Monday, November 10, 2003

Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has finally come clean with precisely what he thinks of Mel Gibson's movie THE PASSION OF CHRIST and finds Mr. Gibson "infected" with anti-Semitic views. And he doesn't stop there. He also admits to believing that Passion plays about the crucifixion of Christ have historically reinforced notions of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus. In a fit of logical fallacy (guilt by association) Foxman cited Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's praise of a Passion play from the 1930s to illustrate his point. He then rolled out the unfounded chestnut that even discussing the crucifixion of Christ in Church services has had a deleterious effect on Jews worldwide, claiming that "hate crimes [against Jews] go up Easter week worldwide" because in many Christian churches, "the sermon is given about the passion (the suffering of Christ)." Lastly, Mr. Foxman distastefully conflates his own paranoid thoughts about this motion picture with the ethnic genocide of the Jews during WWII: "After [the] Holocaust, I don't have the luxury to keep quiet about concerns about anti-Semitism."

To paraphrase a Catholic theologian, If you find the Gospels anti-Semitic, Mr. Foxman, you will find this film anti-Semitic.

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