It’s an age-old story with a modern twist: Even as the boy is being devoured by a real wolf, he continues to point to one that is, if not imaginary, at least toothless.
To some Jews, indirect anti-Semitism is worse than deadly anti-Semitism. Because it’s the former that ineffectual groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center can fight. It’s rather like looking indoors for a quarter that was lost outdoors–because the lighting is better.
If some Jews were upset over The Passion of the Christ even before seeing it, it’s because we gave the exclusive contract on anti-Semitism to Muslims. But why rob Gibson of the benefit of the doubt we gave Arafat? True, the film depicts an imaginatively unflattering Jewish role in Christ’s crucifixion–beyond what the Gospels suggest. So yes, Mel Gibson is his father’s son. But any Jew who supported the Oslo Peace Process–and there were more of us than readily admit now–should be keeping a low profile amid The Passion. Unless blowing up Jews is more forgivable than Mel’s movie. It’s certainly easier to point the finger at the Christian, if you want to keep that finger.
When a movie like The Passion of the Christ comes along, it’s the professional Jew-defender’s dream come true. Mouthing off about Mel is basically a paid vacation for these types, who even with all the Jewish financial contributions from over the years at their disposal weren’t doing their job–not during Crown Heights and not during seven years of genocide bombings in Israel leading up to the second Intifada in 2000, which managed to catch them off-guard. Only then did they kick into gear, as unabashed anti-Semitism exploded throughout the Middle East and resurged in Europe. Only then did it occur to organized Jewry that they forgot to equip a generation or two of college students to fight, much less preempt, the anti-Semitism they would encounter at their left-wing college campuses. Where did all that Jewish money go? To the NAACP, gay rights, injured Palestinian children and Albanian Muslims.
One need only look at Elie Wiesel, the picture of timeless Jewish suffering, to understand the farce that is Jewish outrage today. When three genocide bombs went off in a single week in Israel last year, where was Elie? Elie was in Romania, giving a speech to a village to remind them that 60 years ago “Jews were killed here too.” Understandably, Wiesel survived a horrific Holocaust experience, but he devotes his energies to past threats, choosing to remain a universally sympathetic figure rather than a useful one. He and the rest spent the past decade looking for cheap Holocaust analogies everywhere except Israel, where a more literal parallel was in the making. These days, these types seem to come out only when it’s safe, like when Jesus is involved. Tragically, the Jewish people reserve greater scorn for the guy wanting to save them from hell than the one trying to send them there.
If Jews spent less time worrying about ancient hatreds and more time worrying about the glaring contemporary ones, we wouldn’t have come to a point where the legitimacy of Israel’s very existence is regularly questioned and where the Jews get blamed when Muslims bomb America. While Jews worry about things like intermarriage, a sleepy KKK, an Austrian named Haider, a second president named Bush, and now a movie about Christ, the real threats spiral out of control.
Despite building careers on six million dead, the professional defenders have shied away from the harder fights. So along comes Mel to give them some relevance and put them back in business.
And to put media indignation over anti-Semitism back in business. Both Mel and the Jews should feel used. There’s a reason the controversy got as big as it did. The liberal media acting like they care whether someone is anti-Semitic or not is not only insulting but insidious as well. The plan is to keep the Passion ruckus they raised in their pocket, for fuel in countering accusations of anti-Semitism the next time they diminish terrorism against Israelis, the next time they misrepresent Israeli raids of terror camps as massacres, and the next time they demonize Israelis for building a wall to stay alive. All they’ll have to say is: “We can’t be anti-Semites. Just look at the hell we gave Mel!” The very fact that the notoriously anti-Semitic and anti-Israel New York Times took the lead a year ago in condemning Gibson’s film and family should be telling.
Networks and newspapers are dutifully up in arms over whether a movie will be offensive to Jews, and they give front-page space to recovered paintings stolen from Jews by Nazis, but whom have they let know that the Palestinian Authority televises sermons with titles like “Blessings to Whomever Saved a Bullet to Stick in a Jew’s Head”? Or that Mein Kampf hit No. 6 on the Palestinian bestseller list a few years ago? Or that Palestinians brew terror plots against Americans? By the same token, did any reporters take to task antiwar protesters who held up placards comparing Israelis to Nazis? Only the likes of Pat Robertson’s 700 Club exposes what the Jew killers are up to week to week.
The elites and their media are using Mel to wash their hands of the Jewish blood they accumulated when their sympathies enabled the violence to escalate from brick-throwing at Israeli soldiers to the first suicide bombing against Israeli civilians in 1994–and all the bombings since.
The media of the elites know well that it’s not the anti-Semitism that yells “Christ killer” which kills today, but their enlightened anti-Semitism and Islamic anti-Semitism that do. Behold the unholy alliance between the two: The Passion is their opportunity to put a rift in the rival alliance between Christians and Jews. It’s a chance to further the Left’s war against religion, and the Muslims’ war against religion that isn’t theirs.
By going after The Passion of the Christ the media are using Jews to attack Christianity, the ultimate target of extermination by the Left and its Islamic friends. (Neatly enough, immediately following the Diane Sawyer interview with Mel Gibson, ABC announced a report that thousands more molestations took place within the Catholic Church than previously estimated.)
The feigned indignation over whether Mel Gibson is calling Jews Christ killers is transparent, not to mention ironic. Jesus was a Jew, so calling someone a “Christ killer” is essentially calling him or her a Jew killer.
And the last time I checked, the secular world doesn’t have a problem with those.
–Julia Gorin is a contributing editor to www.JewishWorldReview.com.