Why is it then that Munich caused so much controversy?

I don’t know what made me more uncomfortable, the historical inaccuracies, the humanisation of terrorists and terrorism, the justification of vengeance or the unnecessary wah wah self-righteousness of the Jewish protagonists. As a ‘fictionalised account’ of the Munich aftermath Spielberg does awfully well at making a case FOR Israel through the rationalisation of violence as a counterattack on violence and the virtuous nature of Judaism. Golda Meir hammers home this very sentiment by claiming that ‘every civilisation finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values’. On the one hand I feel that Spielberg’s intention was to portray a moral equivalence between the Palestinian and the Israeli assassins (and later today’s war on terror through pre-9/11 New York imagery) that to a certain extent blames Israel for the shameful history of the Middle Eastern conflict but on the other he’s not ashamed to portray the Israelis in a more favourably light as ‘The Decent’.

We’re Jews, Avner. Jews don’t do wrong doing because our enemies do wrong. we’re supposed to be righteous. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s Jewish.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Spielberg was asked whether he believes the support offered by Golda Meir for the Operation Wrath of God was a mistake.

I believe that Israel’s prime minister had to respond to the monstrous provocation of Munich: Jews were being killed in Germany, and that at the Olympic Games. She could not let an act with such historical implications, such a gross transgression by the Black September movement, go unpunished. Munich was a national trauma for Israel. So in principle I think she did the right thing.

Whether, like President Bush you dehumanise terrorists in order to justify war crimes and illegal war on terror or like Spielberg you humanise terrorism in order to draw a relative morality I think it is important to remember that killing terrorists/extremists is futile; It doesn’t matter who you kill there will always be someone else ready to take their place. It is also highly unlikely in reality that the real Mossad agents experienced the moral soul-searching that the tortured hero, Avner suffered from and subsequently left the secret service because of. Operation Wrath of God disbanded when ‘amateurs killed the wrong guy’, there is no remorse when killing is an order.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Middle East, Reviews and tagged as film, israel, munich, palestine, spielberg. Print this blog post. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.