Posted on 01/22/2006 4:41:27 PM PST by Alouette
Steven Spielberg said that he made Munich to promote a dialogue about the nature of terrorism and the efficacy of counterterrorism. His screenwriter, Tony Kushner, said that he did not feel compelled to portray Israel's retaliation against the Munich killers accurately because "an audience has the resources to check" what is real and what is fiction.
Well, here's a reality check.
• Did Israel's anti-terrorism efforts following Munich create a "cycle of violence"?
The film portrays a squad of Mossad agents, led by a fictional character named Avner Kauffman, tracking down and killing the Black September terrorists who perpetrated the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. As the movie progresses Avner becomes increasingly disillusioned with his mission. His chief concern is that counterterrorism only incites more terrorism, which in turn provokes reprisals.
The trouble with this "cycle of violence" perspective is that it confuses cause and effect. The period immediately preceding Munich was plagued by airline terrorism, including the blowing up of a Swiss airliner, killing all 47 passengers and crew, and dozens of deadly hijackings. Palestinian hijackings were successful precisely because even when the hijackers were captured they were quickly released as soon as Palestinian terrorists hijacked another airplane.
This long pattern of high-publicity-low-risk hijackings is what encouraged Black September to up the ante by infiltrating the Olympic Village in Munich.
As I wrote in my book Why Terrorism Works: "Based on the reaction to international terrorism over the previous four years, the terrorists planning the Munich operation could expect to succeed in attracting the world's attention and be relatively certain that if any of the terrorists were captured, they would not be held for long."
In short: It is the success of terrorism, and not attempts to combat it, that invites its repetition. The movie ends with the image of the World Trade Center projected on the screen. Several reviewers and commentators have interpreted this image as insinuating that Israel's policy of targeting terrorists for assassination caused, or at least contributed to, the attack on 9/11. Such innuendo is patent nonsense.
Osama bin Laden cares not a whit about Palestinian terrorists or Israeli counterterrorism measures. His target is the United States, Christianity, capitalism and Western values. He selected the World Trade Center because it symbolized American power.
Neither Spielberg nor Kushner had the courage to overtly link counterterrorism efforts to 9/11, because such a claim is so easily refuted by the facts. Instead they resorted to the kind of symbolism that has a profound impact on the emotions of viewers without an opportunity for logical response.
• Why didn't Israel let Germany and other European countries arrest and extradite the terrorists?
Near the end of the movie Avner asks his Mossad handler why Israel killed the Black September terrorists instead of arresting them. The answer, never given in the film, is that the arrest method had failed. Arrested terrorists were never tried and imprisoned for long.
Between 1968 and 1975, 204 terrorists were arrested outside the Middle East. By the close of 1975 only three were still in prison. George Habash, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (a Marxist terrorist group responsible for some of the Palestinians' most brutal mass killing), noted that Europe's refusal to imprison terrorists meant that when it came to plotting hijackings and bombing, "success [was] 100-percent assured."
Even when Israel managed to arrest and imprison hijackers, this only encouraged further hijackings designed to release the imprisoned terrorists held by Israel. Indeed the best evidence of why the arrest method advocated by Munich would not work was provided by Black September's own demands in Munich - that Israel free over 200 imprisoned terrorists who had been arrested.
Israel understood that releasing terrorists would encourage future terrorism. Without European cooperation Israel stood little chance of curbing international terrorism. Sure enough, Germany released the surviving Black September terrorists less than two months after Munich, when Palestinian terrorists "hijacked" a Lufthansa plane. (According to the senior aide to Germany's interior minister, it is "probably true" that the "hijacking" was orchestrated as part of a German-Palestinian scheme to free the terrorists.)
It was the German decision to free these killers to kill again that strengthened Golda Meir's resolve to take the steps necessary to protect her citizens; but you would not know that from watching Munich.
Since these terrorists killed by Israeli agents were surely combatants in an ongoing terrorist war, it was as lawful for Israel to target them as it is for the United States today to target Osama bin Laden or Ayman Zawahiri.
SPIELBERG'S MOVIE is concerned with proper homes. A PLO militant delivers a lecture on his people's connection to all of Palestine, with no room for a Jewish state of any size. Avner, who is the movie's moral compass, seems ultimately to adopt Ali's view. By the end of the movie he, too, renounces Israel as his home.
Presumably the filmmakers believe that a Jew's rightful place is Brooklyn, where Avner moves, and not Israel. This is consistent with Kusher's one-sided political view that he has "a problem" with Israel's very existence, and that it "would have been better if it never happened."
The millions of Jews who escaped Muslim oppression in the 1950s and Soviet oppression in the 1970s and 80s would certainly disagree. So would the thousands of Israeli civilians whose lives were saved by Israel's proactive steps against terrorism disagree with the major premise of Munich, namely, that counterterrorism is always counterproductive.
The writer is a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book is The Case for Peace: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Can Be Resolved.
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Kushner is ALSO the most overrated playwright of all time.
I found Angels in America full of the most predictable cheap shots and conceits (the Salt Lake City Mormon married man turns out to be a closet gay.etc. etc. )
His writing is always smudged with the pawprints of amateurism and political wishful thinking.
And Spielberg, as talented as he is, cannot ever rid himself of some kind of artistic schizophrenia. For all its believable brutality, Schindler's List winds up going for capital S Sentiment, with Schindler crying that he "could have saved more",etc. etc. Everything that is good in his movies keeps getting undermined by this sentimentality, which has always been a large component of his signature style. Yesterday , the NY Daily News had a brief article quoting several real life Israeli Mossad agents and their reaction to MUNICH. Basically, they felt it had NOTHING to do with reality, and that Mossad agents like those portrayed in the film were so amateurish they would have gotten caught immediately. Obviously the film has an agenda and a message of its own, and that is what always strangles truth and artistic integrity in the womb.
Kushner is ALSO the most overrated playwright of all time.
I found Angels in America full of the most predictable cheap shots and conceits (the Salt Lake City Mormon married man turns out to be a closet gay.etc. etc. )
His writing is always smudged with the pawprints of amateurism and political wishful thinking.
And Spielberg, as talented as he is, cannot ever rid himself of some kind of artistic schizophrenia. For all its believable brutality, Schindler's List winds up going for capital S Sentiment, with Schindler crying that he "could have saved more",etc. etc. Everything that is good in his movies keeps getting undermined by this sentimentality, which has always been a large component of his signature style. Yesterday , the NY Daily News had a brief article quoting several real life Israeli Mossad agents and their reaction to MUNICH. Basically, they felt it had NOTHING to do with reality, and that Mossad agents like those portrayed in the film were so amateurish they would have gotten caught immediately. Obviously the film has an agenda and a message of its own, and that is what always strangles truth and artistic integrity in the womb.
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CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE WORST KIND
... to borrow a phrase, perversely, from a Spielberg flick about benign intelligence. To mitigate its danger, people capable of critical thinking must take on Hollywood... and must do so in Hollywood venues. The printed word, sad to say, no longer carries the day. |
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006
You have GOT to be kidding me???!!!
Amen. I mean, "Allah akbar!!!"
Avner and Ephraim are walking outdoors with the NY skyline in the background while Ephraim tries to convince Avner to return to Israel.
Who knew Spielberg was such an idiot. Sheesh...
I had intended to NOT see Munich, but my wife wanted to, so...
Anyway, it just so happens that I am in the exact middle of reading "Vengeance," the book upon which Munich is loosely based. One of the things that jumped out at me is that Avner and company were trained to use tiny little Berretta .22 semi-autos like this:
According to "Vengeance," this is the official assassination weapon of the Mossad (much like the CIA uses the Ruger MK series), and the only firearm the team used.
In the first assissination, Spielberg has them using the much larger 9mm Berretta 92FS:
To top it off, when Karl, the cleanup man, comes to remove any evidence immediately after the hit, he is shown picking up spent rimfire cartridges from the floor. Spielberg can't even make up his mind if they were using a 9mm or a .22!
I find this particularly ridiculous since Spielberg went to such great lengths to digitally remove firearms from the hands of agents and replace them with walkie-talkies upon the anniversary re-release of E.T.
He removed guns entirely from E.T., but was not content with little guns in "Munich" and inaccurately replaced them with big guns.
What a butthead.
well said article.
At least it would be more honest.
He also removed any reference to the cache of black market firearms and explosives bought in the black market by Oskar Schlindler in the event his Jews had to fight for their lives from Shcinlers list.
From more reliable sources, the first assassination was cased by a team of about a dozen, with two Mossad agents flown in for a day for the killing, using silenced .22s.
There's a recently released book by Aaron Klein, Striking Back, which presents a much more accurate picture than Spielberg.
I am reading "Vengeance" by George Jonas, the book that "Munich" is ostensibly based upon.
This is a serious question: isn't that a reliable source?
Aaron Klein Discusses 'Striking Back,' A Look At The Munich Killings, Aftermath
'Munich' distorts history-Michael Medved
New Book Takes Issue With Spielberg's 'Munich'
Rival tome snipes at 'Munich' 'Striking Back' says 'Vengeance' botches history
Coming down firmly on both sides
It was an entertaining movie, a bit slow, but appears not to be historical. Other than the actual Olympics coverage, which Klein says was essentially as accurate as you'd expect in a movie.
BTW, I hadn't noticed the weapon in the first killing, but the 92 hadn't been released till the mid 70s, though I suppose the Mossad could have acquired a prototype if they'd wanted.
I was just guessing that's what they were holding, but it was DEFINITELY not a .22. The muzzle was at least 9mm.
Thanks for all the info. After I finish Vengeance I may pick it up. It's gotten me interested.
If I boycotted everything I disagree with I'd hardly have anything at all to see or watch.
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