Replies

I'm wondering where this guy is getting off at, and I'm thinkin' that its just about time to yank the cord; this guy clearly missed his stop (and frankly I want him off of my bus). I heard it said that liberals aren't stupid; its not that they don't know anything, its just that everything that they know is wrong.

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. Kushner has been quoted in an interview with the Times of London, where he declared:

I deplore the brutal and illegal tactics of the Israeli Defense Forces in the occupied territories. I deplore the occupation, the forced evacuations, the settlements, the refugee camps, the whole shameful history of the dreadful suffering of the Palestinian people; Jews, of all people, with our history of suffering, should refuse to treat our fellow human beings like that...I think the founding of the State of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity.... I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.

Spielberg says this in an interview with Time’s Richard Schickel, on the non-judgmental tone of his new movie:

I think the thing I’m very proud of is that [screenwriter] Tony Kushner and I and the actors did not demonize anyone in the film. We don’t demonize our targets. They’re individuals. They have families. Although what happened in Munich I condemn.

That's liberal psychobabel at its gaudiest, and could be as equally non-judgemental of monsters such as Hitler, Stalin, or Pol-Pot. The film’s intended message can be gleaned from this little gem from Time’s cover story:

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.'

For all pragmatic purposes, Spielberg's intent is to portray Palestinian terrorists as calm, reasonable human beings, and muddying any possible distinctions between the good guys and bad guys. That he and Kushner flat out have to depend on an entirely fabricated scene to do just that, well, at least with E.T. and Jurassic Park viewers knew they were getting fiction. This is not so emminently true with Hollywood productions like The Manchurian Candidate remake, or network televisions The Commander in Chief. You can argue until the cows come home with some people about Farenheit 911, but it won't make a lick of a difference. "Did you see it? No? Well, then you don't know what you're talking about." To them, Roger Moore's vomitus is akin to Holy Writ.

Not much of anything is said concerning the guilt of the Israeli athletes in Munich. What did they do to deserve being murdered, and in Germany (of all places), less than thirty years after the Holocaust? That's black sarcasm at its best, and irony at its most horrific. Of course Israel's response to that was guided by a Zionism then at its height rather than the self-loathing and abasement that exists among the Israeli elite today.

Interestingly enough though, the guy makes no reference to the chief financier of The Munich Massacre, Abu Mazen, who just so happens to be the present leader of the Palestinian Authority. Keep in mind also, our own elected leaders not merely engage with this old terrorist, they've outright rolled out the red carpet before him to our White House and our Capitol.