Just as I said yesterday, the developments surrounding the Mel Gibson-produced “Judah Maccabee” film would be interesting. Already, there is a backlash.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, several Jewish leaders are angry at Warner Bros. and Mel Gibson for making the film about the Jewish leader who led an uprising against Greek-Syrian armies in the second century B.C.

“Judah Maccabee deserves better,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League, to The Hollywood Reporter. “He is a hero of the Jewish people and a universal hero in the struggle for religious liberty. It would be a travesty to have his story told by one who has no respect and sensitivity for other people’s religious views.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of Los Angeles’ Simon Wisenthal Center Museum of Tolerance, also said to the magazine/site that the film is, according to the site, the latest slap in the face to the Jewish people by the actor.

“Mel Gibson has shown nothing but antagonism and disrespect to Jews,” said Hier in a statement. “First of all there were the anti-Semitic remarks he made, his portrayal of Jews in ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ I’m talk about those Jews who did not accept Christ, they were all portrayed as idiots, buffoons or people who were tyrants, with a very unfair portrayal. He’s had a long history of antagonism with Jews.” He went on to say that hiring Gibson as a director for a film about Maccabee would be like hiring Bernie Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission or like having a white supremacist portray Martin Luther King, Jr. “Warner Bros. is making a terrible mistake,” he said, also adding that surely the studio must know that Jewish communities will not come to see the film if made by Gibson.

To read the full article, click here.