I’m withholding my opinion on whether Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ” contains or encourages antisemitism until I actually see the film. There are people whose opinions I respect arguing for both sides of the issue.

But it really doesn’t help Gibson’s case when his 85-year old father gives interviews like this.

Hutton Gibson spoke Monday to Steve Feuerstein of “Speak Your Piece!” on WSNR (620 AM), a show syndicated by Talkline, the largest syndicator of Jewish programming.

Some of his most outrageous rants focused on the millions of Jews exterminated by Adolf Hitler.

“They claimed that there were 6.2 million in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 - therefore he must have killed 6 million of them,” he said. “They simply got up and left! They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles.”

He said the Germans did not have enough gas to cremate 6 million people and that the concentration camps were just “work camps.”

“It’s all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it is,” he said.

Gibson repeatedly smeared prominent Jews as money-grubbing power-mongers.

“Greenspan tells us what to do. Someone should take him out and hang him.”

He even belittled the Pope’s reported endorsement of “The Passion,” recounting how Mel referred to the pontiff as an “ass.”

Gibson reserved most of his vitriol for Judaism, asking: “Is the Jew still actively anti-Christian? He is, for by being a Jew, he is anti-everyone else.”

What a crazy old coot. I wonder if Mel Gibson is starting to wish his father would go on a really long vacation?