Quote:
Not Peace, but a Sword
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
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The only "jew-bainting" is Safire's rabid ignorance of the fact that Jesus himself was a jew, that his own friends are portrayed as betrayers, that Pilate was portrayed as a weakling more interested in his own skin than in truth, that Herod was more interested in wine than his own people, and that the Jewish people were not portrayed in the movie as a monotonic stereotype to be belittled for an inibility to voice an opinion (as they are in Safire's article) but as a group of people with diverse opinions and experience with the Christ, some arguing against his crucifixion, as well as some for. Safire also ignores the fact that the violence in the movie was perpetrated by the Romans, and that Jesus (the hero of the movie and the example for Christian viewers) asked for them all to be forgiven.