Posted on 12/13/2005 6:53:28 AM PST by Witch-king of Angmar
As the Monitor noted back in July, “alarm bells went off like crazy when Steven Spielberg hired Tony Kushner last year to rewrite the script of a movie about Israel’s clandestine — and lethal — response to the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.”
The Monitor found cause for concern because Kushner is a radical leftist whose views on the Middle East are hardly distinguishable from the hateful screeds found on the most rabidly anti-Israel websites.
(Excerpt) Read more at thejewishpress.com ...
I think you'll probably find that Tom Hanks was the driving force on both of these projects, as well as the great "From the Earth to the Moon" series. Spielberg was a mere hanger-on.
It's too bad that all of the good work he did with "Schindler's List" (one of the few movies on my "5 Star Movies I could never watch again" list) has been blown away with this P.O.S.
So I ask again, are you saying they deliberately killed the wrong man? Yes or no?
Sloppiness, incompetence and impulsiveness are all things you have to factor into any and every human endeavor involving more than 3 or 4 people, so it doesn't really matter how familiar I am with the details of the incident, the laws of human nature and fallibility still apply.
To the point, unless you can make a case that the Mossad exhibited a pattern of utter callousness toward bystanders in this operation beyond this incident, or that they intended to kill a man who had absolutely nothing to do with Munich or with Arab terrorism in general just for the sake of killing an innocent for fun and target practice, this still comes under the heading of accident.
You also did not mention whether any heads rolled within the Mossad or the Israeli government over this incident. That matters too.
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Yet you insist that you know that it was nothing but an "accident". Have a nice day.
I guess the 'context' of the Israeli athletes having just been murdered in cold blood by the Palestinian terrorists wasn't clear enough to explain the actions of the Israeli security forces.
There is an entirely fictional scene in the movie in which [the leader of the Israeli hit squad] and his Palestinian opposite number meet and talk calmly, with the latter getting a chance to make his case for the creation of a homeland for his people. That scene means everything to Kushner and Spielberg..... Without that exchange, 'I would [said Spielberg] have been making a Charles Bronson movie — good guys vs. bad guys and Jews killing Arabs without any context. And I was never going to make that picture.' "
Spielberg has officially sold out.
Context only matters for the liberation of oppressed peoples, thus 9-11 is totally irrevelent to the War on Terror. Also in this climate if he GAVE context that would only serve the interests of "BusHitler" and the neocon cabal..
Yet you ignore that I took your explanation of the events at Lillihammer at face value, in other words hypothetically agreeing with you 100% on precisely what happened and how. Therefore, my familiarity with what happened is irrelevant to my argument, which is based on an analysis of human nature and man's tendency toward screw-ups no matter what the human activity.
But even in this context of me conceding all the details of the events to be exactly as you described -- in other words, negating the premise of your argument that I'm ignorant of the details and therefore have nothing to say -- you refuse to answer the question of whether or not you think Israel intended to kill the wrong man. You also refuse to answer the question of whether or not there were firings or reprimands of the personnel involved in the killing of an innocent, which I think goes very much toward the state of mind of the Mossad and the Israeli government on whether or not Israel intended to kill this particular man for no good reason.
If it was not an accident (which includes an accident resulting from gross negligence as you described), then it was the deliberate pre-meditated murder of an innocent. There is no third possibility. Please stop hiding behind innuendo and choose one.
marking this great thread.
Having read a few essays from that dreadful anthology I can attest to the author's description.
The problem with our society is that we think an idiot like Jonathan Safran Foer is qualified to speak about the Middle East conflict-or any subject of great import, for that matter-simply because he wrote a novel that made the N.Y. Times best-seller list.
When will people realize that these people are cretins, whose only contribution is to entertain us?
Otherwise, they should just keep their traps shut.
Did I miss the deeper meaning in Gremlins? If we hadn't welcomed the Muslims into our homes and fed them after midnight, things would be different?
Yeah.
Or that Noam Chomsky is qualified to preach on foreign policy because he is a linguist. Or that Meryl Streep is qualified speak on pesticides because she is an actoid, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc..............................
"Unfortunately, for many Jews, being a Jew revolves around being a victim."
I find a correlation between Jewish self-hatred & an obsession with the Holocaust. It reinfoces their negative association with the religion.
"Reinforces." Sorry.
I just read that VARIETY's chief film critic describes the script as "flabby."
I laughed aloud when I read that.
I don't want to give the impression that I'm rejoicing in anyone's failure(s), but, as to Kushner's work particularly, yes, flabby and I sure wouldn't lend any support (nor viewing time or money) to his success.
Jews: stupid smart people.
ping
Arthur Cohn did a great documentary on the Munich massacre called "One Day in September. It won an Oscar in 2000 for best documentary. Great score featuring US rock.
Cohn's won six Oscars including the one for the gorgeous but tragic "Garden of the Finzi-Continis."
Here is what The Nation had to say about Cohn's film:
"Why, then, did One Day in September triumph? One filmmaker and academy member told me that many members she knew thought it was terrific. There's no denying One Day in September's power, which comes largely from the tragedy of the event it chronicles, as well as the showy (and rather unoriginal) way it presents the terrorist spectacle. But it's a remarkably one-sided treatment of the episode. With the exception of a few fleeting shots of a Lebanese refugee camp, the film, as Edward Said observed, "eliminate[s] the Palestinian narrative" altogether and ignores "the desperation and horror that inspired and nourished [the Munich massacre]."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010402/bromley/3
Well Edward Said got his say thanks to Spielberg and Kushner who give the term "progressive" a bad name.
"Forget about the true tragedy which put Israel on the same level as the original terrorists (foreign hit team kills innocent)"
False moral equivalency.
Israel mistook an innocent for a terrorist; terrorists aim for innocents. That's not even remotely "on the same level."
I suspect the people who condemn Israel so roundly for the tragic error are really against the whole concept of hunting down the terrorists and killing them extra-judicially. Israel and its citizens are at war. Those living in the safety of the US may not get it.
"It was a rush-to-vengeance"
How much later was this supposed "rush to vengeance?"
Munich Massacre -- September 1972
Lillehammer mistake -- July 1973
Your calling it "vengeance" exposes your real objection. Sort of like people who object to the death penalty.
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