After a long absence Mel Gibson stars in a new film. Last week, he was interviewed by Sam Rubin, a reporter for KTLA TV in Los Angeles.

After a brief exchange, Rubin, who is Jewish, remarked: ''Some people will welcome you back, and other people will say he should never come back.''

When Gibson asked why, Rubin reminded him of the barrage of anti-Semitic slurs he made when arrested for drunk driving in 2006. According to the officer's report, Gibson said: ''F---ing Jews - Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.'' Giibson then asked the officer if he was Jewish.

Gibson later apologised for his hate-filled rant, saying: ''I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said.'' Gibson insisted that he is not bigot, adding: ''There is no excuse, nor should there be any tolerance, for anyone who thinks or expresses any kind of anti-Semitic remark. I want to apologise 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 seemed to be genuinely sorry and remorseful. Yet four years later, Gibson apparently denies saying those hurtful things.  Leaning forward he told Sam Rubin: ''The remarks that were attributed to me? That I didn’t necessarily make. OK.''

Gibson then must have picked up that Rubin was Jewish. In allusion to Rubin's Jewishness, Gibson told Rubin, ''I gather you have a dog in this fight. Do you have a dog in this fight? Or you're being impartial?'' The implication was clear.

Gibson's 2006 outburst amplified people’s anger about what they saw as anti-Semitic overtones in his 2004 blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. Others were disappointed that he failed to disassociate himself strongly enough from remarks by his father denying the Holocaust.

The Passion of the Christ script that Gibson co-authored is based on the visions and ravings of a 19th century German Catholic nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich. Emmerich’s work is riddled with anti-Jewish tones and has very little scriptural or historical legs to stand on.

Gibson should have listened to those who told him of the inflammatory potential of the film. For centuries, the performance of Passion plays in Europe led to vicious attacks and pogroms against Jews.
The Passion film depicts the brutal tyrant Pontius Pilate as a sympathetic, humane character while making the Jewish priests bloodthirsty sadists who are the main instigators of Jesus’ death. When an interfaith group of scholars condemned an early script for blaming the Jews for the crucifixion, Gibson paid no heed to their concerns.

When Gibson was asked to appear on screen at the end of the film and clearly state that Jewish people are not to blame for the death of Jesus, reflecting the Vatican II pronouncement, he said no. When he was told that the Passion threatens to undo decades of interfaith dialogue he was not moved. Yes, he removed the subtitles from a scene in which a Jewish mob says, ''His blood be on us and on our children'' but left the offensive quotation in the film.

Gibson said he had no wish to offend Jews, but added, ''Anybody who transgresses has to look at their own part or look at their own culpability''. What culpability?

Gibson’s father has said that the Jews of Europe ''simply got up and left'' and were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney; that the Holocaust was mostly fiction because the Nazis never had enough petrol to burn 6 million Jews; that the genocide was fabricated by ''financiers'' seeking to facilitate the movement of Jews to Palestine; that Holocaust museums are a ‘‘gimmick to collect money’’ and that the concentration camps were just ''work camps''. He has further claimed that the Jews are taking over the Catholic Church, are after one world religion and one world government and that former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan should be lynched.

Sadly, Gibson fudged an opportunity to forcefully refute his father’s views when he was questioned about the Holocaust. After stating that he had friends with numbers on their arms, he noted, ''Yes of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives.'' Gibson minimised the mass murder, depicting it as another aspect of the overall toll of the WWII rather than the industrial, systematic extermination campaign that it was.

Gibson told American broadcaster Diane Sawyer: ''My dad taught me faith and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life.'' And: ''He’s my father. Gotta leave it alone.''

Well, Gibson did not have to leave it alone. He could and should have unequivocally rejected his father’s views. He should publicly disavow Holocaust denial. Sons can love their fathers but still admit they are wrong. Arnold Schwarzenegger reacted to the revelation of his father’s past by asking the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to examine whether his father committed atrocities, and publicly denounced Joerg Heider. The California Governor also visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s National Holocaust Museum and laid a wreath.

In his post interview monologue, Rubin questioned whether Gibson was ever honestly sorry for the anti-Semitic remarks he made in 2006, especially since he now contests the comments for which he sought forgiveness. There will be many asking the same question.