The Passion Of the Apology

Mel Gibson Hopes to Meet With Jewish Leaders

Four days after he went into an anti-Semitic tirade during an arrest for drunk driving, Mel Gibson apologized yesterday for the first time to "the Jewish community," while the controversy built in Hollywood and fueled speculation about the Oscar winner's future.

"I want to apologize specifically to everyone in the Jewish community for the vitriolic and harmful words that I said to a law enforcement officer the night I was arrested on a DUI charge," Gibson said in a written statement released by his spokesman, Alan Nierob.

"I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot," Gibson's statement continued. "Hatred of any kind goes against my faith. I'm not just asking for forgiveness. I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing."

Gibson added that he had begun an unspecified "program of recovery" and asked "the Jewish community" for help "in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display."

Those "vicious words" were uttered to James Mee, the sheriff's deputy who arrested Gibson at 2:30 Friday morning for driving 80 mph on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu with a blood-alcohol level later measured at 0.12 percent. (The state legal limit is 0.08.) "[Expletive] Jews," Gibson said, according to a police report later leaked to TMZ.com, a celebrity news Web site. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Gibson then asked the cop: "Are you a Jew?" As it happened, the cop is.

The star's movie "The Passion of the Christ" was attacked as anti-Semitic, and critics have pointed out that his father, Hutton, has called the Holocaust "fiction."

ABC announced yesterday it had scrapped plans to produce a miniseries on the Holocaust with Gibson's production company -- but that deal was already in limbo, languishing in development for two years without even a completed script.

Yesterday's apology was the blockbuster sequel to Gibson's first apology, which came Saturday before the details of his tirade became famous. In Apology I, the star said only that he had made unspecified statements that "I do not believe to be true and which are despicable."

Apology I was judged to be "insufficient" and "unremorseful" by Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Foxman, who had criticized "Passion" as an incitement to anti-Semitism, posted a statement on the ADL's Web site: "We would hope that Hollywood would now realize the bigot in their midst and that they will distance themselves from the anti-Semite."

But Foxman was more impressed with Apology II. "We are glad that Mel Gibson has finally owned up to the fact that he made anti-Semitic remarks and his apology sounds sincere," Foxman said in a statement. "Once he completes his rehabilitation for alcohol abuse, we will be ready and willing to help him with his second rehabilitation to combat this disease of prejudice." Gibson's agent yesterday indicated his client was availing himself of help as an outpatient.

Gibson's latest apology did not change the views of Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel, who said through a spokesman that he stood by his earlier statement that folks in Hollywood ought to be "shunning Mel Gibson and refusing to work with him, even if it means a sacrifice to their bottom line."

Others in Hollywood disagreed with Emanuel. "Any types of call of that nature fly in the face of what free speech is," said veteran producer Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Entertainment, in a phone interview from Hawaii, where he is vacationing. "Anybody trying to prevent anybody from being gainfully employed is distasteful to me. . . . Any type of vigilante justice or political pressure meted out by a business community would be wrong and ill-advised."