Was Mel Gibson speaking his mind when he was pulled over for drunk driving? No doubt he was. In Vino Veritas. It wouldn’t be in Latin if it weren’t true. Discounting some of the vociferous hyperbole owed to his drunken ego, were Gibson’s comments anti-Semitic? How low is the bar for what is anti-Semitic? Gibson didn’t say he hated Jews.

Gibson’s Passion Spiel was held to be anti-Semitic because it portrayed the Jews as responsible for Jesus’ death. Who did kill Christ, if it even matters? Who betrayed him, who complained about him to the Romans, who passed up their chance to have him freed? Is it a matter of biblical interpretation? Whose? Is it anti-Semitic to bring it up because the subject is still too inflammatory after 2000 years? It’s water under the bridge, it’s not water evaporated to nowhere.

I think Gibson’s alcoholic state released sentiments a lot of us are feeling as we watch Israel unleash wave after wave of bombs upon captive Lebanese masses, while our media fiddles.

Polite people are cautioning everywhere, a Jew is not the same as a Zionist. Specifically, ordinary Jews should not be blamed for Israel’s inhumanity.

Well… why are all the Jews on television speaking in support of Israel? Why are newspapers focusing on the dozen Israeli victims and not the hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese?

A Jew who does not repudiate Israel, is as guilty as a Zionist. He may not be a Zionist, but wouldn’t he equal a Zionist?

2. Media
How about, just for the immediate time-being, and I know this might sound anti-Jewish, while Israel is killing UN observers and refugees, while Israel is breaking humanitarian laws and refusing to consider a cease-fire, how about we stop asking Jewish pundits on television to explain both sides of the conflict? How about we disqualify all Jewish Center For Peace spokesmen if they are going to persistently proclaim Israel’s moral authority?

You wouldn’t ask a Dixicrat to officiate an NBA game.

Do we need Jewish American think-tank/lobbying-groups weighing in on Israel’s right to commit mass war crimes in Lebanon? Everywhere you look, all the experts/supporters are Jewish or US senators. What is up with that?

Kofi Annan makes an emergency outcry about Israel deliberately targetting a UN peacekeeping observation post, and Jewish pundits question his report.

They reply: “Of course Israel would not do that. How absurd. Why would Israel do that?” But the media talking heads do not take them up on this question:

“Why indeed?”   How about: because the observation post might have witnessed Israel doing something too dastardly for words. More dastardly than targeting refugees or ambulances or hospitals or civilian residences or what else.   The Arab-Israeli conflict has already seen civilian massacres perpetrated by Israel accompanied by the bombing of the U.N. forces meant to protect those civilians. Qana was the site of a civilian cum U.N. massacre before it was yesterday’s massacre.   How indeed did Kofi Annan know the attacks on the U.N. observers were deliberate? Because the Israeli forces kept firing, even as further U.N. troops attempted to rescue the victims.

 
ADDENDUM 8.03
Today Mel Gibson’s outburst and subsequent apology is being co-opted by the Jewish Lobby. With the tide of American public opinion rising against the Zionist drives to exterminate their Arab neighbors, Mel Gibson was giving voice to popular sentiment.

When Gibson immediately espressed his remorse for what he’d said, and asked for forgiveness, prominent Jewish spokesmen stepped in to offer that forgiveness. Even President Bush echoed their response.

Thus all of us who may have doubted Israel are forgiven and invited back into the fold. The error was not Israel’s bombing of a four-story building full of children in Qana, the error was our doubting the righteousness of Israel defending its own.