<a href="http://educationinthestreets.blogspot.com">Education In The Streets</a>

Sunday, March 14, 2004

Saul Landau on Gibson

Fundamentalist preachers urge their flock to see Gibson's film. They may use this piece of crude cinema rather than complex scripture to re-enforce their anti-Semitism -- while trumpeting Israel's cause. "An anti-Semite," Texas pro-Israel preacher James Roberson once remarked, "that's someone who hates Jews more than he's supposed to." Would Jesus have endorsed this line or Gibson's film for that matter?

I am not worried about Gibson "inciting anti-semitism" - particularly not in Europe or the Global South, as a number of those few jewish neocons who have been willing to put aside for a few moments their love affair with the anti-semitic christian zionist right bothered to criticize the film, have warned that its message of hate will take root. I find their arguments racist, their equation of opposition to Israel's long relationships with terrorist regimes, its racist attempts to contain palestinians and constitute a racialized Jewish state, and its stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction with the anti-jew and anti-judaism of Gibson's film empty, facile, and ultimately incorrect. (There may well be anti-semitism among some sectarian effluvia of the left. If this is true, i've nevertheless never met any left wing anti-semites, and i've met a lot of sectarian nutjobs. Regardless, criticism of israel - and even the statement that Israel as a jewish state should not exist, a statement i endorse - is not antisemitic. Joel Kovel's article in Tikkun is recommended further reading. And we as American jews need to pay attention to and engage in conversations about the problematic historical relationships between jewishness and whiteness in this country and the globe even as we condemn anti-semites like Gibson.

So I am not afraid that Gibson's movie is going to make people hate me or other jews. Perhaps this is naive of me. But i am disgusted nevertheless at the extent to which Gibson's racist pornography of the Christ is being accepted and feted by the corporate media. The movie shouldn't be condemned for the possibility that people who see it are not smart enough to make their (our) own decisions. But the whole fucking planet should be blasting this movie for its attempts to historicize essentialized categories of difference, for its bloody martyrization of the anglo-american christian right in the face of a purported semitic cultural onslaught, and because we've read the New Testament, we know Jesus Christ, and, to paraphrase Loyd Bensen, Mel Gibson is no Jesus Christ.

¶ 7:19 PM

Smash Yale-[ comments.]

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