My “Mel Gibson Postscript” resulted in some interesting emails.
Joerg Wolf, one of the editors of Atlantic Review, emailed a link to his post on “Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism,” which is worth reading, as well as this one and this one (regarding Germany and Israel) — worth reading as well.
Mel Montgomery, who has graced this blog in the past with comments from a Christian perspective, did so again with a thought-provoking comment, arguing that forgiveness without preconditions is the appropriate response. It too is worth reading. It causes me to quote below a view I had originally thought of including in my post, but then decided to omit (for reasons discussed below).
The view was set forth in National Review’s “This Week” column in its August 28 issue:
Even after acknowledging his drunken and profane tirade against the Jews, Mel Gibson insists that he is no anti-Semite. It may be that he is merely being cynical: that he is a thorough anti-Semite who finds it politic to deny the fact. Or it may be that he has some strong anti-Semitic impulses but recognizes, most of the time, that these impulses are wrong and should be resisted. It is both charitable and plausible to assume the latter. While reasonable people can disagree about the merits of his movie The Passion of the Christ, we do not think it was anti-Semitic; and this sad and troubling episode has given us no reason to change that view.
National Review’s view was that Gibson’s sin represented words, not deeds, and that the event was thus blown beyond its proper proportion:
Because Gibson is a celebrity, his words will be forever attached to his name. How many of us, unprompted, could attach anti-Semitic deeds to the names of Naveed Afzal Haq, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, and Rashid Baz? The first of those names got into a Jewish charity office in Seattle the other day and shot six women, killing one. The second opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport one day in 2002, while standing in line at the ticket counter of Israel’s El Al Airlines. He killed two people and wounded four others. The third shot up a van full of Hasidic Jewish boys on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City back in 1994, killing one boy and wounding several others. All these acts were inspired by anti-Semitism, as the perpetrators made plain. While we contemplate this horrid blight, and put names to it, let the first names we think of be those of people who did not merely speak while drunk and angry, but planned, resolved, and acted on their vile beliefs.
It would be better if the first (and indeed only) names we remember were those of Pam Waechter, Yakov Aminov, Victoria Hen and Ari Halberstam — each one an entire world, shot at the Seattle Jewish Federation and the El Al counter at LAX and the Brooklyn Bridge, as the result of a virulent disease now rampant once again in the world, fanned by words.
I would have been more receptive to the word-deed distinction, and the call for charity and forgiveness (about which I’ve blogged before), had I not been directed by an email from a third reader over to MEMRI, where I found the report of Al Jazeera’s coverage of an influential Pakistani general’s press conference, citing Gibson’s words to support the general’s anti-Semitic tirade — broadcast to millions, inciting who-knows-how-many future names to be remembered first, for the deaths of people whose names should be remembered only.
Gibson’s words are now out there, being used to infect others, implicitly backed by his assurance while sober (in the face of prior accusations of anti-Semitism) that his anti-Semitic father never lied to him. He needs to appear on Al Jazeera, not as a precondition for forgiveness, but because at this point he owes the world more than an apology, more than words.