Posted on 06/28/2005 7:12:34 AM PDT by kromike
Stephen Spielberg's "Balanced" View of Terror By Debbie Schlussel FrontPageMagazine.com | June 28, 2005
Much is being made about Steven Spielberg's upcoming inaccurate, revisionist history and "balance" (code for morally equivocating Islamic terrorists with their victims) in his new film, Vengeance -- about the Israeli Mossad's tracking down of Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. But anyone who knows the history of this movie, based on a George Jonas book of the same name, should not be surprised.
Jonas admits he has only one "source" for most of the information in his book and that many of the incidents could not be verified. Many of his "facts" were refuted by testimony in a Norwegian trial of Mossad agents who were caught accidentally killing a Moroccan waiter there. Spielberg has not contacted anyone in the Mossad, the Israeli government, or the agents who were involved in the operation, some of whom discredited Jonas' book.
As I wrote in a column on Spielberg's Vengeance, last summer, Spielberg halted production to avoid upsetting terrorists during the Olympics. Just out of respect and "sensitivity" for terrorists' wishes. Then, Spielberg realized this was a bad P.R. move and had his publicist claim the reason was something almost as absurd, but much less believable: that Spielberg was just too upset each day--sobbing while reading pages of the script--to continue. Right, and the sob-scenes in E.T. also made him halt production. Not.
One wonders if Spielberg's "balance" will involve visiting the family of Cleveland-based parents of David Berger, the handsome, American-born, Israeli Olympic weight-lifter, who was among the murdered athletes. Don't count on it. The film, starring the outspokenly pro-Palestinian Ben Kingsley, is bound to be no different than the "balanced" Oscar-winning documentary, "One Day in September," which -- as I wrote in another column -- showed the murder of the Israeli Olympic athletes from the victims' families' and Palestinian terrorists' points of view--as an action thriller.
Spielberg's "Vengeance," appears to be an indictment of our current War on Terror. According to Reuters, Daniel Craig, who stars in the film, told an entertainment magazine that "it's about how vengeance doesn't...work -- blood breeds blood." The one accidental assassination -- of the Moroccan waiter in Norway -- is being used to discredit the entire operation, which was a successful War on Terror. There will always be accidental deaths in fighting terror, but that does not mean there should not be a strong and swift response to it.
Don't hold your breath for real balance, such as Spielberg visiting terror-host state Syria (on the State Department's terrorist list) to interrogate and film Jamil Al-Gashey, the only surviving murderer of the Israeli Olympic athletes. He enjoys a life of safety and freedom under the protection of Syria's government, where he moved because, as he said, he didn't want his daughter to grow up without a father. No biggie that he killed the fathers of several daughters of the Israeli athletes. Don't look for any of that in "Fighting Terror is a Bad Idea, as Told by Steven Spielberg."
Question: Why did Spielberg make the Nazis look bad, and even melt to their deaths, in "Raiders by the Lost Ark"? Where was the balance then?
I've seen ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER and I have to say it is anything but pro-Palestinian.
"accidentally killing a Moroccan waiter"
Mistakenly killing, not accidentally. They meant for him to die, but they thought he was someone else.
Yeah really the guy is party Jewish and was in Schindler's List.
I guess non-Jews had no stake in WWII? I stated the Libs love Stalin and that is the truth. I said nothing regarding the Jewish people or what their stake in the matter was. Don't put words into my mouth and do not try to set me up as an anti-semite.
Will not be seeing WOTW.
Had planeed not to already.
Also a fictionalized version in "The Little Drummer Girl" by John Le Carré
Stephen Spielberg: continuing to demonstrate to the world that some of us Jews are really, really stupid.
Snicker. The Indy Jones films show more Nazi flags than American flags.
I'll tell you one thing the Munich Massacre did. It sealed the deal for me. I was thirteen years old and just starting eigth grade when it happened. I had just moved to Illinois to live with my Dad and Dan Walker was walking the length of the state running for governor. I'd always been on Israels side, raised that way, Dad's family had been Jewish, I wasn't told that but...
You'll see me write things like Israel Right or Wrong on here and "Israel, with you from the first, with you to the last", stuff like that, and it was that despicable event that made me like that. Nothing has ever happened EVER since then to elevate the pals one iota in my eyes. They deserve to understand the lesson of decimation.
Indiana Jones is an American heroic type, modelled on Doc Savage and other pulp adventurers. He's fighting the Nazis. the threat is never minimized. Hence all the flags.
I wrote off Speilberg when he felt he needed to remove guns from the hands of the military in his ET revision.
Why does Spielberg hate and vilify the Nazis for the cold blooded murder of 6 million Jews in WWII but he does not hate and vilify the Palestinian terrorists of the brutal cold blooded murder of the athletes of the Israeli 1972 Olympic Team in Munich?
Is Spielberg now under the trance of liberalism/socialism/communism?
And full of pathetic liberal self-loathing.
Let's see, hunting down terrorists and killing them. And that is bad, because.......?
You are correct.
Don't forget, current PA president Mahmood Abbas helped to finance the terrorist attack in Munich.
The only hope the Pals have is to get shed of the Arafat gangster generation (including Abbas), and the terrorists who have leached onto them like parasites. Can they ever do it? Do they want to do it, or is it more satisfactory to live with the leeches and thugs in order to keep on hating the Jews?
I was hoping Spielberg's movie was going to be pro-Israel/anti-terrorist, but it sounds as if he plans to take more of an Appease Now line. That is too bad, because I was looking forward to seeing it.
Fair enough...
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