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.
I agree. However, assuming a psychopathic Jew in 12th century England did indeed kill a Christian child for his own psychopathic or perhaps magical reasons, and this was discovered by the highly illiterate and unsophisticated locals, it would not be entirely unreasonable for them to assume this was a part of the Jewish faith.
The tragedy is that anti-semites, some of them Jewish converts, who knew better, would use such a possible atrocity to create the myth of the blood libel as a requirement of the Jewish faith. I pointed out in my earlier post that this is absurd.
Answer: Jesus Christ
Romans 10,9-10
Dream on. Only saintly people would go see the movie? I would not count on that any more than I would count on saying that only God-fearing people read the bible. Anyone can abuse anything.
By the way, Franco was always thought to be of converso Jewish descent, but what a strange thing: he conveniently had all his records destroyed so no one will ever know.
Yea, I guess that's why they specifically targeted priests and religious for murder .
Oh, I get it, it's the old "all Jews are not communists, but all Communists are Jews" lie.
Really?! Strange as how I don't recall ever stating or posting anything to that effect. It is a lie, however, to deny "the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews."
From Winston Churchill:
"There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews.
"In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed, the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses.
"The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people.
"...The fact that in many cases Jewish interests and Jewish places of worship are excepted by the Bolsheviks from their universal hostility has tended more and more to associate the Jewish race in Russia with villainies which are now being perpetrated...Needless to say, the most intense passions of revenge have been excited in the breasts of the Russian people."
End of excerpt
Why astonishing? Some Jews who had survived the Progroms and the Czars thought the secular communist system was going to be better. The Cossacks were manipulated into "defending their homeland" from Nazi aggression too. But they weren't Jewish, so we never hear about a Cossack conspiracy.
And those Jewish Communists in Hungary terrorized Hungarian Jews too. Instead of just reading La Derrota Mundial, you should expand your horizons and read books like Arkady's Stalin Against the Jews. No seas tan ingenuo.
In its perfected practice, Christian egoism of heavenly bliss is necessarily transformed into the corporal egoism of the Jew, heavenly need is turned into world need, subjectivism into self-interest. We explain the tenacity of the Jew not by his religion, but, on the contrary, by the human basis of his religion -- practical need, egoism.Since in civil society the real nature of the Jew has been universally realized and secularized, civil society could not convince the Jew of the unreality of his religious nature, which is indeed only the ideal aspect of practical need. Consequently, not only in the Pentateuch and the Talmud, but in present-day society we find the nature of the modern Jew, and not as an abstract nature but as one that is in the highest degree empirical, not merely as a narrowness of the Jew, but as the Jewish narrowness of society.
Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism -- huckstering and its preconditions -- the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, nd because the conflict between man's individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.
The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.
Make sure it never happens again...not just to Jews, but to any group, including Christians.
One of the justifications for the state of Israel is to provide a home for Jews so they will not be at the mercy of a host country as they were with Germany. Ironic and sad that most of the surrounding countries are bent on Israel's destruction.
Of course, this time around, elements within those countries are also bent on the destruction of the United States and Western Civilization.
If by "moving on," you mean that Jews shouldn't continue to live in the past, I will tentatively agree. However, this is not to say that Jews should forget - it is necessary to keep a very strong awareness and memory of the Holocaust and the past to insure future survival. IMO, the current world situtation requires the same attitude for Americans ane Europeans.
Braveheart was a much larger bone in the English throat that The Passion of the Christ will ever be.
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