ZGram - 2/6/2004 - "Gibson to Delete a Scene in 'Passion'"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

ZGRAM - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

February 6, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

There is so much good stuff being said and written on the Mel Gibson 
Film that I have to restrain myself from running everything.  I will 
say this:  That there has probably never been a film that generated 
such Angst in Jewish circles as this one.  I cannot wait to see it.

Below is a rather transparent article on just that Angst, followed by 
David Irving's comment.  Both have been posted at 
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/04/02/Gibson_film1.html


[START]

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 [2003] 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."
Author, "Never Again? The Threat of the New Anti
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."

[END]

  David Irving comments:

[START]

I HAVE refrained from posting on this website the volume of material 
relating to Mel Gibson's film, as it appears to me a manufactured 
controversy in which each side has its own axe to grind.

A lot of the arguments seem false. Abe Foxman and his corrupt cronies 
argue that this film will feed the ancient "anti-Semitic slur" that 
the Jews killed Jesus Christ. From my own knowledge of the 
working-class mentality and the thinking of the common man, there is 
virtually no discussion of that in the pubs of Wapping, so to speak.

    What enrages stevedores, steelworkers and the rest -- the ordinary 
human beings -- about "the Jews" is the kind of thing I have been 
patiently documenting in my website dossier on the origins of 
anti-Semitism, offering little or no comment, in real time, over the 
last three years: Graft, networking, greed, criminality, brutality, 
intimidation, espionage, conspiracy, extortion, drug racketeering, 
land grabbing, and belligerence being just some of the delinquencies 
involved.

IN the case of the preposterous Abraham Foxman -- who has been called 
the Jewish community's own worst enemy -- let it suffice to recall 
the manner in which he solicited a quarter million dollar bribe (it 
may have been more) from billionaire criminal Marc Rich, another Jew, 
who fled into exile rather than pay the taxes he owes to the US 
people.

    In return for the secret bribe, which became known from captured 
e-mails, Foxman agreed to write a letter to President Bill Clinton, 
urging that Rich be pardoned. Both men's hands are soiled, so to 
speak, but Clinton shapes up to Jesus Christ in saintliness when 
glimpsed standing next to the corrupt head of the Anti-Defamation 
League.

[END]