The Return of Mel Gibson
A good place to start, even before the drunken outbursts, would be the movies, specifically The Passion of the Christ – a dark and primitive display of Jew-hatred not seen on screen since Jüd Suss. Gibson’s bloody gospel violated every precept of how to depict the Passion after the Second Vatican Council, showing the Jews of the Second Temple period – cloaked in black, withered, hook-nosed – as a bloodthirsty mob beating and spitting on Jesus of Nazareth.
The most insidious breach was the inclusion as depicted in Matthew of the Jews as rabble answering back to Pontius Pilate, “His blood be on us and on our children” – a Biblical passage which precipitated and justified 2,000 years of post-Easter pogroms. Gibson claimed to have cut the passage from the final product, yet he had only removed the English subtitles.
Gibson’s Passion should have been an indication of what was to come. In 2006, Gibson was pulled over for drunk-driving in Malibu and proceeded to exclaim to the police officer, “The Jews (are) responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?”
Gibson has not apologised for his remarks per se, saying instead that “I apologise to anyone I may have offended.” And, he has tried to suggest that since he was intoxicated at the time, those remarks were not an accurate reflection of his character.
