Some may remember hard leftist and PLO supporter Vanessa Redgrave going to the podium at the Academy Awards in 1978 to accept the Best Actress Award and denouncing Israel's first incursion into Lebanon as the work of "Zionist Gangsters."  Vanessa had won the Oscar for the movie "Julia," which co—starred Jane Fonda. 

This speech shocked the Hollywood community, yet I don't recall anyone asking her for a retraction of her words. Her hard left political opinions, while hated by Hollywood Jews,  were accepted as such. It only took Vanessa two years to find work in an American TV production, Faerie Tale Theater. If you look at her film history at the International Movie Data Base, you will find a number of American film and television projects since that time.

Recently, Redgrave was a supporter of a play about Rachel Corrie, the American leftist who tried to block an Israeli bulldozer and was killed. 

The Academy Awards has recently honored an unrepentant Nazi propagandist named Leni Riefenstahl by mentioning her passing. To my knowedge, no one in the film community denounced this act in 2004.
 
I personally saw The Passion of the Christ and found it not to be anti—Semitic. Since I know some Hebrew, I could follow the story line in many places without reading the subtitles. I beleive I am realistic in assuming that Mel Gibson has not and will not make the type of sustained political attacks on Jews and/or Israel that Vanessa Redgrave continues to make — while finding work in Hollywood.

Mel Gibson now has had his Holocaust television series pre—production talks cancelled by ABC. The media has puffed out its chest with self—righteousness, saying Mel isn't "kosher" enough to do a Holocaust series. Some of you may remember that in 1980, just 2 years after Vanessa Redgrave's "Zionist Gangster" remark, she starred in a CBS TV production called "Playing for Time" about women musicians forced to play at the Auschwitz concentration camp.   

Apparently CBS, the mainstream media giant, had no problem with Redgrave offending Holocaust and Auschwitz survivors (like my mother) and their families since she was such a dedicated liberal — dedicated to the denunciation, if not destruction, of Israel in her political statements and deeds.

I doubt Mel will be as in denial or unrepentant as Leni Riefenstahl was to her last days. And I believe Mel Gibson, like all of us, is capable of examining his heart, repentence and spiritual growth. To what exent that occurs, time will tell.

In Judiasm, there are no perfect human beings. That is particularly true of the Jews mentioned in the Bible, with all their faults. In Christianity (as I understand it as an outsider), there is only one perfect human being — and He rose to heaven on Easter Sunday around 33 A.D. So for both religions, there are no perfect human beings walking the earth today. But for the liberal religion, they attempt to rewrite Christ's words, (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone) into "By casting the first stone, you can spin it politically so as to imply that you are without sin." In other words, if you denounce Mel Gibson loudly while ignoring your tacit support for Vanessa Redgrave, you — as a lliberal — can get a free pass.
 
As for the mainstream media howling about Mel Gibson, didn't Shakespeare say something about a lady that protested too much?

Jack Kemp (not the politician)   8 02 06