Krauthammer: "Gibson's Blood Libel"

Washington Post ^ | Mar. 5, 04 | Charles Krauthammer

[churchillbuff]

Gibson's Blood Libel

By Charles Krauthammer Friday, March 5, 2004; Page A23

Every people has its story. Every people has the right to its story. And every people has a responsibility for its story. ...[snip]

Christians have their story too: the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Why is this story different from other stories? Because it is not a family affair of coreligionists. If it were, few people outside the circle of believers would be concerned about it. This particular story involves other people. With the notable exception of a few Romans, these people are Jews. And in the story, they come off rather badly.

Because of that peculiarity, the crucifixion is not just a story; it is a story with its own story -- a history of centuries of relentless, and at times savage, persecution of Jews in Christian lands. This history is what moved Vatican II, in a noble act of theological reflection, to decree in 1965 that the Passion of Christ should henceforth be understood with great care so as to unteach the lesson that had been taught for almost two millennia: that the Jews were Christ killers.

[bimbo]

What part of "father, forgive them" do these idiots not understand? Any "Christian" who condemns Jews for the death of Jesus are repudiating their own religion which teaches that ALL OF MANKIND is responsible.

… and Krauthammer must come to realize that this was taught LONG BEFORE the Vatican II Council.

[Concerned]

I COMMENTED: "He wasn't "so disfigured beyond that of any man"

DESTROYTHEDEMOCRATS RESPONDED: "Darn what a gyp! You should get your money back."

I wasn't complaining about it; I was pointing out that, if you really get down to it, the movie wasn't even as graphic as the Bible describes it.

And no, I don't want my money back. In fact, I've already seen it twice and will probably see it once or twice again with friends and/or non-Christian family members. I have been looking forward to seeing it for MONTHS! I can hardly wait for the DVD to come out.

[laconic]

I thought this is what the Council of Trent taught; that there is no corporate responsibility in the Jewish people for the death of Christ. And when was that held -- 1500s? There was nothing "Christian" about Hitler, by the way. He had plans of shutting down the dominant Catholic and Lutheran churches in Germany and replacing them with Norse mythology.

[DentsRun]

Krauthammer: "The blood libel that this story affixed upon the Jewish people had led to countless Christian massacres of Jews and prepared Europe for the ultimate massacre -- 6 million Jews systematically murdered in six years -- in the heart, alas, of a Christian continent."

Krauthammer wants to de-Christianize America because he thinks it will make it a safer place for the Jews. He's got it exactly backwards. It's the fact that America is overwhelming Christian that has made it the safest haven Jews have ever known.

Krauthammer also charges Gibsion with repeating the "blood libel" that the Jews killed Christ, a foul and vicious slander which, he says, led to Hitler's systematic massacre of six million Jews "in the heart of a Christian continent."

If Krauthammer is going to blame the Holocaust on Christians he ought to be aware that hurling such charges is a two way street. And it's not only Christians who don't have clean hands. In the 20th century, Solzhenitsyn has written, Jewish Bolsheviks with the help of Jewish-staffed bureaucracies and clerks, killed something like 20 million Russian Christians, after first burning the Christian churches, murdering the priests and raping the nuns. And from there communism ultimately spread around the world, ultimately killing 200 million people, nearly half of whom were Christians.

Krauthammer has undoubtedly forgotten this, but there was a time immediately after WWII when Jewish leaders thanked the Vatican for its help during the war and blessed those tens of thousands of Christian Americans who lost their lives fighting the people who carried out the Holocaust. But 60 years later, everything has been reversed and now its Christianity, not Hitler, that prepared the soil for the seeds of hate which ultimately killed six million Jews.

Well, I say phooey to that.

Krauthammer has often been regarded as a brilliant writer in some circles. All he's done here is make sure that when it comes to spouting bigotry, he's right up there in the pantheon of world class haters, with Himmler, Goebbels and the Klu Klux Klan.

[walden]

Yeah-- and Safire and Charen before him.

With the exception of the NRO folks, conservative writers have been almost as bad as liberals on this issue-- but that's not the right split, of course. The real split is between real Christians and everyone else-- cultural Christians, secularists, and cultural Jews. Even religious Jews have understood better than secularists and cultural Jews.

[Just mythoughts]

"If Krauthammer is going to blame the Holocaust on Christians he ought to be aware that hurling such charges is a two way street. And it's not only Christians who don't have clean hands. In the 20th century, Solzhenitsyn has written, Jewish Bolsheviks with the help of Jewish-staffed bureaucracies and clerks, killed something like 20 million Russian Christians, after first burning the Christian churches, murdering the priests and raping the nuns. And from there communism ultimately spread around the world, ultimately killing 200 million people, nearly half of whom were Christians."

I had totally forgotten about Solzhenitsyn. Well you certainly are not going to be held in high regard for reminding us of this bit of history.

[DentsRun]

But I think you are incorrect. It was the devil walking behind the Jewish crowd that shook them up.

I sort of liked the devil character myself. But it could have been left out of the movie easily enough with no harm to the story. I think what irks the Jewish critics is how craven and manipulative Caiaphas comes across in Mel's movie, compared to Pilate, a weak but honest administrator, just trying to do his job.

[ZULU]

I think you are judging Krauthamer too harshly.

Most of his comments, if not all of them are accurate. He;s not Christian, he's Jewsih and those are his observations. They seem to be valid ones to me. And I doubt if any one out there can seriously refute them.

A lot is in the perspective.

[avital2]

i agree, giotto. i think people have to accept that Christians view this movie through a different lens than Jews: this is not a sin . i always agree with Krauthammer and feel if he takes this movie so personally that we have to respect that there is this kind of reaction from thinking, serious people who are not anti-Christian. tolerance, folks.

[Abundy]

Just remember that Jesus was a Jew, sent by God to save the Jews. He was a new covenant between God and God's choosen people. There were no Christians around to save. They came later.

Saving the Jews required His blood - following the Jewish ritual of sacrifice practiced in Temple at that time.

God killed Christ. Christ killed Christ. Christ died for the Jews, the Romans and you and I. I don't hate the Jewish people and/or the Romans for what transpired as it was part of God's plan. [That doesn't mean that unscrupulous people haven't used this act of love for evil purposes by manipulating weak-minded believers.]

The Jewish leaders then, like today, feared Jesus' message. They feared the growing following of Jesus then and they fear that this movie might move more to follow Him.

There is nothing anti-Semetic about this movie.

[xsmommy]

There have been other very good movies made about Christ ... including well done scenes of the crucifiction. The Jews were not outraged. Why are they so hurt now? I think good christians need to ask themselves this question

not all Jews are offended by it, read your fellow Freepers posts. Several, on this thread alone, have expressed their opinion that they looked for antisemitism in this movie and found none. Charles Krauthammer is not infallible.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Frum and Krauthammer. Who else (next)? They sure have a weird way of showing their gratitude.

[GraniteStateConservative]

Other neo-cons have been kicking paleos like Mel lately. They are just using us.

[GraniteStateConservative]

What exactly is controversial about depicting the high priests (not all Jews, mind you) as bad guys? Black people and white people and Arabs and other groups are shown as bad guy characters in movies all the time. That's not an indictment of those races. We laugh at Arabs who shriek at depicting a terrorist as an Arab in a movie. We should similarly dismiss these ridiculous claims of anti-semitism. I guess if someone sees what the high priests did as righteous, you might have a problem with the passion. Take that up with God who gave the words to those who wrote down the text of the Gospels.

[kittymyrib]

We have been brain-washed over the years to accept the fact that we all should belong to the Rodney King religion, whose only creed is, "Can't we all just get along?" Now, Mel Gibson's magnificent film and the reaction to it have revealed that most prominent Jews consider all Christians to be responsible for the Holocaust, all the while screaming that Jews are not to be considered responsible for Jesus's death. What rank hypocrisy! What bigotry.
St. Paul was right when he referred to Jesus as "a stumbling block to the Jews" I Cor. 1:23. Apparently, nothing has changed in 2000 years.

[GraniteStateConservative]

The only way this could be anti-semitic, the only way the words of the Gospels could be anti-semitic is if someone views what happened then to have been righteous and acceptable to all Jews then and now. That's not the case, I'd think.

[stanley windrush]

Being a devout Catholic who was educated in Chicago in Catholic schools for 12 years and starting before Vatican II, I never heard the any mention of calling Jews "Christ Killers" and heck, I went to a Catholic elementary school in the heart of a Jewish neighborhood (West Rogers Park). I had a number of Jewish friends to boot and was a best man at a Jewish wedding (great time by the way). I heard from some of these Jewish kids that the nuns taught the children in their charge that Jews were "Christ Killers". Never heard it in our cathecism classes. I figure you ran into a kid whose parents were ignorant morons. I could tell you stories of the public school kids who relentlessly assaulted us on our way to school (had to walk eight blocks through the gauntlet); we being targeted by our uniforms. The neighborhood being as it was...some of those assaulting us might have been Jewish as well. A little anti-Catholic bigotry for a change!

[GraniteStateConservative]

I've also heard that if you didn't know much about Christianity and the New Testament it would be difficult to understand why anyone was mad enough at Jesus to subject him to the punishment he received. There just wasn't much information about what had occured prior to the last 12 hours of Jesus life. Perhaps Mel Gibson is saving that for other movies.

Are you suggesting that Mona Charen, William Safire, and Charles Krauthammer are not scholarly enough to learn about the subject they write about? That's pretty irresponsible and unlike them. I think Occam's Razor would suggest that they know plenty and they just have an agenda like idiots like Paul Krugman.

[SauronOfMordor]

Seems to me historically anti-semitism was been based on "follow the money" rather than who killed Christ.

You got it. The way for a Medieval nobleman to get out of debt, was to get rid of the Jewish creditor.

1) The powers to be deemed that in an agrarian society Jews could not own land (Why? I'm not sure. Medieval antisemitism?)

The only people allowed to have (not "own") land back then were the nobility, where the condition for keeping the land was that they appear to fight for their senior noble when called. If you were not a fighting man, you were not a land owner. No Christian would like the idea of an armed Jew fighting against a fellow Christian

[GraniteStateConservative]

There is no more Jew or Gentile in Christ.

There's the rub. These are the same folk who freak out about evangelizing and missions to Jews here and elsewhere. We aren't the same-- but Jesus can make us the same.