there we have it. Anti-Christian bigotry not only exists, it is present in "most Jews". And the only way to weaken it is to become a christian in name only. That is exactly the message I've been discerning for a month now. Thank you for stating it yourself.

Allow me to correct you. This is what I state myself.

CINO persecution of Jews has existed for centuries. A long and bloody history of Antisemitism has caused Jews to view Christianity with a mixture of fear, suspicion, and skepticism. CINOs who persist in making Jews the target of their envy, anger, and hatred do not serve G-d.

[Kryptonite]

And those threats aren't coming from Christians but from the Left, and the non-believers. These people who screamed anti-Semite have no problem attacking Christians. You see, we should be tolerant to their intolerance.

Not only must we tolerate anti-Christian bigotry, we are told that we must succomb to it by becoming christians in name only, and encouraging others to do likewise.

The bigots absolutely despise both the Crucifix and Cross alike; they will be satisfied when they are taken down - from churches, homes, necklaces - everywhere. Their goal is to deny Christians their core beliefs, by any means necessary, include slurs, bigotry and now, threats, all over a movie.

God help all of us.

[ultima ratio]

This is going to get us nowhere. Here is Rabbi Lapin on all this:

For an explanation of why I believe that those Jews protesting Passion lack moral legitimacy we must take ourselves back in time to the fall of 1999. That was when Arnold Lehman, the Jewish director of the Brooklyn Museum presented a show called Sensation. It featured, from the collection of British Jew Charles Saatchi, several works which debased Catholicism including Chris Ofili's dung-bedecked Madonna.

You may wonder why I highlight the Jewish ethnicity of the players in the Brooklyn Museum saga. My reason for doing so is that everyone else recognized that they were Jewish and there is merit in us knowing how we ourselves appear in the eyes of those among whom we live. This is especially true on those sad occasions when we violate what ancient Jewish wisdom commends as the practice of Kiddush HaShem, which is to say, conducting our public affairs in a way best calculated to bring credit upon us as a group. Maintaining warm relations with our non-Jewish friends is a traditional Jewish imperative and the raison d'être of the organization I serve, Toward Tradition.

This was not the first time that Arnold Lehman had chosen to offend Catholics. While he was director of the Baltimore Museum, in a display of gross insensitivity to that city's Catholics, he screened Hell's Angel, a film denouncing Mother Teresa as a religious extremist and depicting her in obscenely uncomplimentary and ghoulish terms. I am sorry to have to tell you that no Jewish organizations protested this gratuitous insult of a universally respected Catholic icon.

Almost every Christian organization angrily denounced the vile bigotry sponsored by the Brooklyn Museum. Especially prominent was William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, a good friend who has always stood firmly with Jews in the fight against genuine anti-Semitism, yet now, in his fight against anti-Catholicism, he appealed to Jewish organizations in vain. Almost every Christian denomination helped vigorously protest the assault that the Brooklyn Museum carried out against the Catholic faith in such graphically abhorrent ways. Even Mayor Rudolph Giuliani expressed his outrage by trying to withhold money from the museum. Where was the Jewish expression of solidarity against such ugliness? Only a small group of Orthodox Jews joined their fellow Americans in protest at this literal defilement of Christianity with elephant feces. And were other Jews silent? No, unfortunately not. In actuality a small but disproportionately vocal number of them were defending the Brooklyn Museum and its director in the name of artistic freedom.

Here are a few of the names that were prominently defending the Brooklyn Museum's flagrant anti-Christianism during fall 1999. Norman Siegel and Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Steven R. Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union, and lawyer Floyd Abrams, cousin of Elliott Abrams who holds the position of top adviser on Israel-related matters in President George W. Bush's National Security Council. Although at synagogues and around dinner tables revulsion at the Sensation exhibit was widespread, not very many Jews publicly supported our Catholic friends in the time of their pain.

NOT EVEN TEMPTATION...

You may also remember Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ. Then, too, almost every Christian denomination protested Universal's release of a movie so slanderous that had it been made about Moses, or say, Martin Luther King Junior, it would have provoked howls of anger from the entire country. As it was, Christians were left to defend their faith quite alone other than for one solitary courageous Jew, Dennis Prager. Most Americans knew that Universal was run by Lew Wasserman. Most Americans also knew Lew's ethnicity. Perhaps many now wonder why Mel Gibson is not entitled to the same artistic freedom we accorded Lew Wasserman?

When the Weinstein brothers, through their Miramax films (named after their parents, Mira and Max Weinstein,) distributed Priest in 1994, Catholics were again left to protest this unflattering depiction of their faith alone while many Jewish organizations proclaimed the primacy of artistic freedom. Surely Jewish organizations would carry just a little more moral authority if they routinely protested all attacks on faith, not only those troubling to Judaism.