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Phone-throwing Oscar winner Russell Crowe has come out swinging against circumcision — specifically the Jewish kind — in a Twitter rant he subsequently retracted (sort of).

Calling the ritual “barbaric and stupid,” Crowe said he “love[s] my Jewish friends,” but that ” if u feel it is yr right 2 cut things off yr babies please unfollow and f**k off, I’ll take attentive parenting over barbarism.”

The punctuation-impaired actor explained that “I will always stand for the perfection of babies, i will always believe in God, not man’s interpretation of what God requires,” asking, “Is it real that GOD requires a donation of foreskin?”

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The “Gladiator” star directed one of the posts at Jewish director Eli Roth, with whom he worked on the upcoming “The Man With the Iron Fists.” Roth responded via a tweet of his own, “You didn’t seem to be complaining when I was recutting you this afternoon…”

Crowe seems to have had second thoughts about the tone of his tweets, which dismissed medical justifications for circumcisions in terms too graphic for a wholesome, family-friendly blog such as the Shmooze. He later deleted some of the posts, and wrote, “I have a deep and abiding love for all people of all nationalities, I’m very sorry that I have said things on here that have caused distress.”

It should be noted that not all of Crowe’s beliefs about Jewish tradition are hostile: In the first set of tweets, he praised “the funny little hats” and said he “love[s] the apples and honey.”

And, to be fair, he’s an expert on barbarism and stupidity: The famously volatile actor once pleaded guilty to assaulting a hotel employee (those annoying little people!) with a telephone.

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