Gary Oldman may be “deeply remorseful” over the controversial comments he made about Jews in Hollywood to Playboy, but not everyone thinks his apology is enough.
“He should have simply of said, ‘Given the history of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, Given what’s happening today in Brussels, Paris and around the world, I made a serious mistake in appearing to defend what Mel Gibson said,’” Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in an statement exclusively given to TheWrap on Wednesday.
The “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” star came under heavy fire after discussing Mel Gibson‘s DUI backlash. He told Playboy, “I don’t know about Mel. He got drunk and said a few things, but we’ve all said those things. We’re all fucking hypocrites. That’s what I think about it.”
Also read: Gary Oldman ‘Deeply Remorseful’ Over ‘Insensitive’ Playboy Comments
Rabbi Hier doesn’t agree. “Gary Oldman makes the mistake by saying, ‘We all talk like that, so why are we stereotyping Mel Gibson?’ We do not all talk like that. Mel Gibson said things that Adolf Hitler used to murder 6 million Jews during the Holocaust,” he said.
“Even when he was not drunk Gibson offended the Jews. In his film ‘The Passion of the Christ,’ every Jew who did not follow Christ is portrayed as either a tyrant or an idiot … [and] when Oldman goes on to say, ‘the Jews own the town,’ it sounds like a cabal. But that’s the language that anti-Semites use. Besides even Mel Gibson got a job in Hollywood!”
Rabbi Hier isn’t the only prominent member of the Jewish community unhappy about Oldman’s apology. As TheWrap reported earlier, the Anti-Defamation League also said it was “not sufficient.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, established in 1977, is a Jewish human rights organization.