Posted on 12/28/2005 10:27:44 AM PST by SquirrelKing
SPOILERS BELOW
A major controversy has emerged as to whether Steven Spielberg’s Munich is anti-Israel - a kind of pacifistic rejection of the ‘cycle of violence,’ a simplistic cri de coeur about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by a West LA liberal. Many conservative critics are rejecting the film on this basis - while left-leaning film critics are smugly embracing the film, largely for the same reasons.
All of these people apparently saw a different film than I did.
Steven Spielberg’s new terror-themed thriller Munich may be many things, but it’s not Woodstock, Coming Home or Born on the Fourth of July - as some seem intent on portraying it. It is astonishing to me how Spielberg’s film - which is a gripping, classically-styled thriller that indulges in only a modest amount of pacifistic hand-wringing - is being turned by the media into, well, Syriana. It isn’t that - not by a long shot. Munich spends about 4/5 of its time portraying the Israeli Mossad and its mission of retribution against Black September in a heroic, serious and decidedly glamorous light. The film’s basic premise for the first 2 1/2 hours is a familiar one: war is hell. Unfortunately Munich dissipates its dramatic energies in a tedious, dialogue-rich coda that does dwell lugubriously on the ‘cycle of violence’ - but I think this aspect of the film is being strongly over-emphasized by critics on both the Left and Right.
As regular LIBERTAS readers know, Spielberg’s Munich has been on our radar for some time. In a season of left-leaning political films (Good Night & Good Luck, Syriana, Jarhead) dealing - albeit indirectly - with the War on Terror and related concerns, Munich would seem to have been Hollywood’s crown jewel, the definitive liberal statement by a master filmmaker on the day’s most challenging and controversial subject.
Why so definitive? The reason is simple: Munich is self-evidently a ‘personal’ film, in ways that the season’s other political films are not. People like Stephen Gaghan, George Clooney or Sam Mendes may be very interested in the War on Terror as dramatic material, but I’m not aware that the topic challenges their identity as the subject obviously challenges Spielberg - who is not only America’s most prominent Jew, but also its most visible chronicler of the Holocaust. This personal need Spielberg felt (and he has discussed this publicly) to make a ’statement’ on the current war is therefore of a completely different order than, say, Michael Moore’s efforts of last year - or Oliver Stone’s next year when he releases his World Trade Center. Steven Spielberg may be many things, but one of them is not a flamethrowing provocateur; nor is he a young director still struggling to establish his ‘importance’ in the industry. On the contrary, Spielberg is as well-established in the Hollywood firmament as Alfred Hitchcock or Cecil B. DeMille, and one senses he was only dragged to this unpleasant material kicking and screaming.
For this reason I went into Munich willing to cut Spielberg a lot more slack than I normally would, given the current left-leaning climate in Hollywood. And I had no desire to lump him in with the hacks presently taking swipes at this subject matter. All I asked or hoped for, really, was that Spielberg would make a reasonably balanced film on the subject.
He did that, and much more so. In fact, for the first 4/5 of Munich (which clocks-in at a hefty 164 minutes), I actually thought I was watching a masterpiece. This will shock many of you who’ve been reading the coverage on this film here - and frankly it was quite a surprise to me. Suffice it to say that media coverage about Munich - from both the Left and Right - has been both misleading and itself simplistic. I’ll have more to say about that below …
First, though, let’s take a close look at the film itself. The first thing to say about Munich is that it’s a thriller. However much co-screenwriter Tony Kushner may have wanted to pull the film toward being a chamber drama, Munich is unreservedly an action thriller in the Hitchcockian vein - although it owes a certain debt to war thrillers like Where Eagles Dare.
The film begins with a tense, visceral re-creation of the original Black September raid at the 1972 Munich Olympics that culminated in the murder of 11 Israeli athletes. Adults of a certain age will remember this event as the ‘kick-off’ event in the modern history of terrorism - in large part due its having been staged for the media. And, appropriately, Spielberg meditates on this theme throughout the film. When the Israeli Mossad team led by Avner (Eric Bana) begins its deadly work against Black September, its strikes are similarly calculated for theatrical effect; for example, the team prefers to use bombs rather than pistols.
Spielberg takes us about halfway through those original Black September murders, then doles the rest out by way of flashbacks at strategic points during the film - points when the resolve or morale of the Mossad team members is at its lowest. I’d like to dwell on this point for a moment, because I think it’s vital to understanding what Spielberg is doing here with this film.
What is so fascinating about Munich is the way Spielberg actually dramatizes the way people lose their memory of terrorist attacks. At various stages in the Mossad team’s odyssey of retribution against Black September, Spielberg inserts scenes from the original Munich attack in order to ‘remind’ the team members - but really to remind the audience - of why the retribution is occurring. At no point in Munich does Spielberg want the audience to forget why the Mossad team was sent on its mission in the first place: innocent civilians were butchered. And the murder of the Israeli athletes is not presented in Rashomon-like fashion - as an event ‘open to interpretation.’ It’s presented as what it actually was: the brutal, primal scene of violence around which modern strategies of counter-terrorism have been orchestrated.
Do I even need to mention that four years removed from the September 11th attacks, this kind of recollective, ‘anamnetic’ exercise in historical memory is more important now than ever? With each passing day, Americans seem to be forgetting the Semptember 11th attacks and the raw horror that accompanied them. Spielberg’s Munich allows no such complacency - it forces such bitter memories back on us.
After the initial terrorist attack, Israel forms its retaliatory strike team. This is done in the usual way with such films: we learn about each team member - his skills, quirks, etc. This is a good point to start talking about the cast - it’s excellent, possibly the best Spielberg’s had in years. Eric Bana’s Avner is tough, sinewy, masculine, humane. There is a lot of dialogue in Munich; none of it, in my opinion, communicates as much as Bana communicates with his eyes, through which one catches variations of anger, longing, resolve, confusion, resignation. His performance in this film is absolutely vital; if his character fails, the whole film fails.
Among Bana’s team members my favorite is certainly Steve, a tough-as-nails South African killer played by Daniel Craig - the next James Bond, incidentally. In Munich Craig plays a killing machine - essentialy the ‘id’ to Bana’s ego. Craig - the team’s designated ass-kicker - shoots first and asks questions later, and he gets some of the best scenes in the film.
There’s a great moment midway through the film where Craig gets in the face of a PLO terrorist with whom he and the Mossad team must share a safe-house. He and the PLO guy spar over which radio station to listen to; they finally agree, but you sense the scrawny PLO guy never stood a chance. Craig is the Colonel Killgore (Apocalypse Now) of Munich - the implacable, cool Israeli who is simply not going to let his country down, period. Somewhere in the back of our minds, we all know rough hombres like this still exist - nail-chewing guys with chest hair. They guard Israel, and also America. And we’re all safer as a result.
This is a good place to talk about tone. Reviewers on both the cultural Left and Right are, I think, completely missing the tone of this film. Again, you’d think from reading some of the reviews that Munich was Fahrenheit 9/11. It isn’t. While it’s possible to cherry-pick certain lines of dialogue to make the film fit some Hollywood pipe-dream of pacifism (a lot of reviewers are doing this), Spielberg seems to be communicating something different through the style, psychology and tone of the story.
In part it’s the sunglasses, in part it’s their fluency in foreign tongues, and those over-tight jeans from the 1970’s, or perhaps it’s the studied swagger and sophistication these guys bring to their work, but Spielberg makes this Mossad team out to be the ablest, savviest group of killers assembled on-screen in some time - a kind of anti-terror Magnificent Seven. This is the obvious point that Munich’s critics - and even its supporters - are missing. There is an obvious attempt by Spielberg here to glamorize the Israelis and their cause in a way that is striking and unprecedented. Bana and Craig’s characters in particular come across as tough, macho, principled - and they have no equivalent on the Palestinian side.
And this is where I differ with my conservative friends who feel that Munich suggests a ‘moral equivalency’ between Israel and the PLO terrorists. I understand from what elements of the film one might derive that opinion (more on that below), but it’s still absurd to suggest this is Spielberg’s view. The Israelis are uniformly portrayed as thoughtful, humane, but also resolute. After watching Munich, I almost wanted to sign-up for the Mossad, myself - or at least buy some new sunglasses. It’s no coincidence Spielberg cast Hector from Troy (Bana) and the next James Bond (Craig) as his Mossad agents - he wants this team to look ballsy, thoughtful and sympathetic all the way through. And they do.
For this reason alone, don’t expect this film to play well in the Islamic Middle East - if it’s allowed to play at all …
Now, as Avner’s team methodically picks-off one Black September terrorist after another - and this goes on for two straight hours - it’s true that team members pause to reflect on the legitimacy of their actions. But frankly, this moral reflection rarely goes beyond what one sees in a war film like, say, The Guns of Navarrone. And the team’s moral qualms really only serve to humanize them, and further fan the sympathies of the audience toward their cause. We otherwise watch these guys kill terrorists for two straight hours. And am I allowed to say … that I found the experience a little cathartic? And am I supposed to believe that Spielberg didn’t? Not even a little?
Let’s talk about this second act of the film, which seems to be the most controversial. Here Avner’s team conducts a series of assasinations and raids on PLO terrorists and their front-men. It is extremely important to point out here that none of the terrorists are depicted with the same seriousness or moral complexity as the Israelis. In fact, none of them even has so much as a character-arc. Indeed, I dare say that Spielberg hardly seems interested in the PLO’s ‘cause’ at all. Instead PLO henchmen are portrayed as vapid automata - gifted only in pulling a trigger - or as pampered, narcissistic pseudo-celebrities.
In true Hitchcockian form, Spielberg portrays the terrorists as hiding - cynically - behind elaborate fronts. There’s the litterateur who’s recently translated The Arabian Nights into Italian. There’s the PLO front man (Mahmoud Hamshari) living in a ritzy apartment with a French wife and a daughter taking piano lessons (!). [In one hilarious moment, he’s reminded by his wife that he needs to denounce violence - whenever he’s talking to the press, that is.] There’s Black September heavyweight Ali Hassan Salameh, living like a pampered rock star in London - he looks so guilty, the audience in my theater burst out laughing when he first came on screen. His expensive flat looks like something out of Miami Beach.
Spielberg depicts these men as unrelentingly cynical, violent, decadent. No morality adheres to their cause. Not for a second do we root for them. But they’re depicted as having the media on their side, and friends in all the right places. For example, at one point the Black September terrorists are brought before TV cameras in Libya, free and smiling like jackals. The media loves them, treating them like rock stars. No one bothers to ask them a hard, serious question. Instead they’re allowed to preen like Pamela Anderson.
In another early scene, this one really delightful, Avner visits some German Marxists holding a pot party. Avner squeezes vital information out of them, while listening to his ex-girlfriend babble on about Marxist dialectics and Herbert Marcuse. It’s a hilarious moment in which Spielberg captures the vacuous infatuation of Leftists with the PLO cause, and how the PLO exploit their own decadent glamor to hide in plain sight.
And there’s another such scene, midway through the film, in which Avner confronts a PLO terrorist working under the protection of the KGB. The terrorist opens-up to Avner, thinking he’s just another German Leftist. The terrorist says he doesn’t given a damn about European Leftists, although he’s happy to accept their support. He confesses that he wants a Palestinian homeland, but he also admits that the only reason the Arabs support the PLO is due to their hatred of Israel. And he fully expects the Arab nations to rise up and destroy the Jewish state.
It’s a striking scene - not the sort of thing one would expect Spielberg to put in the film, if his intent was anti-Israel. One gets the sense in these moments of what the Mossad was up against in hunting down Black September - a dizzying maze of false fronts and cynical alliances. Again, in watching how Spielberg depicts the various PLO honchos, I was reminded of the decadent villains in Hitchcock’s films. Think of the urbane Herbert Marshall playing the villain in Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent; on the outside he runs a respected European ‘peace’ party, on the inside he’s a Nazi sympathizer. Or think of Otto Kruger in Saboteur; on the outside he’s a respected businessman, on the inside he’s a Nazi organizer …
It’s also important to point out what Spielberg does not include in this second-act run of assasinations. It is widely believed that the actual Mossad team did kill at least one innocent civilian, a waiter. I was waiting for such a moment in Munich - that gut-wrenching scene in which it dawns on everyone that the wrong guy got killed. The moment never comes. Instead, an entire (again, Hitchcockian) suspense sequence is built around the Mossad team going out of its way to avoid killing an innocent girl. The PLO terrorists in this film, by contrast, never hesitate to kill when given the opportunity.
Spielberg even delves into the vanity and moral equivocation of the French in Munich, by way of a French family of black-marketeers who sell both the Mossad and Black September vital intelligence leads. Actor Mathieu Amalric does a great job here playing Avner’s oily French go-between, Louis. He reminded me a lot of a young Roman Polanski. Michael Lonsdale, perhaps channeling his role as Drax from Moonraker, does a nice job playing Louis’ father - a refined, equivocal French black marketeer. Lonsdale savors the subtleties of French cheese, and the cut of cornish hen, while dispensing ‘wisdom’ to Eric Bana on the untrustworthyness of governments - whether the Russians, the Americans, the Israelis, the Arabs, whomever.
I think I enjoyed this interaction between Avner, Louis and his father most of all in the film. One senses here what a morally slippery world Avner has entered - a European world of smoke and funhouse mirrors. Louis will soon betray Avner, and Louis’ father … may or may not betray him, we’re never quite sure. There’s only one, glaring lesson here: avoid French gentry like the plague.
Before going further, let me say this: I’m not suggesting that Spielberg has created a ‘conservative’ film here, or some kind of Israeli Top Gun. But he’s delivered a strikingly sober film on the subject of Islamic terrorism - and I can’t believe it’s what the powers-that-be in Hollywood really wanted from him.
Why do I say this? Because what Hollywood and its celebrity class generally want to tell you is: Bush is Hitler, and the War is a fraud - a play for oil, an excuse to crack down on civil liberties, etc. These are the none-too-subtle messages of Syriana, or the forthcoming V For Vendetta.
Spielberg’s Munich indulges in none of this nonsense. It takes the War on Terror largely for what it is: an ancient struggle over religion and, to a lesser extent, land. There are no conspiring oil companies in Munich, no Halliburton, no ‘chill wind of free speech.’ Spielberg has a raw, real story to tell - and therefore no time for such idiocy.
That raw, real story unfolds in places that American films don’t usually go these days: for example, to the dark, sodium-lit alleyways of Athens, Rome and Beirut where terrorists congregate. You see the world in Munich, but not the sanitized version. I probably loved this aspect of Munich the most - the globe-trotting, the moody ambient lighting on the London streets, the blindingly bright Israeli sun. Spielberg shows us the sights and sounds of the War on Terror, and how varied and exotic the terrain of this war is.
The film does all this while maintaining a brisk pace that doesn’t let up for the first 2 1/2 hours. Special kudos go to John Williams for his tense score, and Janus Kaminski for his best cinematography yet under Spielberg. The period production design is sumptuous, realistic and flawless.
Acting kudos go to Lynn Cohen as Golda Meir, and Gila Almagor as Avner’s mother. Both women bring gravity and humanity to their roles. Ciarán Hinds also gives a nice, idiosyncratic turn as Avner’s older teammate, Carl.
Now, it’s important for me to point out what I didn’t like about Munich - and there’s plenty. Much of this is confined to the final 1/5th of the film, when Avner succumbs to growing doubts about the efficacy and legitimacy of his mission. At a certain point late in the film, Avner resigns his commission - honorably - and returns to his family, who are now living in Brooklyn. He’s still shaken from the intense experience of hunting terrorists - from having been hunted himself, and from having been betrayed (although the exact nature of the betrayal remains mysterious). It was at this point, his arrival in Brooklyn - when the story had basically stopped - that I think Spielberg should’ve ended the film, which already was running long.
Instead, Avner begins to whine - in a kind of preachy, unmanly fashion. Though we already know how difficult the mission was on him, he begins to complain to his Israeli overseer (tartly played by Geoffrey Rush), and become paranoid - something like the way spook Gene Hackman grows paranoid at the end of The Conversation. Avner begins to question Israel’s entire strategy of retaliation, even though his concerns are answered perfectly in an eloquent and moving scene involving his mother, who happens to be a Holocaust survivor. [Essentially she tells him: you’re serving your country, doing your duty, so that your people can live freely in a land of their own.]
Rather than build to a climax, it’s at this point that the action stops, and the movie devolves into a series of static philosophical discussions about the ‘cycle of violence,’ etc. - and this, really, is where one senses the deadening hand of Tony Kushner. It’s this last 30 minutes or so that contains all the dialogue that has the cultural Left delighted and atwitter, and this is where - unfortunately - so much of Spielberg’s good work is dissipated. There is literally a point in the film where Avner is asked, “What have you learned?” - the sort of obvious, didactic question that should’ve been answered by the first 2 1/2 hours of the film! [The answer? War is hell.] There’s even an an embarassing, utterly pretentious montage intercutting the death of the 11 Israeli athletes with a sex scene (non-graphic) between Avner and his wife. It’s meaningless, film school-level drivel. Again one senses here the hand of the tendentious, sex-as-death obsessed Kushner.
Munich also contains a few gratuitous pot-shots at the CIA, which is accused - admittedly, by the French - of paying/protecting the head of Black September in order to prevent the assasination of American diplomats. This is the kind of snarky historical swipe Kushner apparently specializes in - and it grated on me, deep into the film. It’s one of Munich’s few departures into conspiracy la-la land, and it goes against the overall flow of the story. American audiences should have some explanation from Spielberg about whether he endorses this view of the CIA.
****
There is so much more that could be said about this film, but let me finish with these final points …
What’s unfortunate is that the gravitational pull of left-leaning political films like Syriana and Jarhead - and of Hollywood generally - will ‘pull’ Munich further left than the film actually is. In point of fact, the worldview of films like Syriana or (especially) Fahrenheit 9/11 is completely incompatible with Munich’s.
Munich declares soberly that our current war is not ‘all about oil,’ nor a pretext for limiting domestic dissent. On the contrary, Munich depicts the War on Terror as an old and morally significant clash - one that challenges its participants to retain their humanity. And it’s exceedingly obvious that Spielberg believes the Israeli side to be ahead on that count. He’s using all the iconography, all the cinematic tools at his disposal - acting, costume design, music, editing - to make that clear. If all you do is de-construct the dialogue of this film - which is what many critics are doing - you’re missing 90% of what Spielberg is tellling you.
So I would ask fellow conservatives to take a closer look at this film, and not go overboard in attacking it. Munich is not Fahrenheit 9/11, not by a long shot. Examine what Spielberg is doing here cinematically - especially in the delineation of character through action, rather than verbiage - although some of the verbiage in this film is quite good. Ask yourself who you’re sympathizing with, rooting for - and who, on the other hand, you’re led to despise or reject as inhuman. I think Spielberg is in greater agreement with you than you’re being told by some conservative critics. And calling Munich ‘anti-Israel’ is about as fair as calling The Passion ‘anti-Semitic.’
It’s extremely important for conservatives not to endlessly cry “wolf,” decrying every film that comes down Hollywood’s pipeline as liberal propaganda. [I tried to warn people earlier in the year about this with respect to Star Wars, and also Spielberg’s War of the Worlds - neither of which were as ‘politically engaged’ as some made them out to be.] Frankly, there’s enough genuine propaganda as it is - we don’t need to drag Spielberg’s film into the mire, as well. He doesn’t deserve it - and frankly, I wish we had someone on the conservative side who was as skilled and passionate on this subject.
To the liberals out there, who were so eager to embrace this film as the ‘Oscar frontrunner’ just a few weeks ago, I’d ask: did you really get the film you wanted, here? Did you like that scene when the PLO terrorist admits to Avner why the Arabs really support the Palestinians? And did you like the way that terrorist was escorted around by KGB handlers? And by the way, where was Halliburton in all this? Or Exxon? Or ‘American Imperialism’? Or Nixon’s Plumbers?
Given the present state of Hollywood, which has drifted further and further left - and become terminally unserious - I think Spielberg is basically to be commended here. If nothing else, he’s crafted the richest and most entertaining spy thriller in years. He would’ve been wise to let the film end where Hitchcock would’ve ended it: before the interminable speechifyng and hand-wringing starts. He also should’ve reigned-in his screenwriter, whose political passions get in the way of good drama.
Had he done those things, Spielberg might’ve had a classic on his hands. As it is, he’s still made a surprisingly substantive and sincere film for the times. That’s a far sight better than what the rest of Hollywood is doing
Wow. Didn't know that. I'd have a fit too, I guess.
"My chief concern is the reflective self doubting that has entered Mossad related literature as of late. This gut gnawing questioning of the morality of killing terrorists and characters abandoning their righteous posts stinks of Le Carre’s leftist “The Spy that Came in From the Cold.”
I guess I would have to see the level of self doubt and the overall portrayal. This review makes it sound like the Mossad operatives were consummate professionals who got the job done, and for whom self doubt was a mission accomplished post facto indulgence.
"I do hope the film points out what bungling buffoons the Germans were in this tragedy."
For that you need to rent Arthur Cohn's "One Day in September." The Germans were portrayed as incompetent appeasers. The Olympic Committee was more concerned about the games than about a few expendable Israeli athletes.
I pick my movies very carefully these days. Hollywood gets me so ticked off that instead of actors I see political useful idiots on the screen.
I just put that title on hold at my local library.
Yeah, I keep adding more and more actors to my list of those whom I will not watch their movies.
After reading the review, if, and that is a big IF, I were to see Munich, it would be a partial viewing. The thing to do would be to get up and walk out after 2 1/2 hours when the tone of the movie changes.
I'll withhold judgment until this comes out on DVD and I get to see it. I am going to keep an open mind though because I got burned listening to a lot of Freepers on the movie Kingdom of Heaven. Seems FR was awash with posters ripping the film for being a piece of Islamic propaganda. I finally saw it and didn't come away with that impression at all. It was primariy a historical action flick which showed both good and bad muslims and good and bad Christians. The final battle scenes depicting the siege of Jerusalem were very well done and were quite exciting. I thought it was a pretty good flick other than the main character being hopefully miscast. Sorry but guy (can't recall his name) does not make a convincing macho warrier at all. He's more a sensitive touchy feely type. Russel Crowe would have been perfect in that role.
Here is an article that says the whole IDF and Israeli government has become Le Carre like in their aversion to battle. There is certainly a strong element of that in Israeli society as well.
The much maligned settlers still have the guts and the will. That's why the left hates them so much.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/663595.html
Not that FReepers are ever too far off mark, but somtimes a movie is just a movie.
Does that include the left in Israel? The fact that Sharon is so well supported, despite forced evictions, is a testimony to me that current Israeli thinking is similar to the pacifistic denial that got Polish Jews killed in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Actually security is the #1 political issue for most Israelis, far above the economy and other issues despite the fact that 20% live below the poverty line. It is the reason that Sharon was first elected and the reason his personal popularity continues to be very high - so high that he can form a new party that instantly shoots to the top of the polls.
Israelis are nothing if not practical. Gaza was a cess pool that should have been ceded back to its original ruler, Egypt - but Egypt was too smart to take on the Pals (after having seen what they tried to do in Jordan). So Israel kept Gaza - which was a huge drain economically and militarily. The Generals have been wanting to jettison this piece of garbage for many years.
Give Sharon credit for building fences, cutting his losses, and forging ahead. Terrorist bombings are down 95% since he came to office. That is why he is popular.
"The Generals have been wanting to jettison this piece of garbage for many years."
Not exactly.
"The situation on Israel's southern border, and in the Philadelphi corridor, is a complex barometer for all of the region's problems. Not only does it register the ups and downs in Israeli-Palestinian relations. It reflects the state of Egypt's relations with Israel and the Palestinians, and the situation in Egypt and Gaza itself, where sub-state actors, led by Islamists, have progressively eroded the authority of the Egyptian state and the PA. Smuggling and infiltration must be understood—and fought—in these broader contexts.
The United States has to shift its perspective on this issue. The smuggling and infiltration network should be regarded as part and parcel of the global terrorism network, and the battle against it as part of the global war on terror. Smuggling constitutes a strategic convergence between the Palestinian terror apparatus in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and global militant Islam. It is a reflection of the strengthening of militant Islam in post-9/11 Egypt and in the post-Saddam Middle East. The border will only become the "border of peace" envisioned twenty-five years ago, if and when the United States realizes many of its broader goals for Egypt and the Arab world—goals that include profound political and economic reforms and the triumph of secular democracy over militant Islam.
Until that happens, there is no alternative to a border regime that rests on forceful deterrence, active interdiction, and swift reprisal. And that means that there is no alternative to Israel's continuing presence at this crucial point on the regional map.
Maj. Gen. Doron Almog served as head of Israel's Southern Command from 2000 to 2003. In these years, the Command succeeded in preventing all attempts by terrorists to breach the security barrier surrounding the Gaza Strip. He prepared this study while a visiting military fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy."
http://www.meforum.org/article/630
http://www.jcpa.org/brief/brief004-12.htm
"It is the reason that Sharon was first elected and the reason his personal popularity continues to be very high - so high that he can form a new party that instantly shoots to the top of the polls."
His popularity is rising because he is now drawing from the left and the middle.
"Does that include the left in Israel?"
I was referring to the left in Israel. They are pretty much the same as the left here.
I don't think PM Sharon is unrealistic in his appreciation of the Palestinian hatred and desire to wipe Israel off the map. Leftists may like his current program but he is not one of them. I think he has opted for what is called defnsible borders, and a two state solution because he felt that the world was heading for forcing a one state solution. He also thought that Pres Bush and this administration would allow him the best shot at achieving the best borders.
Whether he has made a hubrisitic miscalculation remains to be seen.
"Will Israel be left with the right of religious based expulsion? Can she jettison any and all Moslems? If not, I wouldn't be surprised that many decide to stay."
Very few people talk about expulsion. The two adherents of that politically explosive issue are now dead by Arab terrorism - Rehavim Ze'evi who was Tourism Minister at the time, and Rabbi Meir Kahane whose political party was outlawed.
I'm sure Israeli Arabs would opt to stay rather than go to what will certainly be a cesspool of violence, intolerance and poverty. Some Israeli Arabs serve honorably in the army -- Druze.
"The problem with them staying then is how does the new state solution solve anything? My understanding is that Israel's greatest fear is to be outnumbered by Moslems in years to come."
The demographic issue is the one from the territories - West Bank and formerly Gaza - not from Israel proper which can hold its own as a Jewish State. Just jettisoning Gaza with its Jewish population of 8,000, separated 1.3 million Palestinians.
Also recent data shows that the Palestinians greatly exaggerated the demographic issue for their political ends.
http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.990/event_detail.asp
The one state solution would have ensured a Muslim majority and the annihilation of Israel for Jews. There is a push for that by the Arabs, Palestinians, Europe, and leftists here. That is why they define the idea of a Jewish state as racist.
In a way it is the natural progression for Europe which is seeking to destroy the nation state under the EU and thinks that nationalism is a dirty word. Of course that does not mean they are willing to embrace Turkey, understanding the implications of an Islamic country in their club, one who appears to be sliding towards Islamism. But they don't afford Israel the same regard.
Here is an American on the subject of the One State
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16671
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