Posted on 03/15/2004 2:28:01 PM PST by presidio9
As one of the few Jewish writers who tried to lower the decibel level of vituperation regarding Mel Gibson’s movie, and as one who was primarily critical only of his liberal use of cinematic artistic license and selectivity of history and scripture in his portrayal of the Passion, I feel I have an obligation to speak my mind about the real problem with Mel Gibson.
I respect Mr. Gibson’s faith and his desire to bring it to life using the genre of movies. Granted that movies are a pretty dumbed-down way to faith, but we are living in such times. Nevertheless, Mr. Gibson does have guilt on his head. He has set himself up as a religious personality and must take the responsibility that goes with it.
If Mr. Gibson is sincere that his movie is not anti-Jewish but about universal love, then he must speak openly and loudly to the Christian community that his work not be misinterpreted. Instead, Mr. Gibson has chosen to speak occasionally on television before friendly interviewers and made fairly empty remarks that “we are all guilty of Jesus’ death,” in spite of the fact that this does not seem to be image movie-goers get while watching ugly Jewish mobs and smug and sadistic Jewish leaders watch Jesus’ gruesome and violent death. The voluntarism of Jesus’ sacrifice and the universality of mankind’s guilt are not the first things that come to the viewers’ minds. If that was Mr. Gibson’s meaning then he should be screaming from the rooftops that people should not be misled by his movie. Mel Gibson has done nothing of the sort and is quite content to let the social fallout be whatever it will be. He has made himself a religious spokesman and if he believes in tolerance and love, he should be everywhere spreading that message in the same way that he acted like a typical Hollywood producer, selling his movie like a carnival barker on every talk show that would have him. This act of omission is serious.
Mr. Gibson should acknowledge the terrible results of his movie that have already occurred in Europe. Jewish children have been beaten in hundreds of incidents and the cry of “Christ killers” has once again raised its ugly head. Mr. Gibson needs to go to Europe and set the record straight as to the meaning of his movie and to condemn in the strongest possible terms the entirely PREDICTABLE outbreaks of anti-Jewish behavior in Europe. Mr. Gibson should be working with all people of god will in Europe to stop this phenomenon. Given the climate in France, could Mr. Gibson have been so naïve as to believe that anything but anti-Jewish outbreaks would occur? Does Mr. Gibson believe that in Russia his movie will lead to interfaith dialogue? Can Mr. Gibson believe that the Islamic world will use his film as anything BUT a further tool of incitement against Israel and Jews? Mel Gibson is a sophisticated film maker. He knows the financial rewards of overseas markets and the distribution rights to other countries. Mr. Gibson’s silence and lack of action on these fronts is nothing short of shameful. Mr. Gibson will have Jewish blood on his hands in nations less enlightened and tolerant than the United States. This is a sin of commission. Incitement to violence and murder is not the sign of a man of love.
Where are the televangelists that were so quick to defend Mr. Gibson, now that their job is only half done? Do they not need to say to both American audiences and foreign audiences what they have said here in the US? While Mr. Gibson may have awakened the faith of many in America, he has also opened a Pandora’s Box of hatred among a small minority in the US and among the not-so-silent majority abroad. I have little doubt that Jews will die in violent acts because of this film and the failure of Mr. Gibson to condemn publicly and in important venues any anti-Jewish interpretation of his film (although the film itself will make that quite difficult). Mr. Gibson needs to get over his whining, self-pitying, “I am a victim of the Hollywood establishment” role and think of the real victims he is helping to create. His behavior so far has been self-righteous and belligerent. It would seem the Hollywood establishment has been pretty good to Mel over the years. When Mel was getting started and needed the money, he did his own fair share of schlock movies with questionable moral messages.
I must finally discuss the most unseemly aspect of Mel Gibson. His recent interview in Reader’s Digest and his many statements prior to that leave absolutely no doubt that he is a Holocaust-denier like his father. I do not know if he believes every crazy idea of his father (like the Jews were secretly responsible for 9/11), but he has done absolutely nothing to disavow such beliefs. He mentions the Holocaust by saying that “some Jews died…war is terrible…” He then compares that to civilian casualties in the Second World War. Apparently Mr. Gibson can make no distinction between a systematic plan to exterminate a people and a religion and the normal ravages of civilian populations in total war. Even the biggest Holocaust-deniers agree that “some Jews were killed by the Nazis.” That is no major breakthrough. His words reinforce neo-Nazis here and abroad. He has the absolute gall to trivialize the deaths of six million people and a plan to exterminate an entire people. I can understand that Mr. Gibson does not want to attack his father’s Jew hatred publicly out of some filial devotion. That’s one thing; but now he is showing his agreement with his father’s ideas.
Before the movie, Mel Gibson deserved the benefit of the doubt. His subsequent behavior leaves him beyond the pale of civilized opinion. Instead of furthering the goal of trying to reassert traditional values in American life and general opinion, Mr. Gibson has set back the cause of traditionalists by restoring the worst stereotypes of traditionalist and religious people as mere bigots. This is NOT true, but thanks to Mr. Gibson a lot of work has been undone. As a Catholic he should run—not walk—to confess his sins. Then again, I forgot that Mel doesn’t believe that the Catholic Church is Catholic enough for him. He rejects the teachings of the Popes since Vatican 2. He has set up Gibsonian Catholicism. From whom does a man who is holier than the Pope receive absolution of sins? It is good that Mr. Gibson believes in a forgiving God because he will need it.
Misfar Saad Al-Misfar, deputy minister of culture, told the paper his ministry confiscated more than 350,000 pirated Playstation CDs from East Asia.
It is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Nope. Nice try. You can try to take the easy way out. This is not a charge of a psychopathic Jew killing a Christian. I will contend that there is a historical fact that a group of Jews persecuted mostly Hebrew Christians. One of the leaders was Saul. Remember what happened to him? We know him as Paul.
The charges in Europe against Jews, by both Catholics and Protestants against Jews with some institutional backing, has been that groups of Jews, in different countries and in different centuries, killed Christian children to obtain their blood to mix with their matzo for Passover. It is akin to Jews accusing us that the cardinals in the Vatican or James Dobson and Focus on the Family killed some child on an altar to use the blood for holy communion. It's not only lying about the Jews and their rabbis, it is lying about Passover, a Holy day that Jesus Christ of Nazareth certainly thought was a very covenantal day with God. The blood libel conspiracy against the Jews is not a religious misunderstanding about Passover, it's an outright hate-filled poisonous lie.
I haven't seen the film, but I tend to think it is not antisemitic.
Yeah, it gets very tiresome when people use the Holocaust as a bludgeon in support of unrelated arguments.
I do think it relevant when the question is Jewish sensitivity to antisemitism. But on reflection, I probably agree with you that it would have been better if it hadn't surfaced on this thread.
When did this happen (and why does it sound like peacenik-speak)?
Actually it is a Jew, Michael Horowitz, who wrote the Introduction to Peter Marshall's book on modern day Christian Persecution, Their Blood Cries Out, who asks why Christians aren't realizing that there is a Christian Holocaust going on in the world today and why they aren't doing much about it.
The Jews have Israel to worry about. The question is not why don't the Jews talk more about the Christians murdered in the Holocaust and Russia and now Sudan, Pakistan.... why aren't Christian leaders talking about it? Why aren't the Christian universities' historians' spending some time documenting the 4 million or more Christians who were killed by the Nazis? Too comfortable or too liberal or not interested?
We know a lot of the Protestant so-called leaders have radio programs and tv stations and most own property worth millions of dollars (paid for by "love offerings"). (I'll pick on the Protestants here, since I'm a Protestant). Let's not blame the Jews for our shortcomings too.
Huh? So because other people tell lies, we can too? Like the hot dog commercial says, "We are held to higher standards."
I wrote: I know about some Christians being murdered by Muslims for being Christians, but it's ironic that Jews are still getting accused of something they DID NOT do.
And you replied: Are you saying the Jews did not kill Christ? The Gospel is very clear on this. They did.
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I was referring to Jews getting accused even today of murdering Christian children and using their blood at Passover, I was not referring to Jews getting accused of killing Jesus.
But when you say that the Gospel is very clear that the Jews killed Jesus Christ, I hope you don't go around telling that half truth you just posted. That is lying by ommission, and I don't believe that is even Mel Gibson's movie's version.
In Acts 4:27-28, we are told WHO killed Jesus Christ of Nazareth:
For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.
Apparently some people think Spain has not suffered enough.
From Hilaire Belloc, August, 1937:
"It (communism) insisted on "liquidating" those who had inherited or acquired the habit of control under the old Christian society... The simplest form of "liquidation" was murder, and under the inspiration of Communism we saw murder on a scale hitherto unknown even during the invasions of the pagan Mongols. Priests by tens of thousands, the owners of wealth in every kind, the adherents to old traditions in every form, were massacred wherever the new fury could strike.
"Moreover, Communism declared itself not only atheist but materialist in its atheism. It declared quite accurately and logically that its prime enemy was the Christian religion...
"Meanwhile, there was a hatred of the Church as violent as, or more violent than, the hatred of the rich and of the system whereby the rich were supported. This hatred of the Church was not due, as foreigners have ignorantly and even stupidly supposed, to the wealth of the Church: the Spanish parish clergy were among the poorest in Europe, and anyone who will go carefully over the list of those known to have been murdered will satisfy himself that envy of wealth had nothing to do with the crimes. Half the priests of Spain have been savagely put to death by the revolutionaries, and very few of them could have known from one day to another where to find 10 pesetas. Humble village priests, sprung from the people, indistinguishable in manners and speech from the peasants around them and less endowed with goods than any other class in the country, were the specially chosen victims.
"Here again it was a minority, as might be expected, that committed such shocking crimes. The bulk of the population, even in great towns, were churchgoing Catholics. This was manifest in Barcelona, though Barcelona was the very focus of the revolution. But the Church was associated in the minds of the revolutionaries with the best of all the traditions they were determined to destroy.
"At this point let it be carefully noted and fixed in the reader's mind that the Spanish conflict is essentially a RELIGIOUS WAR. It does not call itself such. The superficial foreign observer, especially if he be from a country where Catholicism is virtually unknown to the mass of men, may well think the other elements in the struggle to be of greater importance, and particularly the struggle between Capital and Labour. But in all its manifestations of active hatred, especially its organizing of murder, Communism in Spain since the outbreak of the revolution has been specially and particularly anti-Christian. In that part of Spanish territory still in the hands of the revolutionaries it has been impossible to practise religion, or to teach religion to the young. What is more, implements and symbols of religion were systematically destroyed wholesale because the Revolutionaries judged, quite rightly, that symbols are a support to Religion. They are also proofs of its presence. In a great many cases the possession of a crucifix or a rosary was a death-warrant."
End of excerpt
From 1936-1939, when Stalin's "International Brigade" forces were dispatched to Spain to fight the Catholics, Jewish Communists comprised the largest faction of his troops, "More than 40,000 volunteers fought in the International Brigade...A huge number of the volunteers were Jews: between 7,000 and 10,000 of the Internationals as a whole, more than one-third of the Americans." Jewish Communist Milton Wolff was the last commander of the American contingent. Rabbi Hyman Katz joined in order to fight Spanish Christians. (cf. Jeffrey Sharlet, "Troublemakers," Pakn Treger, Fall, 1997, pp. 16, 18 and 24).
"In Ciudad Real in the center of Spain, the bishop and every single priest of the diocese were murdered; not one escaped." --Dr. Warren H. Carroll, 70 Years of the Communist Revolution, pp. 184-185, 188-189. (Also cf. Justo Perez de Urbel, Catholic Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War [Kansas City, Missouri: The Angelus Press, 1993)....
Spain has had no shortage of martyrs for the Faith. Poor Spain, treated only with derision.
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