Gibson film attacked as 'anti-Semitic'

Actor and director Mel Gibson’s biblical film The Passion of the Christ is “damagingly anti-Semitic”, Gerald Kaufman, chairman of the UK-based Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee, claimed today.

The film, which depicts the last 12 hours of Christ’s life, has been angrily received by America’s Jewish communities, and opens in the UK on March 26.

“What you are in for is sadism, gratuitous violence, ugliness, wallowing in blood and, it has to be said, crude anti-Semitism. That is what this movie is about,” Mr Kaufman told GMTV’s The Sunday Programme.

“The Jews depicted are depicted as almost caricature Jews who demand (Christ’s) blood. I am not accusing him (Gibson) of being a deliberate and overt anti-Semite but there is no doubt that the message of the film is seriously, damagingly anti-Semitic.

“People who do not know the story will see it as the Jews wanting to murder this saintly man while the Roman ruler of the country didn’t want to do it but was forced into by their pressure.

“If this is the film that Mel Gibson has always wanted to make then so much the worse for Mel Gibson.”

Meanwhile, the film was endorsed by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, leader of the Catholic church in England and Wales.

“I have not seen it, the film, but everyone I have met who has seen it has been profoundly moved,” he told BBC1’s Breakfast with Frost.

“There were people who said it was anti-Semitic. I don’t think from what I hear that it is in any way anti-Semitic.

“I think they have been very careful not to in any way induce anti-Semtism. I think it is a profound reflection on the passion of Christ, that is what it appears to me.”

The Cardinal added: “I shall go and see it and I think that people will make their own judgments on what is one man’s interpretation – Mel Gibson and those who work with him – on the most important event in human history, namely the life, the death, the passion and death of Christ.”