Paul Thomas: Like Gibson, Israel reaps what it sows

After being arrested in San Antonio, Texas, in 1982, rock star and professional lunatic Ozzy Osbourne entered this plea in mitigation: "I would never urinate at the Alamo at 9am dressed in a woman's evening dress sober."

Indeed. If he could do that sober, it would require an unusual imagination and a very open mind to visualise what he'd get up to drunk.

Sports teams have sometimes sought to reinforce off-field discipline with the mantra "Alcohol is no excuse" but in fact an awful lot of idiotic and/or unattractive behaviour is played down or explained away as alcohol-induced.

Mel Gibson blamed an alcoholic relapse for his anti-Semitic ravings but even though Hollywood has historically been tolerant of substance abuse and its behavioural manifestations (for good reason, to the showbiz community, rehab is like cosmetic surgery for the soul), no one apart from the abused sheriff's deputy is cutting him any slack.

The arresting officer, to whom Gibson unburdened himself of a world view with a distinct echo of a Munich beer hall circa 1933, reckoned it was the booze talking. Hollywood and the United States media are more inclined to see it as a case of in vino veritas.

For them Gibson's rant is the smoking gun. His father, whom he has never repudiated, is a Holocaust denier who mutters darkly about Jews and Freemasons.

Gibson belongs to an offshoot of Catholicism that is sometimes described as deeply traditional but which the commentator Christopher Hitchens alleges "more or less lives off the stench of medieval anti-Semitism".

Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ, which defied Hollywood convention in a number of ways, most notably by being a mega-hit, was accused of pandering to the notion that Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, a bedrock of anti-Semitism down the ages.

Its blockbuster success was largely attributed to its appeal to evangelical Christians who despise the Hollywood establishment as vehemently as they are despised in return. It also reportedly played well at the Muslim box office.

Whether or not Gibson's career goes down the toilet would seem to depend on the consensus that emerges once the sound and fury dies down: was this a case of a harmless crackpot going on a bender or the mask slipping to reveal the racist beneath?

If it's to be the latter then it's probably worth pointing out that, when the personal abuse and hysteria are stripped away, Gibson was voicing an opinion that tens if not hundreds of millions of people around the world, many of them liberal-minded, wouldn't altogether disagree with.

Obviously no one in their right mind believes that the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world, but plenty of people believe that Israel (and the Jewish lobby in America) deserve the lion's share of the blame for the big one, the intractable Middle East conflict, and are the architects of the latest conflagration in Lebanon.

Israel's fall from grace in the eyes of the Western World, America excepted, is one of the more striking geopolitical developments of recent decades.

This can't be because the threat to Israel's existence has receded because it hasn't, not one iota.

Israel's bitterest complaint is that, despite the 6 million reasons for doing so, the world refuses to take its enemies seriously when they routinely vow to exterminate the Jews.

In a sense Israel, like Gibson, is reaping what it has sowed. Successive military victories based on tactical brilliance and overwhelming made-in-America technological superiority have transformed it from David to Goliath and persuaded world opinion that the extermination rhetoric can't be taken seriously.

Israel's existence isn't at stake because its enemies don't have the wherewithal to destroy it. There is no end to justify the means.

Perhaps Iran's nuclear ambitions will tilt international opinion back towards Israel but it may never come to that.

Watching the annihilating assault on Hizbollah, Iran's Lebanese proxy, it is impossible to imagine Israel holding fire while the Mullahs acquire the means to make good their threat to wipe the Jewish entity off the map.

After all this it is a relief to return to the great state of Texas where a Jew, while not starting a war, is certainly stirring up the political scene. Kinky Friedman, a country and western singer turned crime novelist, is running for the governorship of Texas, an office held not so long ago by none other than George W. Bush.

Friedman first achieved notoriety as the front-man of the Texas Jewboys who produced such cult classics as They Ain't Makin' Jews like Jesus Any More and I'm Proud to be an Asshole from El Paso, a parody of Merle Haggard's redneck anthem I'm proud to be an Okie from Muskogee.

Friedman is running as an independent on an eclectic platform ranging from hardline on immigration to liberal on gay marriage. ("Gays have the right to be miserable too.")

Whether he follows in the footsteps of celebrity politicians like Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger or is simply an entertaining footnote, he has already made his mark with this startling admission which perhaps could be filed under Too Much Information: "I'm a member of the Mile High Club. A solo member."