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MEL GIBSON’S LONG FIGHT AGAINST LOXISM

“Crucify him! Crucify him!”

“I wanted it [“may his blood be on us and our children”] in,but, man, if I included that in there, they’d be coming after me at my house, they’d come kill me.”

“They wrote a document to say change this scene, take this scene out, change this dialogue, do this, do that,” Gibson is quoted by CNN as saying.

“This is not communist Russia. Does anybody realize that my rights as an American, as an artist, as a human being … are being violated here?” Gibson added.

-Mel Gibson

[Imagine a jake (immature male turkey) like Scrotulant Scarborough raising the issue of loxism.]

What follows is a small fraction of the posts I have re: Jews v. Gibson. The persecution of Gibson long preceded his most recent debacle. I knew after filming The Passion Jews would get to him. I didn’t know how but there was no question about it. Mel would have to pay. He’ll never be forgiven, he’ll be hounded until the end of his days.

Suicide? Or “suicide”? A possibility.

NB: commentaries below by others (such as Jewish Tribal Review: http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/ )
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Saturday, Jan. 24, 2004 2:46 p.m. EST
Mel Gibson: I Was Threatened

Mel Gibson says he was threatened by critics of his upcoming movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” if he didn’t make changes to the film’s script.

Gibson, who produced the film and spent $30 million of his own money to make it, believes a group of scholars comprised of Christians and Jews stole a script and used it as the basis for their attacks.

Jewish leaders have also claimed that the film is anti-Semitic and will fuel hatred against Jews.

Gibson denies both allegations.

“They wrote a document to say change this scene, take this scene out, change this dialogue, do this, do that,” Gibson is quoted by CNN as saying.

“This is not communist Russia. Does anybody realize that my rights as an American, as an artist, as a human being … are being violated here?” Gibson added.

February 4, 2004
Gibson to Delete a Scene in ‘Passion’
By SHARON WAXMAN

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3 — Mel Gibson, responding to focus groups as much as to protests by Jewish critics, has decided to delete a controversial scene about Jews from his film, “The Passion of the Christ,” a close associate said today.

A scene in the film, in which the Jewish high priest Caiaphas calls down a kind of curse on the Jewish people by declaring of the Crucifixion, “His blood be on us and on our children,” will not be in the movie’s final version, said the Gibson associate, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The passage had been included in some versions of the film that were shown before select groups, mostly of priests and ministers.

“It didn’t work in the focus screenings,” the associate said. “Maybe it was thought to be too hurtful, or taken not in the way it was intended. It has been used terribly over the years.”

Jewish leaders had warned that the passage from Matthew 27:25 was the historic source for many of the charges of deicide and Jews’ collective guilt in the death of Jesus.

Mr. Gibson’s decision to remove the scene could indicate that he was being responsive to concerns of Jewish groups that the film will fuel anti-Semitism. Mr. Gibson was the co-writer, director, producer and financier of the $25 million film, which will be released in more than 2,000 theaters on Feb. 25, Ash Wednesday.

Mr. Gibson also responded to a letter from Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who had requested a meeting and asked Mr. Gibson to consider a postscript that would “implore your viewers to not let the movie turn some toward a passion of hatred.”

Mr. Gibson did not respond to those requests directly, writing only: “I hope and I pray that you will join me in setting an example for all of our brethren; that the truest path to follow, the only path, is that of respect and, most importantly, that of love for each other despite our differences.”

Mr. Foxman responded in turn on Monday that “your words do not mitigate our concerns about the potential consequences of your film — to fuel and legitimize anti-Semitism.”

This reporter was shown a two-hour version of the R-rated movie this week. The film features agonizing passages as Jesus, played by Jim Caviezel, is mercilessly beaten by Jewish and then Roman guards, and jeered and hounded by a Jewish mob on his way to his Crucifixion. It is unclear how close this version is to Mr. Gibson’s final film.

In this version, the Roman leader Pontius Pilate is depicted as being reluctant to harm Jesus, who Pilate’s wife warns is holy. Largely to mollify a restive Jewish mob outside his window, Pilate agrees to a severe lashing and scourging of Jesus, but the crowd and the high priest demand more.

Pilate says in Latin: “Ecce homo” — “Behold the man” — displaying the broken and bleeding Jesus to the crowd. But the high priest insists, in Aramaic, “Crucify him.” Pilate responds, “Isn’t this enough?” The mob roars, “No,” and only then does the Roman leader agree to the Crucifixion.

Because passion plays historically preceded outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in Europe, the film passage is a particularly sensitive matter with Jewish groups at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise in parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

But Mr. Gibson further raised hackles among Jewish leaders in an exclusive interview by the writer Peggy Noonan published in the March issue of Reader’s Digest.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, accused Mr. Gibson of insensitivity when he compared Jewish suffering in the Holocaust to that of millions of others who died in the war.

Ms. Noonan, a former speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan, asked Mr. Gibson about his father, a conservative Catholic who was quoted in a New York Times Magazine article last March as denying that Holocaust took place. Mr. Gibson answered that he loved his father. Ms. Noonan insisted: “You’re going to have to go on record. The Holocaust happened, right?”

Mr. Gibson responded: “I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.”

In a letter to Mr. Gibson, Rabbi Hier wrote: “We are not engaging in competitive martyrdom, but in historical truth. To describe Jewish suffering during the Holocaust as `some of them were Jews in concentration camps’ is an afterthought that feeds right into the hands of Holocaust deniers and revisionists.”

Mr. Gibson’s spokesman, Alan Nierob, denied that the director was looking to further inflame those leaders.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that not only does he know the Holocaust and acknowledge it, he has shed tears over it, with me,” he said.

Rabbi Hier responded that Mr. Gibson missed a chance to reduce the tension with Jewish groups. “I think he was lobbed an easy question. He could’ve used the occasion to take us on a different road, instead he marginalized the Holocaust, he diluted its significance, and it’s a lie,” he said. “Either he is very ignorant of sensitivities in Jewish communities of riling survivors, those who have lost loved ones, or he is doing it deliberately.”

Mr. Foxman also protested Mr. Gibson’s remark on the Holocaust. “At the very least it was ignorant, at the very most its insensitive. And you know what? He doesn’t get that either. He doesn’t begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are.”

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Article.

Thursday, Feb. 26, 2004
Hollywood Bosses Vow to Destroy Gibson

“I won’t hire him. I won’t support anything he’s part of.”

So says a chairman of major Hollywood studio quoted today by the New York Times in its latest attack on Mel Gibson and “The Passion of the Christ.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who along with Steven Spielberg are the big cheeses at the powerful DreamWorks, and who just happen to be Democrat activists, are angry about the movie, according to the Times. And the chairmen of two other big studios, who of course remain anonymous, say they won’t work with Gibson.

“Amid the daily dealings of Hollywood, the film and the star have been fodder for unfavorable gossip. Dustin Hoffman has talked to friends about what he called Mr. Gibson’s ‘strangeness’ during the ABC interview. The producer Mike Medavoy said Mr. Gibson’s religious zealotry made him feel uncomfortable,” the Times fretted.

‘Antichrist’ Welcome

Others, however, think Tinseltown’s notorious avarice will rule in the end.

“If the movie works, I don’t think it will hurt him. People here will work with the Antichrist if he’ll put butts in seats,” said John Lesher, an agent with Endeavor.

And the butts, as Lesher so delicately puts it, are there. The movie, budgeted at $25 million or $30 million, according to conflicting media reports, is already breaking even.

Record Audience

The movie, playing on 4,643 screens in 3,006 theaters, made an astonishing $23.6 million Wednesday, in addition to $3 million earned in private screenings for church groups Monday and Tuesday, the Associated Press reported this afternoon.

The box office is unprecedented for an R-rated foreign-language movie. Only studio blockbusters such as “Spider-Man” have had better openings.

Looks as if Gibson will get to laugh all the way to the bank. “After theater owners take their cut, about half of the box-office take will come back to Gibson, who then pays Newmarket a percentage fee for distribution,” AP said.

Article.
Boycott The Passion of the Christ
Why aren’t people like Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand protesting a movie that portrays their people as deicidal villains?

by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach/Jewsweek.com February 26, 2004

Has the real Mel Gibson been kidnapped by space aliens, leaving a Jew-hating, racist, body-double in his place?

Remember the days when Mel was running around shooting people with Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, making us all feel warm and fuzzy about an intimate, on-screen friendship between a white man and a black man? Is this the same Mel Gibson who has now staked a huge amount of his wealth and all of his Hollywood prestige on making a movie that portrays Jews as demonic God-killers? Is it the same Mel who shockingly told Peggy Noonan, when she asked him whether the Holocaust happened, “Yes of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.”

Is this famously intelligent actor really so dense as to equate horrible casualties of war with a government program of genocide that turned more than six million people into ash, soap, and lampshades?

I once greatly admired Mel Gibson not only as a quality actor but as a quality human being. He was one of the few Hollywood celebrities who seemed devoted to his wife and family, and as a father of seven I had great admiration for another father of seven who saw the blessing, rather than the burden, of having lots of kids. As a religious man, I was greatly inspired by his commitment to his Catholicism. But all that is behind me now. Because whether Mel hit his head against a rock or just decided to follow in the footsteps of his Holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic father, the Mel Gibson that first charmed us as an innocent-looking Australian soldier in Gallipoli seems gone forever.

In his place has arisen a kooky religious fundamentalist who seems intent on reversing the reforms of Vatican II, which officially absolved the Jews of deicide, and convincing the world that, indeed, the Jews did it.

If I were a high-profile person and was asked to comment on my father’s statement that the “Second Vatican Council was a plot put out by the Jews” and that the Holocaust could not have happened because “there weren’t even that many Jews in all of Europe,” I would shout from the rooftops that I love my dad, but that doesn’t excuse his being a racist.

Instead, Mel has yet to publicly distance himself from his father’s Jew-hating tirades. Contrast this with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reacted to the news of his father’s Nazi past by requisitioning the Simon Wiesenthal Center to probe whether his father committed atrocities. Schwarzenegger went further and publicly denounced the Austrian far-right politician Joerg Haider, who praised Hitler’s SS troops.

But all of this is small potatoes compared to the real meat of Mel’s passion for his movie The Passion of Christ. Elsewhere, I have written a lengthy refutation of the New Testament’s passion narratives, where I also emphasized that whether or not Mel’s movie will excite anti-Semitism is beside the point, since the bigger issue is that it is based on an anti-Semitic lie, a cheap fabrication contradicted by all serious history of the time. When asked if Jews might be offended by his film, Mel said, “It’s not meant to. I think it’s meant to just tell the truth.” But then why has Mel engaged in such profound historical revisionism?

Here is The New York Times describing a scene in The Passion that gives us insight into how Mel Gibson portrays Pontius Pilate: “The Roman leader Pontius Pilate is depicted as being reluctant to harm Jesus, who Pilate’s wife warns is holy. Largely to mollify a restive Jewish mob outside his window, Pilate agrees to a severe lashing and scourging of Jesus, but the crowd and the high priest demand more.

“Pilate says in Latin, ‘Ecce homo — Behold the man’ — displaying the broken and bleeding Jesus to the crowd. But the high priest insists, in Aramaic, ‘Crucify him.’ Pilate responds, ‘Isn’t this enough?’ The mob roars ‘No,’ and only then does the Roman leader agree to the Crucifixion.”

What a bunch of hateful nonsense. The historical records shows that Pilate was the Saddam Hussein of his time, a murderer of unspeakable cruelty. King Agrippa I wrote a letter to the emperor Caligula about Pilate’s “corruption, his acts of insolence, and his rapine and his habit of insulting people, and his continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, and gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity.”

Likewise Philo wrote that Pilate was an “unbending and recklessly hard character,” famous for “corruptibility, violence, robberies, ill treatment of the people, grievances, continuous executions without even the form of a trial, endless and intolerable cruelties.”

So cruel was Pilate that he was eventually recalled by Rome for his sadistic actions. When a Samaritan prophet gained a large following, Pilate’s method of dispersing his followers was typical: he slaughtered four thousand of them when they gathered on their holy mountain. Even the brutal Romans could not overlook this atrocity, and Pilate was recalled to Rome in 37 CE.

The Romans routinely crucified self-proclaimed messiahs and “kings of the Jews” for challenging their rule, the way Jesus did. Just a few of these include Judah of Galilee (6 CE), Theudas (44 CE), and Benjamin the Egyptian (60 CE). But none of this has stopped Mel Gibson from perpetuating the abominable lie that the Jews demanded that one of their own rabbis be killed in the most horrible manner despite the pious Pontius Pilate’s objections.

But there is good news. Mel has now agreed to take out an especially offensive line in which the Jewish high priest, Caiaphas, calls down a kind of curse on the Jewish people by declaring of the Crucifixion, “His blood be on us and on our children.”

This scene is based on Matthew 27:22: “Pilate said to [the Jews], ‘Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?’ They all said, ‘Let him be crucified.’ And he said, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified.’ So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’ And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children.'”

How plausible does this scene appear to the discerning mind?

Firstly, the very same Gospel of Matthew says that Jesus was accorded an enthusiastic welcome to Jerusalem by the Jews just five days earlier. But aside from this glaring contradiction, how many people do you know who would openly call for a curse upon their children?

Yet this false Christian charge of vertical accountability has led to the massacre of millions of Jews throughout the ages. But the incident is pure invention and does not even appear in the Passion narrative of Mark, even though nearly all scholars today concur that both Luke and Matthew based their own Gospels largely on Mark. Clearly, this is a later fabrication used to justify Christian anti-Judaism, and a pathetic attempt on the part of the fledgling Christian community to suck up to the powerful Romans by portraying them as humane and innocent and the Jews as vengeful and vicious.

The simple and undeniable fact is that Jesus was condemned in a Roman court on a Roman charge, and put to death by a method of execution used only by the Romans, just as the two leading historians of the time, Josephus and Tacitus, expressly maintain.

While Mel may be prepared to do Jews the favor of deleting a single offensive scene, I believe that the Jews ? and every decent person who hates bigotry ? should go the whole nine yards and delete the entire movie by boycotting it, for the whole message is odious and offensive. Is there really a more serious charge against a people than that they killed God?

I am at a loss to explain the silence on the part of Hollywood’s Jewish celebrities and media moguls regarding Mel’s movie. Why aren’t people like Steven Spielberg protesting the horrible message of this loathsome film? Where is Barbra Streisand — so vocal in her attacks on Republicans — on a movie that portrays her people as deicidal villains? Are Hollywood’s Jewish celebrities afraid to criticize the movie because it’s “art” even when that art brings to life a story that has been responsible for the slaughter of our people for centuries?

Calling someone an anti-Semite is about as big an insult as one can hurl, and I for one am forever careful in its usage. But if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. If a man comes along who isn’t prepared to acknowledge the special crime of the Holocaust, makes a movie that portrays Jews as wicked God-killers, and is prepared to risk his illustrious career on the making of that movie, well, quack, quack, quack.

Legal action urged against Mel Gibson film

The Age (Australia), March 12, 2004
“A Jewish advocacy group has asked the US Justice Department to “utilise civil, criminal and federal hate crime laws” against Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. The group, Messiah Truth Project, says the “anti-Semitic” tone of the movie has resulted in hate crimes against Jews, synagogues and Jewish cemeteries across the United States since its release on February 25. Three incidents involving anti-Semitic graffiti have been reported in New York in the past fortnight and a Los Angeles college was closed yesterday after a speaker’s car was sprayed with graffiti while she addressed a forum on hate speech on Tuesday. Yesterday, the group’s online petition had collected 195 signatures.”

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A digital petition at www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/765533849 implores US Attorney General John Ashcroft and the US Department of Justice to evaluate the anti-Semitism clearly presented in Gibson and Fontana’s portrayal, and asks that civil, criminal, and Federal hate-crime laws, as appropriate, be utilized not only against the perpetrators involved in each and every act which it has encouraged, but against the directors, producers, and screen writers responsible for the work itself.”

[Another Jewish attempt at censorial fascism:]

Department of Justice Petitioned to Evaluate Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” for Violations of Hate Crime Statutes.

A new petition implores US Attorney General John Ashcroft to evaluate possible actions against the creators of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” for violation of state and federal hate crime statutes in the purposeful encouragement of anti-Semitic violence,

emediawire, UNION, NJ (PRWEB) March 10, 2004
” Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” through purposeful rewriting of the Christian Gospel mythos has, itself, become an anti-Semitic diatribe which, since it’s February 25, 2004 release resulted in hate crimes against Jews, Synagogues and Jewish Cemeteries in cities throughout the US. Mel Gibson’s unbiblical and a-historical account of the “crucifixion” story has taken Hutton Gibson’s claims that the Holocaust is “fiction,” even one step further. Just as Adolf Hitler described the 300th anniversary performance of the Oberammergau Passion Play as “a convincing portrayal of the menace of Jewry” in 1934, Gibson and Writer/producer Tom Fontana’s 2004 use of extreme graphic and excessive violence set up and perpetrated at the urging of “the Jews” in their portrayal displays a clear prejudicial bent against the Jewish faith … United State law defines “bias related” or “hate crime” to mean a “designated act that demonstrates an accused’s prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance, sexual orientation, family responsibility, physical handicap, matriculation, or political affiliation of a victim of the subject designated act.” Depending on the state, criminal and / or civil laws may apply, as well as recently enacted Federal statutes. A digital petition at www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/765533849 implores US Attorney General John Ashcroft and the US Department of Justice to evaluate the anti-Semitism clearly presented in Gibson and Fontana’s portrayal, and asks that civil, criminal, and Federal hate-crime laws, as appropriate, be utilized not only against the perpetrators involved in each and every act which it has encouraged, but against the directors, producers, and screen writers responsible for the work itself.”

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/19527.htm

‘HATE’ COPS GO SEE MEL MOVIE

By LARRY CELONA and WILLIAM NEUMAN

March 2, 2004 — The cops at the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Unit are passionate about their work – and they’ve all been told to watch Mel Gibson’s controversial new movie about the last hours of Jesus.

Some Jewish leaders and Christian scholars charge the movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” could lead to an upsurge in anti-Semitism because of the way it portrays Jews and their role in Jesus’ death.

Aware of those concerns, the Hate Crimes Unit supervisor, Inspector Dennis Blackman, ordered the 20 detectives under his command to see the film after it opened last week.

Sources said about half the cops in the unit have done so so far, viewing the movie during work hours. But brass softened the order to a request – that cops see the movie on their own time – after The Post began asking questions about the “Passionate” new assignment.

The cops’ reviews, so far, are mixed. “It was beneficial to understand what all the hype was about,” said one source.

A source said cops feared that someone who already held strong anti-Jewish views or was a religious zealot could be pushed over the edge by the graphically violent film, in which Jewish priests and a Jewish mob are shown hounding Jesus as he goes to his death. The sources said the unit has not seen an increase in anti-Semitic bias crimes since the movie opened Wednesday – although of the two incidents reported in that time, one arose from the controversy around the film.

In that incident, Rabbi Avi Weiss, a prominent Bronx rabbi, reported getting several hate-filled e-mails after he staged a rally protesting the movie.

In another incident, an unidentified vandal painted swastikas on a synagogue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Thanks to the controversy swirling around the movie, “The Passion” has outpaced all expectations at the box office.

It has hauled in more than $125 million since opening on Ash Wednesday.

Meanwhile, in Rome, Ga., the movie generated a different sort of controversy when some devout filmgoers complained that the number 666 was prominently printed on their tickets.

“It’s from our computer, and it’s absolutely a coincidence,” said Gary Smith, owner of the Movies at Berry Square Cinema. Smith said some patrons had complained and one woman asked for a special pass to be substituted for her ticket.

The number 666 is said by some to have a Satanic meaning.

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[This below is really a call to boycott Christianity and the response should be a boycott of Jews. It’s time for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and all their influential like who are railing about “liberals” attacking Gibson’s movie to call the attackers what they are: Jews. Are these censorial rabbis “liberal?” The Culture War is shaping up as world Jewish censorial hegemony versus every one else. ]

Rabbi urges Passion boycott,

The Weekend Australian, February 28, 2004
“Oneof Israel’s two leading rabbis today called for a boycott of Mel Gibson’s controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, which he said was untrue, deliberately violent and encouraged anti-semitism. “I call on all Jews and non-Jews to boycott this lying, anti-educational, gratuitously violent film, which can only encourage anti-semitism by falsely accusing the Jews of killing Jesus,” the head of the Ashkenazi community, Yona Metzger, said. “I hope that it will never be shown in Israel, because sin must not be rewarded.” The chief rabbi was speaking the day after the head of the influential ultra-Orthodox Shas party demanded that the film be banned from being shown in Israel. Eli Yishai said it “incites hatred against the Jews and raises again accusations of ritual crime”. Gibson’s movie, which pulled in an estimated $US20 million ($26 million) on its opening day in the United States, depicts the last hours of Jesus Christ. Eagerly awaited by some Christian groups and strongly criticised by Jewish bodies, which fear it will feed anti-semitism, the film has stirred emotion in a way rarely equalled by a movie. Several US Jewish organisations have accused Gibson of reviving the accusation of the Jews being a deicidal people, which was retracted by the Catholic church in the Second Vatican Council of 1962 to 1965. “This film is based on something which has not only been denied by historians but which contradicts the official doctrine of the Catholic church,” Metzger said. “I hope that the present Pope, whom I met three weeks ago in Rome, will recall this clear policy,” he added. “I think there is a good chance he will do so because John Paul II has shown several times how important he considers the fight against anti-semitism” … As well as stirring criticism from Jewish groups, the film has also been attacked for its gruesome portrayal of the torture and crucifixion of Christ, which reviewers have called “sadistic”, “almost pornographic” and “relentlessly savage”.

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[This article is sick. It’s Jewish McCarthyism. Jews dominate Hollywood: they own the Temple of Decadence and its incessant moral garbage. Hollywood is a vast Jewish nepotistic network and those who don’t fall on their knees to Kiss Jewish Butt are ostracized. And Jews detest Christianity. Nihilistic Hollywood Jews mostly worship their penis, money, and cocaine. A non-Jew decides to follow his spiritual path and the Jews — from Hollywood to the mass media to the Anti-Defamation League — gang up on him, seeking to destroy his career. And here yet another bigoted Jewish journalist at the Jewish-owned Jew York Times defines reality. People wake up. The Jewish Wall crushes free dissent to anything but their ethnocentric Will. Jews want to beat Gibson into MUSH, like they do everyone else. Support the Liberator, Braveheart, against massive Jewish Repression. The Last of the genuine American Heroes.]

New Film May Harm Gibson’s Career,

By SHARON WAXMAN, New York Times, February 26, 2004
“Mel Gibson’s provocative new film, “The Passion of the Christ,” is making some of Hollywood’s most prominent executives uncomfortable in ways that may damage Mr. Gibson’s career. Hollywood is a close-knit world, and friendships and social contact are critical in the making of deals and the casting of movies. Many of Hollywood’s most prominent figures are also Jewish. So with a furor arising around the film, along with Mr. Gibson’s reluctance to distance himself from his father, who calls the Holocaust mostly fiction, it is no surprise that Hollywood — Jewish and non-Jewish — has been talking about little else, at least when it’s not talking about the Oscars. Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, the principals of DreamWorks, have privately expressed anger over the film, said an executive close to the two men. The chairmen of two other major studios said they would avoid working with Mr. Gibson because of “The Passion of the Christ” and the star’s remarks surrounding its release. Neither of the chairmen would speak for attribution, but as one explained: “It doesn’t matter what I say. It’ll matter what I do. I will do something. I won’t hire him. I won’t support anything he’s part of. Personally that’s all I can do.” The chairman said he was angry not just because of what he had read about the film and its portrayal of Jews in relation to the death of Jesus, but because of Mr. Gibson’s remarks defending his father, Hutton Gibson. Last week in a radio interview the elder Mr. Gibson repeated his contention that the Holocaust was “all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is.” Asked about his father’s Holocaust denial in an interview with Diane Sawyer on ABC, the movie star told her to “leave it alone.” The other studio chairman, whose family fled European anti-Semitism before the Holocaust, was less emphatic but said, “I think I can live without him.” But others said there would be no lasting backlash against Mel Gibson … Many in the relentlessly secular movie industry see his recent religious conversion — he practices a traditionalist version of Roman Catholicism — as another form of addiction. Last Friday the media billionaire Haim Saban, former owner of the Fox Family Channel, sent a concerned e-mail message to friends about Mr. Gibson and his father. The message forwarded an article by the journalist Mitch Albom calling on Mr. Gibson to repudiate his father’s denial of the Holocaust. Mr. Saban sent the article to, among others, Roger Ailes, who heads Fox News; Norman Pattiz, who runs the Westwood One radio network; and Michael R. Milken, the securities felon turned philanthropist. Amid the daily dealings of Hollywood, the film and the star have been fodder for unfavorable gossip. Dustin Hoffman has talked to friends about what he called Mr. Gibson’s “strangeness” during the ABC interview. The producer Mike Medavoy said Mr. Gibson’s religious zealotry made him feel uncomfortable. Mr. Hoffman is Jewish; Mr. Medavoy is the child of Holocaust survivors. “One question is, `What propelled him to make the movie about the passion of Christ?’ ” Mr. Medavoy said. “It makes me a little squeamish. What makes me squeamish about religion in general is that people think they have the answer: `I think my God is the right God.’ How do you argue against that?” But many non-Jews in Hollywood have also been unhappy about the religious divisions that the movie has exposed and could deepen. … Alan Nierob, Mr. Gibson’s publicist, is himself the child of Holocaust survivors. “I think Hollywood appreciates good art and will embrace the talent of a filmmaker,” Mr. Nierob said. “I don’t see a negative reaction.”