Hollywood director Oliver Stone has made anti-Semitic comments, and is a supporter of Iran and Venez

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ADL accepts Oliver Stone's 2nd apology

By JPOST.COM STAFF AND BLOOMBERG NEWS
07/29/2010 11:21

But billionaire Haim Saban calls to cancel director’s Showtime series.

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The Anti-Defamation League has accepted Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone’s second apology over comments he made in an interview to Britain’s Sunday Times, in which he downplayed the Holocaust, defended Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and complained about Jewish influence in the United States.

“I do agree that it was wrong of me to say that Israel or the pro- Israel lobby is to blame for America’s flawed foreign policy,” the director said on Wednesday. “Of course that’s not true, and I apologize that my inappropriately glib remark has played into that negative stereotype.”

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In a statement released on Wednesday night, ADL national director Abraham Foxman welcomed the apology, saying, “I believe he now understands the issues and where he was wrong, and this puts an end to the matter.”

Stone’s publicist, Rubenstein Communications, had released a previous apology on Monday, stating, “In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret.”

The first apology came after Diaspora Affairs and Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli Edelstein slammed Stone on Monday for the comments. Edelstein said that Stone’s statements to the newspaper were racist and anti-Semitic and made him sick.

“Beyond the ignorance he proves with his comments, his demonization of the Jewish people could be a sequel to the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’” the minister said. “When a man of Stone’s stature says such things, it could lead to a new wave of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, and it may even cause real harm to Jewish communities and individuals.”

Meanwhile, Israeli-American television and media tycoon Haim Saban has called on CBS Corp.’s Showtime Networks to cancel Stone’s planned documentary series Secret History of America.

Saban, creator of the Power Rangers franchise and an investor in Univision Communications Inc., urged New York-based CBS to cancel the 10-hour series, his spokeswoman, Stephanie Pillersdorf, said on Wednesday in an email.

“Anyone who works with this guy should be ashamed,” Saban said in comments posted at HuffingtonPost.com and confirmed by Pillersdorf. “Oliver Stone should be given a helping hand – indeed, a vigorous shove – into the land of forced retirement,” he said.

Stone’s interview with the Sunday Times provoked an outcry from groups that included the American Jewish Committee. He told the newspaper that “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people, 25 or 30 million.” He discussed what he called “Jewish domination of the media,” and said Israel had “f***** up United States foreign policy for years.”

Rich Licata, a Showtime spokesman, declined to comment on Saban’s statement. The network said this week it hadn’t set a release date for Secret History, which is still in production. The views expressed in the Sunday Times interview aren’t part of the series, Showtime said.

In the Sunday Times interview, Stone was promoting a documentary on Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. He also discussed the Secret History project, which is being produced by his Ixtlan Productions.

“Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein,” Stone told the Sunday Times. “German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support.”

In January, Stone said the series would place historical figures including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin “in context” and suggested that Hitler had been made an “easy scapegoat” by history, the UK’s Telegraph reported at the time.

Stone belongs “in the professional wilderness,” said Saban, who was reported by Forbes magazine to be worth $2.8 billion. “Standing on a splintered soapbox right next to Mel Gibson’s, he can preach his anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism into the wind.”

David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement this week that Stone “has outed himself as an anti-Semite.”

News Corp.’s Fox studio is scheduled to release Stone’s Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps on September 24, according to the Internet Movie Database. The film, a sequel to the 1987 hit, features Michael Douglas in a reprise of his role as financier Gordon Gekko, along with Shia LaBeouf and Josh Brolin. It cost $70 million to make, according to IMDB.com.

Fox, part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, plans no changes in the movie’s release, Chris Petrikin, a spokesman for the studio, said this week.

“Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry,” Stone said in his first apology.“The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity – and it was an atrocity.”