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Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History Subscribe: HoffmanWire-subscribe@topica.com Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor Feb. 4, 2004 From Great Promise to Scandal and Disgrace:
Gibson Agrees to Censor his Film by Michael A. Hoffman II When an intermediary delivered to Mel Gibson in Houston, Texas, my Talmud research proving that the Talmud affirms that Judaics killed Christ (since picked up by David Klinghoffer and others), it temporarily stiffened the resolve of Gibson who, prior to that point, was beginning to falter in his resolve to bring his movie "The Passion of the Christ' to the screen uncensored. Then mixed signals begin to come in. My intermediary, formerly a close associate of Gibson's, was suddenly cut-off. My scheduled meeting with Gibson at his ranch in Montana was canceled, and Mel began a campaign to promote his movie to ministers and preachers who an Orthodox Christian colleague of mine has rightly described as "antiChrist Zionists." And now the dreadful and tragic news --if indeed it is news and not a media lie--(see article below) that Mel is going to cut a scene from his movie that had portrayed the arch-fiend Caiphas in too harsh a light. One can always make excuses for Gibson's surrender to the Judaic censors: "They probably threatened his life...told him they'd ruin his career...take his fortune." So what? Ernst Zündel sits rotting in a Canadian dungeon because he won't recant his skepticism about Auschwitz gas chambers. It will soon be one year that he's been in solitary confinement for the crime of having an incompetent immigration lawyer. Zündel's in his sixties. His health is not the best. His life may be on the line, but he does not recant. Nor does Prof. Robert Faurisson, nearly beaten to death in 1989 and still under threat, and countless other non-violent revisionist dissenters against Zionism and Judaism who do not command one cubic centimeter of the attention and influence Gibson does. About Gibson one smells the fumes of the kosher conservative. Most of his ideological allies now are of that odor, from the grotesque Bush-backer Peggy Noonan on down. Gibson's behavior is typical of this class. All of this would be routine and perhaps forgivable were it not for one solitary fact. Gibson repeatedly told the press that the Holy Spirit inspired his movie; directed it even. Healing miracles supposedly occurred on the production set. H.L. Mencken would have had a satirical field day with such florid public professions of piety, recalling Tartuffe and Elmer Gantry. So now the Holy Spirit gets censored, eh Mel? According to the Scriptures that's the one unforgivable sin. On a human level, I would also term it almost unforgivable the way Mel has toyed with all the beaten-down activists in the trenches, the little guys who've been earnestly working for the Kingdom of God for decades and who've been mocked and betrayed for their refusal to cut some slack to the Caiphas who rules out modern world. At the thought of a major movie that would be militantly faithful to the Gospel account of Christ's trial and execution, years of cynicism and bitterness melted and these beaten-down people were suddenly jubilant. "At last one powerful man will put his money and career on the line for the unvarnished truth" is the message of hope I have lately received in e-mails and letters from folks like these all over America. And now what? What do you tell 'em Mel? That you did it the Wall Street Journal's way? Note the workings of the engine of The Dialectic. Now that they've flea'd his rump and pared his claws, the System won't mind too much if we support Mel, for the same reasons they give their safety valve Pat Buchanan a platform on cable television. Having domesticated these tigers, the Establishment does not want us to think they've sold out, so Buchanan is allowed to let off steam about Sharon now and then, while Mel gets quoted in "Reader's Digest" comparing WWII Judaic suffering with that of Ukrainian Christians under Stalin. This is the Hegelian mechanism V.I. Lenin called "two steps forward, one step back." They let Mel vent in "Reader's Digest." That's one step back for their Machine. But they persuade him to cut the most contested scene in "The Passion of the Christ" --perhaps the movie's key scene-- from the Gospel of Matthew--that's two giant steps forward for the System. "Poor Mel," the dim-wited, apocalyptic Catholics and Protestants will say. "What could he do? Soon the Fatima apparitions" --or-- 'the Rapture" (fill in the blank), "will whisk us to Judgment Day; until then all we can to do is read, talk and pray." Martin Scorcese never claimed the Holy Ghost inspired him to depict Christ as a demented sex freak and coward in his film, "The Last Temptation of Christ." He and his distibutor, Lew Wasserman, received plenty of death threats. But they toned nothing down, filtered nothing, censored nothing. They were only being true to an "artistic" vision, not a vision from the Holy Ghost, yet they defied everyone who sought to compromise it. Shortly before he died, the poet Allan Ginsberg, whose abiding ambition was to find a little boy to have sex with, was asked to characterize his life in two words. He replied, "Absolute defiance." How strange it is that in Satan's camp we discover manly virtues of uncompromsiing defiance, while among those who claim to be raising the banner of God we continually encounter poseurs and wimps. Mr. Gibson has said that his movie is not really concerned with singling any particular religion or ethnicity out for culpability in Christ's death, but rather in spotlighting the responsibility of all of us for the sins that caused Christ to be crucified. In which case, by toning down his movie to satisfy the never-satisfied Judaic mob, Mel Gibson has just caused the Roman soldier to bury the lash and pound the nail an inch deeper than heretofore. It is one thing to lament past sins, but what degree of cosmic crime and hypocrisy is it when one compounds those sins in the name of Jesus Christ? It's a shame and a disgrace that what promised so much has turned out to be a farce. Gibson, you've got three weeks to examine your conscience in fear and trembling before the living God and release your film uncut. Ora pro Mel. -------/---------- Ernst Zündel's prison address: Toronto West Detention Centre, 111 Disco Road, Box 4950, Rexdale, Ontario M9W, 5L3, Canada -----------/------------- Gibson to Delete a Scene in 'Passion' By Sharon Waxman NY Times | February 4, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/04/movies/04PASS.html 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 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." 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." > >>>>>>>>>> The HOFFMAN WIRE is a public service of Independent History and Research, Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 USA 24 Hour Revisionist News Bureau: http://www.revisionisthistory.org/news.html Subscribe: HoffmanWire-subscribe@topica.com Disclaimer: The Hoffman Wire is a controversial and politically incorrect e-mail letter intended only for those who have requested it. We have a strict anti-spamming policy. 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