In the heat of Passion: Film is gory, but anti-Semitic? Unapologetic Gibson says no

Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, has said he believes Emmerich was anti-Semitic, and her book "distorts New Testament interpretation by selectively citing passages to weave a narrative that oversimplifies history, and is hostile to Jews and Judaism."

Gibson was roundly criticized last year by Foxman and other leading religious and political Jewish leaders. They say the film recasts centuries-old blame upon the Jews for Jesus' death, noting Gibson is a traditionalist Catholic who has rejected many reforms from Vatican II, a meeting of worldwide leaders in which the Catholic Church formally rejected historical claims that the Jews were guilty of "deicide."

But Jewish suspicion of Gibson's motives seems to have mellowed slightly in recent weeks since Gibson reportedly removed a phrase from the movie's English subtitles (the dialogue is in Aramaic and Latin) spoken by the Jewish high priest, Caiaphas, regarding culpability for Christ's impending crucifixion: "His blood be on us and on our children."

The phrase was apparently one of the subjects repeatedly raised by Jewish leaders with Gibson since he invited them, along with large groups of religious leaders, to view early versions of the film and offer feedback at more than a dozen prescreenings nationwide.

Gibson has countered charges of anti-Semitism with his belief that Christ died for the sins of the whole world.

"We're all culpable," he told the Global Catholic Network in January. To illustrate Christ's suffering for individual sin including his own, Gibson said his only on-screen appearance in the film is his hand, which holds the spike that is driven into Christ's hand on the cross.

Gibson told Sawyer earlier this week the film was about "faith, hope, love and forgiveness."

"To be anti-Semitic is a sin," he said. "It's been condemned by one Papal Council after another. To be anti-Semitic is to be un-Christian, and I'm not."

This week, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein cautioned Jews against overreacting to the film's potential to inflame anti-Semitism and urged them to "refrain from seeing it as a Christian battle cry against the Jews." Eckstein, an Orthodox rabbi who heads the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, serves as an unofficial adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to a press release issued Tuesday.

While it is "essential that the world Jewish community not forget, and be ever vigilant against, the resurgence of past forms of anti-Semitism," he said, "it is more critical that we not fight the battles of the past but realistically focus on current anti-Semitic threats. . . . I am less concerned that Christians exposed to this movie will relapse" into old hatreds.