Phil Brennan, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003

The head of the nation's most influential Jewish organization has charged that Mel Gibson is an "anti-Semite."

Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman had previously avoided affixing the label on Gibson, who directed "The Passion," a movie about the last 12 hours of Jesus.

In a biting article published in The Jewish Week, Foxman charged, "Recent statements by Mel Gibson paint the portrait of an anti-Semite," and said the star was spouting "classic anti-Semitism."

Repeating the charge that Gibson's movie negatively portrays Jews, a claim that those who have actually seen "The Passion" heatedly refute, the story notes that "no mainstream Christian or Jewish community leader has until now made such a direct charge against Gibson …."

Instead, so-called "interfaith critics" – a panel of nine scholars co-founded by Foxman before the film was made, who falsely represented themselves as a committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and who are angry that the film is based on the four Gospels they regard as unreliable - have focused on the "bloody movie." They claim that "by promoting the 2,000-year-old charge of Christ killers against Jews [an equally false charge], the film would fuel anti-Semitism around the world."

Foxman uses Gibson’s 85-year-old father, Hutton, to attack the filmmaker. Foxman says that the elder Gibson has been quoted as saying that far fewer Jews died in the Holocaust than 6 million and that he is a conspiracist claiming Jews are behind recent Vatican reforms.

"There’s no longer a debate where [Mel Gibson] is coming from," Foxman said Tuesday. "He is a true believer that the true story of the suffering [of Jesus] is that the Jews made him suffer."

Foxman blasted Gibson for telling New Yorker writer Peter J. Boyer that he portrays himself as being persecuted like Jesus for making the film, and as a victim of a murderous cabal who forced him to make changes in the film that could end his career.

Among Foxman’s other charges: