Indiana Spielberg and His Jewish Problem

The American Prowler ^ | 12/21/2005 | Yale Kramer

[nickcarraway]

Without the bullwhip and hat, but with his camera, his moviola, and his trusted young sidekick, Tony Kushner, Steven Spielberg has set out to do what no great head of government alone or in concert, no statesman, not even Winston Churchill, not even the United Nations when it was still shiny, hopeful, and had clout, has been able to do since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire -- solve the riddle of the Middle East.

Befitting such an heroic undertaking, Time magazine has put Spielberg on its cover and given him eight pages of copy and pictures with which to hyp...er...celebrate his new movie Munich, which the magazine calls his "Secret Masterpiece."

In the fantasy world of Steven Spielberg, ever since he was a little boy making movies, every hero has had a secret bit of magic up his sleeve with which to win the struggle against evil and this time the magic is his new movie Munich. It is with Munich that he plans to solve the Arab/Israeli problem. How? You'll be surprised.

The movie takes its name from the events that occurred on September 5, 1972, at the Olympic Games held in Munich that year. On that day 11 young Israeli athletes were taken hostage and, after being held for many hours, murdered in cold blood by their captors, a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September, an offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah.

Betrayed by the West German government and the nations represented at the Olympic Games, the outraged Israelis developed a plan to avenge these murders and deter other outrages of this kind. The plan was to send out a number of teams of counterterror assassins to kill those who had anything to do with the Munich massacre or any known acts of terrorism.

Between the two stories -- the massacre story and the revenge story -- there is little to choose. Both are gripping, human, dramatic, full of twists, suspense, and irony. But if you emphasize the massacre story, the sympathy is bound to be for the Israeli athletes and their wives and families. If you emphasize the revenge story the sympathy could easily be with the Arab victims and their families.

IT IS THE LATTER STORY that Spielberg and his pacifist-moralist scriptwriter, Tony Kushner, want to tell in their film. Or rather it is the revenge story that they want to use as the basis for Spielberg's grandiose fairy tale. The movie is only "inspired" by the events of the Olympic massacre in Munich. Not at all like Schindler's List, a serious film about the real people on Schindler's list ageing but still alive and breathing at the end of the movie, Munich is more like Raiders of the Lost Ark, a fantasy peopled by creatures of Spielberg's imagination. Unfortunately, it is a work of the imagination corrupted by Spielberg's moral egotism and grandiosity.

"Would it be fair to say that this movie is, in the end, about the human cost of a quagmire?" the Time interviewer asks Spielberg, meaning not the Iraqi war but the Israeli-Palestinian war. "Yes," Spielberg answers. "And also for me this movie is a prayer for peace. Somewhere inside all this intransigence there has to be a prayer for peace. Because the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence."

Only two more brief quotes from Time's interview will be enough to suggest what Spielberg is up to. "...And there's a project I'm initiating next February that I think might also do some good....What I'm doing is buying 250 video cameras and players and dividing them up, giving 125 of them to Palestinian children, 125 to Israeli kids, so they can make movies about their own lives -- not dramas, just little documentaries about who they are and what they believe in, who their parents are, where they go to school, what they had to eat, what movies they watch, what CDs they listen to -- and then exchange the videos. That's the kind of thing that can be effective...in simply making people understand that there aren't that many differences that divide Israelis from Palestinians -- not as human beings, anyway."

"In the same way," Time magazine suggests, "Everyone in the movie is human, you feel for them all." "Right," Spielberg responds, "I think the thing I'm very proud of is that Tony Kushner and I...did not demonize anyone in the film....They're individuals. They have families...."

As the reader can see, there is no evil in Spielberg's real world -- only in his Indiana Jones world -- thereby transforming it into a world of fantasy. We wonder whether it ever occurred to Spielberg that all those nice SS officers who ran the concentration camps were individuals and had families and played Mozart on the piano when they weren't stringing Jews up on piano wire.

The fact is that Steven Spielberg has become a billionaire ten times over by exploiting his childlike imagination. He has a genius for combining three ingredients in the right proportions: grandiosity, little boy fantasies, and narcissistic self-confidence.

But in this winning recipe there is lacking all the things that would ruin all those Indiana Jones adventures -- complex motivation, judgment, ambivalence, skepticism, and an understanding of how the world really works. Some part of his mind is still 9 or 10 years old. You know how it is when you are that age -- you read Hardy Boys and Tom Swift books with pleasure because in them children seem to be able to solve grown-up problems and they do not see that the world has been simplified for them by the genius of the author.

You can see the childish quality of Spielberg's thinking from his remarks about the movie. What causes the problem is "intransigence" -- not the Jews or the Palestinians but some disembodied force called "intransigence." And if we pray hard enough or give the children video cameras so that they each can see how much alike they are, that they are all individuals with families, then their intransigence will go away.

Spielberg cannot deal with irrational motivation, passionate beliefs, ambivalence, unforgiving rage -- all facts of life commonly found in the Middle East. So he avoids looking at historical fact and turns to social-worker-like solutions. Why, for example, did he not consult with anyone who could have provided for him a historical context? It would have interfered with his ideology -- his need to prove that everybody is the same morally.

THE HISTORICAL FACTS YOU WILL NOT LEARN ABOUT IN SPIELBERG'S MOVIE THAT MOTIVATED GOLDA MEIR'S POLICY OF AGGRESSIVE DETERRENCE

THE MURDER OF ISRAELI athletes was coolly planned in the summer of 1972 at the pleasant cafes on the Via Veneto in Rome by the leaders of Black September. In July they were in a fit of pique at the International Olympic Committee, which they felt had insulted the PLO by not allowing it to participate in the upcoming games in Munich. The leaders, Abu Daoud and Abu Iyad, had been among a handful of sophisticated PLO activists who wanted to continue their terrorist activities without jeopardizing the increasing political stature of Arafat's PLO and Fatah. By creating a fictitious organization -- Black September -- they were able to provide plausible deniability to Arafat. "Who, me? I don't know anything about terrorism." In fact, the leaders of all the Palestinian groups were frequently in contact and assisted each other whenever possible. (The name Black September was taken from the period around September 1971 when the Jordanians, in the service of their own political interests, forced the Palestinian terrorists out of Jordan.)

The Black September leadership had failed in several earlier terror projects and were searching for some dramatic act that would catch the world's attention and put them on the terror map as the Japanese Red Army had done several months earlier in May 1972 when three members of the group had machine-gunned to death 24 Puerto Rican religious pilgrims and wounded 78 other passengers in the Tel Aviv airport. To Daoud and Iyad the Munich Olympics sounded like just the ticket. They formulated the plan to capture and hold as many Israelis hostage as they could and threaten to kill them one by one unless their demand to release 234 of their fedayeen brethren from Israeli prisons was met, even though they knew from previous experience that such a demand was a non-starter for the Israeli government. How they thought such a scenario would play itself out is not clear -- but they knew that by September the world would have heard of Black September.

Without the circle of sophisticated leadership of Black September there would have been no massacre. The media in America and Europe often purvey the foolish notion that acts of terrorism are spontaneous outbursts of an oppressed people like the recent events in the Paris suburbs -- a downtrodden mass of people breaking their bonds. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spielberg, take note.

Abu Iyad took the most important first step by choosing the commander of the group that would execute the Munich terror operation. It was this man, "Issa," small, tense, and wiry, who maintained iron control of the seven other young terrorists and kept their focus until the final denouement. Without him there would have been no possibility of carrying out such a plan. The foot-soldiers, the fedayeen, did not have the sophistication, the language, the adaptability, or the intelligence.

"Issa," a nom de guerre, was in reality Luttif Afif, a Palestinian militant whose mother was Jewish and whose father was a wealthy Christian Arab businessman. In 1958 he had moved to Germany to study engineering, and learned the language. He moved around Europe easily, enjoying a playboy life. At some point he returned to the Middle East, joined Fatah and fought in some battles against Israeli soldiers. By 1972, however, he was in Berlin engaged to be married to a young German woman.

Ironically, Spielberg and Kushner remain in the grip of the naive idea that the reason the Israeli-Palestinian problem still exists is that the two peoples don't understand each other and if only they could see how much alike they were -- that they have the same human qualities -- their intransigencies would diminish and disappear.

"I never like to draw lessons for people," says screenwriter Tony Kushner about the Middle East question. "It's not an essay; it's art." (A self-delusion, at best, as anyone can tell you who has spent six tedious hours listening to the essays and lectures in Angels in America.) "But I think I can safely say the conflict between national security and ethics raised deep questions in terms of working on the film. I was surprised to discover how much the story had to do with nationality vs. family, and questions about home and being in conflict with somebody else over a territory that seems home to both people."

There is an entirely fictional scene in the movie in which Avner, the protagonist, 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. "The only thing that's going to solve this is rational minds, a lot of sitting down and talking until you're blue in the gills," says Spielberg. Without that exchange, "I would 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." In fact he has made that picture over and over -- what are the Indiana Jones films but good guys vs. bad guys? Spielberg's problem is that he cannot allow himself to see the Israelis as good guys as long as they refuse to allow themselves to be victims anymore.

Spielberg doesn't seem to grasp the fact that although the leader of the terrorist murderers, "Issa," was a man who loved his family, was not a Muslim, was not poor, was not deprived, was worldly and sophisticated and understood who and what Jews and Israelis were like, it did not matter at all -- he still ordered the cold-blooded murder of eleven innocent young men who also had families.

Even before the Israeli athletes arrived in Munich, the Israeli government, understanding that their young citizens might be at risk on foreign soil, asked for permission to provide their own security and were turned down. Furthermore, it was part of Germany's policy to have minimal security protecting the athletes and grounds. This was because West Germany and Bavaria wanted to demonstrate to the world that German militarism of old and Nazism were gone forever.

Even after the eleven athletes were captured and two of them were shot to death and their bodies were dumped out of a second story window, there was little or no sympathy or cooperation provided by the Olympic Committee. There was no way that old Avery Brundage, autocrat of the Committee, was going to allow anything to rain on his parade. "The organizers of the Games naturally wanted the Games to resume as soon as possible," the Police Chief of Munich, Manfred Schreiber, said in an interview. "The organizers...want peace and quiet, they want the event to take place unhindered, they want the event to continue without any delays...." The Olympic Committee refused to cooperate with the rescue attempts or acknowledge the danger that the hostages were in. The Israelis were treated like bad sports who were interfering with everybody's fun.

IT SOON BECAME APPARENT that the German officials handling the negotiations with the terrorists were in way over their heads. But when the Israelis petitioned then Chancellor Willy Brandt to allow Israeli commandos, who had experience with Palestinian terrorists, to assist the German police Brandt refused to allow them to take part in the crisis.

Baffled by the unconventional and intransigent attitude of "Issa" and the terrorists, and inexperienced in rescue operations, the West German authorities organized a clumsy and transparent attempt to rescue the nine remaining hostages at a military airfield on the outskirts of Munich which was so incompetently handled that a horrendous fire-fight broke out, resulting in the deaths of all of the hostages as they sat in two helicopters awaiting their rescue. In addition one German policeman and five of the eight terrorists, including "Issa," were killed. The Palestinians took pains to kill all the Israelis, who were bound and gagged -- one group by hand-grenade and one by machine gun fire.

The details of the botched rescue attempt and shootout were never revealed to the press at the time but can be seen in a superb documentary film, One Day in September, based on many hours of interviews with those who participated in the events of that day (click here). An excellent book with the same title (click here) but much more detail, written in association with the documentary but independently by Simon Reeve, a British journalist, appeared in the same year, 1999. In it he tells the shameful story of the German cover-up and the true Israeli response to the Munich Massacre. Spielberg, take note.

The insults of that day -- the arrogant, cold-blooded, murderous behavior of the terrorists; the disregard and indifference of the politically powerful Olympic Committee; the rigid, bungling, incompetent German police -- all of these fed the outrage of Golda Meir and her ministers in the weeks afterward while they were formulating a rational policy to deal with Arab terrorism. The first principle was to depend on their own Israeli resources to protect their citizens because no one else seemed to care.

If what happened on September 5, 1972, wasn't enough to force the policy of retaliation, what happened less than two months later made it a virtual certainty.

On the morning of Sunday, October 29, a Lufthansa Boeing 727 on its way to Frankfurt from Beirut was hijacked by two Palestinian terrorists who demanded that the three Black September terrorists who survived the Munich shootout were to be released immediately. If not they would blow up the plane.

Without even informing the Israeli government as a courtesy, the Germans capitulated and told the hijackers that the three men would be ready to be picked up within an hour and a half. According to Chancellor Willy Brandt: "The passengers and crew were threatened with annihilation unless we released the three Palestinian survivors of the [Munich] massacre. Like the Bavarian government, I then saw no alternative but to yield to this ultimatum and avoid further senseless bloodshed."

In the course of the making of the documentary film and writing of the book One Day in September, it was revealed that the hijacking had been set up between Black September and the German government. The Palestinians had threatened the government that they would launch a wave of bombings and hijackings against Lufthansa unless the three Munich terrorist survivors were released. The "hijacking," according to sources in Germany, Israel, and Palestine, was a compromise agreed to by senior officials in the German government. "Yes, I think it's probably true," said Ulrich Wegener, who was an eyewitness to the events at the time and who later became founder of the elite GSG-9 West German counterterrorist unit after the Olympics. "The German government thought they could negotiate with the terrorists and could convince them that they would give them money and something else to get rid of them....But of course it was the wrong way, no question, because when one case is solved in this way other cases will come."

GOLDA'S LAST STRAW

SIMON REEVE, AUTHOR of One Day in September, states that "Regardless of whether the release of the three Munich fedayeen was a 'put-up job,' in the words of one Israeli official, there was astonishment and fury in Tel Aviv when news came through of their release." Golda Meir said she "was literally physically sickened....I think that there is not one single terrorist held in a prison anywhere in the world. Everyone gives in. We're the only ones who do not."

According to Reeve, it was the release of the terrorists that was, for Meir, the last straw. "Officials had already pleaded with her to authorize the establishment of an undercover unit to track down and assassinate those blamed for the Munich massacre. Any doubts she might have had about responding violently were quashed by the release of the three murderous conspirators." It was then that Meir gave the command to General Aharon Yariv and Zvi Zamir, head of the Mossad, to organize the undercover assassin team.

You will see none of this in Steven Spielberg's childlike retelling of the Munich massacre story. It would not fit in with his revision to show the Israelis' patience, forbearance, and cooperativeness, and the ruthlessness, indifference, and contempt shown to the Israelis by the terrorists, the Germans, and the Olympic Committee, without which there might not have been any need for retaliation.

The full truth about the Israeli assassination teams will probably never be known since the basis of all such operations is complete deniability, however implausible these denials may be. But alongside Simon Reeve's excellent book, a book that has added many further details since 1984 is Vengeance, by George Jonas, reissued in 2005 with new material (click here). It is the story of "Avner," a nom de guerre for an Israeli Mossad agent who ran one of the assassination teams. Israeli officials have disavowed this book and its story from the beginning -- as one would expect. Others who have researched the matter believe that his story is mostly true.

While Munich is based Jonas's book with changes required by Spielberg's ideology, if you want to see a dramatic movie based more closely on the Jonas book try Sword of Gideon (click here. It is not as slick and stylish as a Spielberg film, with all the expensive production values he can command, it is the straight story of the book.

Spielberg's and Kushner's basic corruption of the story centers around the change in Avner's feelings about the aims of the team's mission. In the movie Spielberg contrives to throw Avner into a moral funk from which he cannot escape because he cannot see any moral difference between the act of murdering 11 innocent young men and the act of killing the murderers in a military action for the protection of other Israelis from future terrorist attacks. The Spielberg Avner shrinks from the mission on moral grounds.

The real Avner writes in the new edition of Vengeance in May 2005 (Spielberg, take note):

The fact is, our conceptions of morality have little power over terrorists. After all, the terrorists who killed the Israeli athletes in Munich (just like the terrorists who killed the thousands in the World Trade Center) regarded their actions as being profoundly moral -- holy, even.... The fact is that there are real differences between us and the terrorists. When terrorists attack, they shed blood indiscriminately. Indeed, killing innocent people is often the point of what they are doing -- either to send a message to those in power or to terrify the population at large....In stark contrast, when Israel exacts revenge for terrorist attacks -- whether by sending out a team like mine after Munich or by launching an air-to-ground missile in the occupied territories after a car bombing -- she aims to do it surgically, targeting only those responsible for the incident that triggered the mission....

"So it is that if I had to do it all over again, I would make the same choice I made when Golda Meir approached me more than thirty years ago. At the time -- a time long before the Camp David Accords, a time long before any meaningful "peace process," a time when the entire Arab world (including Egypt and Jordan) was calling daily for the destruction of the Jewish state and Israel's continued existence was very much an open question -- responding in kind to the violence that had been visited on us was the only course that made sense.

The question remains, is Munich Spielberg's "Secret Masterpiece" as Time magazine proclaims?

Spielberg's gift -- his ability to stay in touch with the Peter Pan inside his head -- has earned him many billions of dollars. It has made him king of the world of kids, of the world of play and players, the king of make-believe. In the Neverland of Hollywood he has the power to realize any filmic wish he desires.

Munich might have been a "Secret Masterpiece" if he had allowed himself to tell the complex truth about the Jews and the Palestinians. Instead he turned it into another Indiana Jones. A serious work of art emerges from its characters and their conflicts. It is from these conflicts that plot develops. The plot of Schindler's List emerges from Schindler's character. The reverse is true in Munich. The character does not come from a real person but from the requirements of the plot, just like Indy's character is invented to suit the requirements of the plot.

I'd advise you to save your money for Indiana Jones Part 4, coming out next year. That's something Spielberg really knows something about.

Yale Kramer is a psychiatrist and essayist for Horsefeathers, the blog that fights folly, ignorance, and cant.

[veronica]

What a depressing article. Yet important to read. I have long had a debate going with my brother, who thinks Spielberg is a crappy director, who makes mushy, unimportant films. I have to concede now that he was right all along. But from the sounds of it, this is a film only a Jew-hater could make, which goes beyond mush.

The notion of the strong Jew fighting back terrifies some Jews, for reasons I will never understand. In their world Jews must always be conciliatory, acquiescent, and wracked with guilt. But that mindset was never part of my Jewish education.

Kushner is clearly the force behind this farce, but Spielberg hired him. Any goodwill Spielberg garnered after Schindler's List he has now forfeited. I'll say it again, a few Jews being saved by a Gentile apparently get Spielberg's empathy, but a nation of Jews refusing to be the victims of the new Nazis appalls him, as he sits in his vast estate in Pacific Palisades, or wherever he's hunkered down in his fantasy world these days.

I guess I need to see this film, to talk about it in a more informed manner, but I don't relish it. I doubt I'll be able to sit through it, if Spielberg's comments in Time are a true indication of what animated him in the making of the film.

[william clark]

I think the best response to Spielberg's tunnelvision is for people to take the money they might spend on a ticket to "Munich" and instead buy the DVD of "One Day in September" and/or "21 Hours at Munich," both of which came out this week.

[montag813]

Time magazine suggests, "Everyone in the movie is human, you feel for them all."

Thank you Steven for making people more sympathetic to vicious terrorists who rip families apart.

Spielberg is a piece of shit.

[70times7]

The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence

OH PUH-LEEEEZZZZ! Open your eyes Spielberg!

The Palestinians, particularly Arafat, repeatedly offered concessions in public yet repeatedly called for Israel’s' destruction in the Arab world. This is the same Arab world that offered Palestine NOTHING but support for terror against Israel and any of Israel’s allies. At the same time the two greatest contributors of funds for the building of Palestinian infrastructure and for relief were the US and Israel. These funds were diverted to keep Arafat and others rich and comfy and the Palestinian people destitute and angry at Israel. Now Israel has given more land while Iran again calls for their destruction. And we are to pay money to Spielberg and hollyweird to be lied to? Any Palestinian grieving that resulted from the murders in Munich was brought about by Palestinians. Sell your scheiße elsewhere Spielberg.

[dennisw]

 

 

o Jurassic Park #1
o Minority Report
o Catch Me if You Can

Are the only Spielberg productions I have seen and wanted to see. They were good movies
I won't be seeing "Munich" unless I catch a few minutes of it on TV sometime in the future

____________________________________________

 

Steven Spielberg (I)

 

More photos Add/change photo

Date of birth (location) 18 December 1946 Cincinnati, Ohio, USA   Mini biography Without a doubt one of the most influential film personalities in the... (show more)   Sometimes Credited As: Steve Spielberg Steven Spielrock

Filmography as: Producer, Director, Miscellaneous Crew, Writer, Actor, Editor, Second Unit Director or Assistant Director, Cinematographer, Visual Effects, Himself, Archive Footage, Notable TV Guest Appearances

Producer - filmography
(In Production) (2000s) (1990s) (1980s) (1970s)

1. "The Pacific War" (2006) (mini) TV Series (announced) (executive producer)
2. When Worlds Collide (2006) (announced) (producer)
3. Untitled Ukrainian Holocaust Project (2007) (announced) (executive producer)
4. Untitled Transformers Film (2007) (pre-production) (executive producer)
5. Untitled Steven Spielberg/Abraham Lincoln Project (2007) (pre-production) (producer)
6. Jurassic Park IV (2006) (pre-production) (executive producer)
7. The New Girl (2005) (pre-production) (executive producer)
8. Flags of Our Fathers (2006) (post-production) (producer)
9. Monster House (2006) (post-production) (executive producer)
10. The Talisman (2005) (released) (executive producer)
    
    
11. Munich (2005) (producer)
12. Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) (producer)
13. The Legend of Zorro (2005) (executive producer)
14. "Into the West" (2005) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)
15. Dan Finnerty & the Dan Band: I Am Woman (2005) (TV) (executive producer)
16. The Terminal (2004) (producer)
17. Voices from the List (2004) (V) (executive producer)
18. Burma Bridge Busters (2003) (TV) (executive producer)
19. Catch Me If You Can (2002) (producer)
20. "Taken" (2002/I) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)
    ... aka Steven Spielberg Presents Taken (USA: complete title)
21. Men in Black II (2002) (executive producer)
    ... aka MIB 2 (USA: promotional abbreviation)
    ... aka MIIB (USA: promotional abbreviation)
22. Price for Peace (2002) (executive producer)
23. "Broken Silence" (2002) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)
24. We Stand Alone Together (2001) (TV) (executive producer)
    ... aka We Stand Alone Together: The Men of Easy Company (Europe: English title: DVD title)
25. "Band of Brothers" (2001) (mini) TV Series (executive producer)
26. Jurassic Park III (2001) (executive producer)
    ... aka JP3 (USA: promotional abbreviation)
27. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001) (producer)
    ... aka A.I. Artificial Intelligence (USA: poster title)
28. Evolution (2001) (executive producer) (uncredited)
29. Shrek (2001) (executive producer) (uncredited)
30. Semper Fi (2001) (TV) (executive producer)
31. Shooting War (2000) (TV) (executive producer)
    ... aka Shooting War: World War II Cameramen (USA: video title)
32. A Holocaust szemei (2000) (executive producer)
    ... aka Eyes of the Holocaust (International: English title) (USA)
    
    
33. Wakko's Wish (1999) (V) (executive producer) (uncredited)
    ... aka Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs: Wakko's Wish (USA: complete title)
34. The Haunting (1999) (executive producer) (uncredited)
    ... aka Maldición, La (USA: Spanish title)
35. The Last Days (1998) (executive producer)
36. Saving Private Ryan (1998) (producer)
37. The Mask of Zorro (1998) (executive producer)
38. Deep Impact (1998) (executive producer)
39. "Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain" (1998) TV Series (executive producer)
40. "Toonsylvania" (1998) TV Series (executive producer)
    ... aka Steven Spielberg Presents Toonsylvania
41. Amistad (1997) (producer)
42. Men in Black (1997) (executive producer)
    ... aka MIB (USA: promotional abbreviation)
43. The Lost Children of Berlin (1997) (executive producer)
44. "High Incident" (1996) TV Series (executive producer) (1996-1997)
45. Twister (1996) (executive producer)
46. Survivors of the Holocaust (1996) (TV) (executive producer)
47. The Best of Roger Rabbit (1996) (V) (executive producer)
    ... aka Disney and Steven Spielberg present The Best of Roger Rabbit (USA: complete title)
48. Balto (1995) (executive producer)
49. "Freakazoid!" (1995) TV Series (executive producer)
50. "Pinky and the Brain" (1995) TV Series (executive producer)
51. Tiny Toon Adventures: Night Ghoulery (1995) (TV) (executive producer)
52. Casper (1995) (executive producer)
53. A Pinky & the Brain Christmas Special (1995) (TV) (executive producer)
54. "ER" (1994) TV Series (executive producer) (1994)
55. The Flintstones (1994) (executive producer) (as Steven Spielrock)
56. I'm Mad (1994) (executive producer)
57. Tiny Toon Adventures: Spring Break Special (1994) (TV) (executive producer)
58. Tiny Toons Spring Break (1994) (TV) (executive producer)
59. Yakko's World: An Animaniacs Singalong (1994) (V) (executive producer)
60. Schindler's List (1993) (producer)
61. We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993) (executive producer)
62. "SeaQuest DSV" (1993) TV Series (executive producer)
    ... aka SeaQuest 2032 (USA: new title)
63. "Animaniacs" (1993) TV Series (executive producer)
    ... aka Animaniacs (UK)
    ... aka Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs (USA: complete title)
64. Class of '61 (1993) (TV) (executive producer)
65. Trail Mix-Up (1993) (executive producer)
66. SeaQuest DSV (1993) (TV) (executive producer)
67. It's a Wonderful Tiny Toons Christmas Special (1992) (TV) (executive producer)
68. "Family Dog" (1992) TV Series (executive producer)
69. "The Plucky Duck Show" (1992) TV Series (executive producer)
70. Tiny Toon Adventures: How I Spent My Vacation (1992) (V) (executive producer)
71. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991) (producer)
72. Cape Fear (1991) (executive producer) (uncredited)
73. A Wish for Wings That Work (1991) (TV) (executive producer)
74. "Tiny Toon Adventures" (1990) TV Series (executive producer)
    ... aka Steven Spielberg Presents... Tiny Toon Adventures (USA)
75. Arachnophobia (1990) (executive producer)
76. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) (executive producer)
77. Roller Coaster Rabbit (1990) (executive producer)
78. Back to the Future Part III (1990) (executive producer)
79. Yume (1990) (executive producer: international version)
    ... aka Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
    ... aka Dreams
    ... aka I Saw a Dream Like This
    ... aka Konna yume wo mita
    ... aka Such Dreams I Have Dreamed (Japan: English title)
80. Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) (executive producer)
    
    
81. Always (1989) (producer)
82. Back to the Future Part II (1989) (executive producer)
83. Dad (1989) (executive producer)
84. Tummy Trouble (1989) (executive producer)
85. The Land Before Time (1988) (executive producer)
86. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) (executive producer)
87. *batteries not included (1987) (executive producer)
88. Empire of the Sun (1987) (producer)
89. Three O'Clock High (1987) (executive producer) (uncredited)
90. Innerspace (1987) (executive producer)
91. Harry and the Hendersons (1987) (executive producer) (uncredited)
    ... aka Bigfoot and the Hendersons (UK)
92. An American Tail (1986) (executive producer)
93. The Money Pit (1986) (executive producer)
94. The Color Purple (1985) (producer)
95. Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) (executive producer)
    ... aka Pyramid of Fear
96. "Amazing Stories" (1985) TV Series (executive producer)
    ... aka Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories (USA: complete title)
97. Back to the Future (1985) (executive producer)
98. The Goonies (1985) (executive producer)
99. Fandango (1985) (executive producer) (uncredited)
100. Gremlins (1984) (executive producer)
101. Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983) (producer)
102. Poltergeist (1982) (producer)
103. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) (producer)
     ... aka E.T. (USA: short title)
     ... aka E.T. the Extra- Terrestrial: The 20th Anniversary (USA: longer version)
104. Continental Divide (1981) (executive producer)
105. Used Cars (1980) (executive producer)
     
     
106. I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978) (executive producer)

[brazzaville]

Good morning.

I believe it was Golda Meir who said that there would only be peace in the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate the Israelis.

I despair of that happening when I see photos of Palestinian children in their toy suicide vests.

Michael Frazier

[dervish]

You know what other piece of history you will never see --

"Abu Mazen [otherwise known as Mahmoud Abbas, current PM of Palestinians] headed some of the organization's most sensitive departments in the 1960s and '70s; it would have been remarkable if he was not involved in violence. Indeed, if we are to believe the autobiography of former PLO official Muhammad Daoud Oddeh published in France in 1999, Abu Mazen was involved in the hostage takeover at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, which led to the death of 11 Israeli athletes.

Oddeh, known as Abu Daoud, wrote that he was the mastermind of Munich, which was carried out by the so-called Black September organization. He recalled that the plan was concocted in Rome at a meeting he held with senior PLO official Salah Khalaf, better known as Abu Iyad, and another colleague. Soon after, Abu Daoud began planning the operation. The only people he dealt with on the matter were Abu Iyad and Abu Mazen, who, Abu Iyad said, was to secure the funding."

http://www.slate.com/id/2085993/

[Sans-Culotte]

I also remember Sword of Gideon as being clear that the Palestinian terrorists were terrorist scum. There was a scene in which the leader of the Israeli squad goes to the hospital, to make certain that one of the Palis was in fact dead, and sees the terrorist's wife and kids waiting for word, and he gets all mushy, like they are "normal" people too. That scene just made me angrier at the terrorists, like they kiss the wife goodbye, and go off to "work", blowing people up.

I remember a good scene in which they've rigged a car to explode, but they have to keep taking their finger off the button for fear of blowing up an innocent. One of the Israelis remarks that the Palestinians set their bombs with no regard for who else might get killed.

I do not remember any innocents being killed by the Israelis in Sword of Gideon. I do remember that they took out a female assassin who had been hired by the Palis to take them out, but I would hardly call her an innocent.

[dervish]

Golda Meir made a terrible error in the Yom Kippur War which almost cost Israel its life.

To placate the international community she waited until Israel was attacked instead of pre-emptively striking before the inevitable attack took place.

"Despite the army's urgent insistence, the cabinet remained unwilling. In her autobiography, Golda Meir admits that she and her advisors had intelligence reports of an impending attack. Nevertheless, they refrained from calling up the reserves so that the world would see that Israel was not an aggressor. Allowing herself to be attacked would clearly demonstrate Israel's peaceful intent to the Americans and encourage them to support her with arms."

http://www.sichosinenglish.org/books/eyes-upon-the-land/17.htm

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

Three comments.

1. This is an absolutely fantastic article. This guy totally "gets it" and every word of it rings true.

2. I never liked Speilberg when it seems like the rest of the world couldn't get enough of him. Many of his films I never saw (for example never saw Indiana Jones in it's entirety, ditto for ET) and those of his films I did see I didn't like very much. The article's explanation of Spielberg's "inner Peter Pan" or "Hardy Boys" view of the world resonates with me as probably one reason I never cared for his films (except maybe Private Ryan).

3. What he says about Speilberg in particuar, could just as easily be said about liberals and liberalism in general. They are all in touch with their inner Peter Pan and have a childlike view of the world in which everyone can be just made to "get along" if they could only receive the wisdom that liberals seem to have a monopoly on receiving and dispensing. Liberalism is truly a mental disorder and this article would indicate that Spielberg has a particularly virulent and contagious form of it!

Great article thanks for posting it!

[lowbridge]

bump

[Kenny Bunk]

It wasn't grammar that got me in hot water, it was those who couldn't read through my messy grammar thinking I am a HATER of religion, rather than one who see's religion as insignificant. . . . a major difference.

Pinto, it is the sender's job to make the transmission intelligible to the receiver. Your disdain for "grammar," might quite reasonably be construed as a device making anything you may care to say something you might either affirm or deny, as later developments strike your fancy.

Of course, if anyone thinks they might disagree with you, you can quite rightly claim they did not understand what you have to say.

Who could? The truth of the matter is that neither religion nor grammar are insignificant.

[Madison Moose]

My favorite qoute attributed to her was from when she was speaking to Anwar Sadat.
She said "We can forgive you for killing our sons, but we can never forgive you for making us kill yours."

[winner3000]

Some things never change. The Germans are still negotiating with terrorists. In exchange of one German civilian being released they released one terrorist. The cravenness is incredible.

[rcocean]

I have to give Spielberg credit for his love of the Jewish people - for example, when he visited Cuba and Castro he also made a visit to Jewish Cubans and the local Holocaust Museum:

Per the UPI:

"Spielberg spent four days in Cuba, launching a showcase of eight of his movies, meeting with Cuban filmmakers and paying visits to Havana's largest synagogue and a memorial to Holocaust victims at the city's Jewish cemetery. The Oscar-winning director of "Saving Private Ryan" and "Schindler's List" also dined with Fidel Castro, spending about eight hours with the Cuban leader discussing art, politics and history. During his trip, Spielberg made headlines by calling for an end to the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, saying it was time to bury old grudges from the Cold War and expand interactions between Americans and Cubans."

[lowbridge]

I do not remember any innocents being killed by the Israelis in Sword of Gideon.

Sword of Gideon/Munich focuses on only ONE team of Israeli assasins. In fact, the Israelis had more than one team spread throughout Europe.

One of those teams accidentally mistook a waiter in Switzerland for a leading terrorist. They shot him to death right in front of his pregnant wife. IIRC, the Israelis wound up paying the now widowed woman 5 million dollars.

The "Munich" team, heard about the waiters murder on the news, surprised that they werent the only Israeli assasination squad.

____________________________________

On July 21, 1973, the Israeli assassination team shot and killed an innocent man closely resembling Salameh. Earlier that day the surveillance team followed the individual they believed to be Salameh to a local public swimming pool. Soon after, he exited with an obviously pregnant woman. At approximately 1400 hours, the assassination team arrived in-country and proceeded to the Oppland Tourist Hotel where they registered under alias names. The surveillance team reported that they observed the assumed Salameh enter a movie theater with the same pregnant woman at approximately 2000 hours. The action team departed the hotel and deployed to intercept the target after he left the theater. The target and female companion exited the movie at approximately 2235 hours and took a bus to an area just a "short walk" from their flat. As they began their walk from the bus stop to the flat, two members of the action team exited a Mazda and began firing into the man believed to be Salameh with Baretta .22 caliber pistols. The pregnant woman crouched over the dying man, screaming as the team escaped from the scene. Individuals in the neighborhood notified the police, who arrived at the scene within the next few minutes. The team dropped the Mazda at a predesignated point and transferred to a Peugeot rented from a Scandinavian rental company to transport them out of Lillehammer.7

The authorities identified the dead man as Ahmed Bouchiki, a Moroccan, working as a waiter in Lillehammer. The pregnant woman was later identified as Bouchiki's wife. The police observed the Peugeot with the assassination team on a road leading away from Lillehammer after receiving reports of the shooting. Unfortunately, Dan Arbel and Marrianne Gladnikoff used poor operational tradecraft and utilized the Peugeot a second time to travel to the airport 24 hours later. Airport personnel observed the vehicle and reported it to the police. The police located the vehicle and immediately arrested both occupants.

During the police interrogation, Gladnikoff provided the police a safe house address as her residence. She also broke down and reported that she was working for the Government of Israel. Arbel had an unlisted phone number in his possession which lead the police to Yigal Zigal, originally believed to be an employee of El Al Airlines. Following Gladnikoff's lead, the police responded to the safe house address and discovered Yigal Zigal, Zwi Steinberg and Michael Dorf. Zigal claimed to be an Israeli Security Officer assigned to the Israeli embassy. He offered the police official Israeli credentials at the time of his arrest, ordered the police to leave the apartment, and attempted to claim diplomatic immunity. The police disregarded the credentials and took Zigal, Dorf, and Steinberg into custody. The police also discovered a detailed Mossad cable of instructions in Dorf's possession identifying the Mossad and specific evacuation procedures. This cable specifically ordered the unit not to carry any potentially compromising material with them during the course of the operation. 8 Steinberg also had two keys with a blue label attached identifying an apartment in Paris. After official notification, the French police responded to the address identified on the key labels. The French located the apartment and identified it as another Israeli safe house. Within that apartment were more keys and labels exposing almost every safe house in Paris. The French authorities recovered other incriminating evidence that allegedly linked the Israeli Government with other assassinations of PLO terrorists. A public trial of the six arrested Israeli team members exposed the details of the operation. Five team members were convicted for killing the waiter; Michael Dorf was acquitted. 9 Dan Raviv, co-author of Every Spy a Prince, reported that although the five officers were sentenced from two to five and one-half years in prison, all five were released by the Norwegians in less than twenty-two months.

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/calahan.htm

[wickedpinto]

I know you are right. It isn't necessarily disdain, it's laziness. But I get your point, and you're right.

[Sans-Culotte]

Thanks for the info. I assumed Sword of Gideon had merely cut that little faux pas from the story, so it is good to know they didn't.

It's obvious I'm gonna have to read that account that everybody at FR mentions.