Mel Gibson Comments about Jews causing all the wars
Many Hollywood Jewish leaders silent on Gibson | US News | Reuters.com:
"LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Superstar Mel Gibson goes on a drunken anti-Semitic tirade and Hollywood's powerful Jewish community finds itself under attack for not speaking up strongly enough in protest.
In the days since Gibson's arrest on suspicion of drunk driving after a wild ride down a Malibu highway, few of the leading Jewish figures in the film industry have publicly commented on Gibson's barrage of anti-Semitic comments.
The actor was formally charged with drunk driving on Wednesday, six days after his arrest and subsequent rant to a police officer about Jews causing all the wars.
On Tuesday, Gibson issued a statement that said in part, 'I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said...'"
posted by Anonymous @ 12:00 PM
1 Comments:
Why is this even a story? Gibson didn't say "Kill the Jews" or advocate any violence against them other than the socially savoury "F** the Jews " - but then L.A. would be empty before sunset if that was a crime worth ostracizing someone for. When he said that Jews start all the wars in the world he DID make a claim that can be checked - though on immediate reflection the whole world seems a stretch, or is it? I'm not pro- or anti- anybody - even if it's cross-eyed, k-legged, polka-dotted and has three eyes - I am however one to listen to and wonder what people say. In their own words then:
"We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves." - Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.
"We should prepare to go over to the offensive. Our aim is to smash Lebanon, Trans-Jordan, and Syria. The weak point is Lebanon, for the Moslem regime is artificial and easy for us to undermine. We shall establish a Christian state there, and then we will smash the Arab Legion, eliminate Trans-Jordan; Syria will fall to us. We then bomb and move on and take Port Said, Alexandria and Sinai." - David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978.
"It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands." - Yoram Bar Porath, Yediot Aahronot, of 14 July 1972.
"Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours... Everything we don't grab will go to them." - Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right-wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.
"Every time we do something you tell me America will do this and will do that . . . I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."? - Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, October 3, 2001, to Shimon Peres, as reported on Kol Yisrael radio.
If as Ariel Sharon and many others, I might add, have remarked in considerable detail (e.g. Kennedy School of Government: "The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy" By John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt)? that the Israeli tail wags the American dog, to the dog's detriment, that's one heck of a footprint Israel has on the world. ?
Not so long before President George W. Bush appointed Rabbi Dov Zakheim, an avowed Zionist and dual Israel-US citizen, Undersecretary of Defense and Comptroller of the Pentagon - where he rose to power over the Pentagon's labyrinthine, bottomless accounts, he co-authored a now infamous article entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century," which was published by The Project for a New American Century in September 2000, exactly a year before 9/11. ?
In this article, on page 51, it is stated that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor". ? Rabbi Zakheim stepped down from his post in the midst of an unfinished brouhaha about a trillion (yeah, that is a 'T' for 'Too much!') dollar hole (i.e. unaccounted for funds) that remains unresolved to this day.
Now, it's not unreasonable that a drinking man, dwelling on these and other thoughts, at 0230 or so in the morning, while speeding down a lonely highway, might come to speculate in the direction Gibson did. I make no claims or arguments, but do point out two things:
(i) that if we are to take the public figures quoted above at their word (and there are literally thousands of similar quotes from the leadership rank in Israel) stretching over the last sixty years, there's enough stuff on the ground to give a thinking man reflection about Gibson's claims of the involvement of others in war making. At least after the knee jerking spasms have quieted down.
(ii) If Gibson had said, instead, F*** the Arabs, Moslems, or African Americans, I reckon none of us would have heard of his conversation, just that he'd been done for DUI. And if, as sometimes happens, we had heard - would Arianna and Ari be calling for Hollywood to stand in solidarity and ostracize and organize against him, as they are, for saying and suggesting what he said about Arabs, Moslems, or African Americans? Right. I kind of doubt it.
So let's give it a rest and give the man a chance to remake his circumstances. Really, the real issues of the day are the mindless blood letting of civilian men, women, and children going on in both Lebanon and Iraq, not to mention the accelerating death of democracy in the US. I'd like to see/hear a call to Hollywood to stand up in concert about that. Right. I thought so.
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