Gibson said that when people are drunk, they express what they think incorrectly.
"Now when you're loaded, you know, the balance of how you see things -- it comes out the wrong way. I know that it's not as black and white as that. I know that you just can't, you know, roar about things like that. That it's wrong," he said.
When Sawyer countered that a lot of people would say he was still blaming the Jews, Gibson said he wasn't blaming them.
"No, no. Did … did I say that?" he asked.
After several rounds on the Middle East, he said this was his statement of his true feelings.
"Let me be real clear, here. In sobriety, sitting here, in front of you, national television. … That I don't believe that Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. I mean that's an outrageous, drunken statement," he said.
But he said something else was eating at him that night. He said he had realized he had been harboring an old resentment.
"The other place it may have come from is, you know, as you know, a couple of years ago I released the film 'Passion.' … Even before anyone saw a frame of the film, for an entire year, I was subjected to a pretty brutal sort of public beating," he said.
"During the course of that, I think I probably had my rights violated in many different ways as an American. You know. As an artist. As a Christian. Just as a human being, you know."
Tens of millions of Christians who saw the film said it was simply evoking the New Testament version of Jews, Romans, and the brutal crucifixion of Jesus.
But the leaders of several Jewish organizations launched a campaign arguing that Gibson had seeded the film with deliberately anti-Semitic images. They also warned that Gibson might be inciting a new wave of hatred and even of violence against Jews.
He said that never happened.
"The film came out. It was released, and you could have heard a pin drop, you know. Even the crickets weren't chirping," he said. "But, the other thing I never heard was the one single word of apology."
"I thought I dealt with that stuff. All forgiveness, but, the human heart's a funny thing. Sometimes you can bear the scars of resentment. And … it'll come out, you know, when you're overwrought, you take a few drinks," he said. "There was anger from that, I think. … My resentment stemmed from certain individuals treating me in a certain way."
