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"Without that interpretation, The Passion of the Christ is nothing more nor less than the old charge of deicide. "

I appreciate your endeavor to explain why some feel hurt by it. But within the Passion of the Christ, the clear teaching of Christianity is presented that Christ died for the sins of humanity; a deicide accusation is NOT in the film.

So, it still seems to come back to a type of projection.
1. Those hurt are hurt because they fear the charge of deicide against Jews.
2. Fearing that charge, they accuse Christians and the film The Passion of making that charge.
3. The film does not make that charge.
4. However: Those hurt do not believe the Christians professing their own faith that humanity is responsible. (They could accept that, without accepting the divinity of Christ personally. They could at least accept what Christians say about the Christian religion.) And they don't believe that the charge of deicide is not in the film.
5. I would conclude, they are hurt by their own unnecessary fears. Rather than by Christians or the Passion. Yes, we can have compassion for that, but it is based upon emotion, not logic.

Without that interpretation [divinity of Christ + he died "for our sins"], The Passion of the Christ is nothing more nor less than the old charge of deicide.

This is a nonsensical statement in multiple ways.

1. To people who do not accept the divinity of Jesus, he was simply a man, not God. Therefore the charge "X killed Jesus" can not be a charge of "deicide" against X; at worst it's a charge of murder. (In the case of Jesus, I'm inclined to think it wasn't even murder; he was given capital punishment by the ruling authority of his time and place, and let's face it, he does seem to have been guilty of the blasphemy charge against him, so even if his execution was bad, how is it "murder"?) But to say that "X killed Jesus" is a charge of "deicide" is to imply that Jesus was God, which as you say is manifestly not what any (conventional) Jew thinks. So then how could any Jew think he, or anyone else, is being charged with "deicide" in the first place?

2. Even if one accepts that it's a charge of deicide (by saying "well it's deicide in Christians' eyes anyway..."), you gloss over whom that charge is against as if it is but a small detail. At the very most, it is a charge being levelled against (a) some Romans (and perhaps e.g. Syrian or other foreign soldiers working for the Romans) who comprised or worked for the ruling authority in Judea at the time, and (b) whichever Jews (i.e. Sanhedrin) may have been involved in turning Jesus over to those Romans from (a), or who may have worked for/collaborated with the Roman rulers (we know there *were* some, e.g. Saul/"Paul", right?).

But all of the people being charged in (a) and (b) are now dead and have been so for nearly 2000 years.

So when you say "it's a charge of deicide!" my reaction is, "yeah, ok, so what?" First of all, someone killed Jesus, so we gotta charge someone with this "deicide" (if that's what you believe)...isn't that ok? Second, it's a charge being made against a group of people X. All of the individual people in that group X are dead. Why should anyone today, Jewish or otherwise, feel "hurt" by identification of some or all of the individual people that group X?

Also, is group X somehow not allowed to contain any Judeans? Was it metaphysically impossible for any Judeans 2000 years ago to have had a hand in getting Jesus killed? From the way detractors now talk, one would think so. To say "'the Jews' didn't kill Jesus" is perfectly reasonable, of course, but to say that "NO Jews even had a hand in killing Jesus" is stretching things. I don't know that. Are not Jews capable of this aspect of human experience (gettin' someone killed)? Why infantilize Jews so much that we deny the very possibility that some of them had a hand in this deed? But, you see what I'm saying, I am sure.

Jews have been persecuted and died as a result of Jew-hatred and/or the deicide charge.

That is of course true but it does not mean I have to take a claim like "Mel Gibson's movie charges 'The Jews' with deicide" seriously if that claim is, in fact, factually untrue. I don't see how it's even within the realm of possiblity that a narrative film depicting Jesus' execution "charges 'The Jews' with killing Jesus". It can charge some Jews with doing it but I cannot for the life of me imagine how it can charge "the" Jews.

There may indeed be people who walk away from Mel Gibson's movie with the nonsensical impression that "'The Jews' killed Jesus" but those people are frickin' idiots, and I will say so at every opportunity if I ever encounter them.

Still doesn't justify the nonthinking criticism being levelled against Gibson's film. Not his fault there are frickin' idiots in the world.