Spielberg
"Lukewarm"???...
Hollywood
Surrenders to Terrorists
By Cliff Kincaid and Roger Aronoff
Steven Spielberg is a gifted and
influential filmmaker. His latest creation, Munich,
about the aftermath of the bloody attack on Israeli athletes
at the Munich Olympics in 1972, is superbly crafted, as one
would expect. But that craftsmanship is combined with a
confused and morally ambiguous story, one that reflects an
unfortunate degree of moral relativism when the U.S. and the
free world need a clear understanding of the stakes involved
in the war on terrorism.
The "war for the free world,"
as Frank Gaffney accurately calls it, has intensified in scope
as the fanatical Iranian regime continues its program to
develop and possibly use nuclear weapons. Judging from the
message of the Munich movie, Spielberg would have the
world accommodate rather than confront the Iranian regime.
In real life, in the years that followed
the slaughter of the Israelis, a large number of Palestinian
terrorist operatives were eliminated by Israeli Mossad agents.
As noted by Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy in their
book, Inside the PLO, the Israeli operation followed
the recognition that "new methods of fighting back"
against terrorists were needed and that Israel needed to
"carry the war to the terrorists." Only by making
"the hunters the hunted," Israeli officials
reasoned, could Israel defend itself.
Yet Time magazine and many in the
mainstream media have seized on Spielberg's Munich as being a
parable for the current U.S.-led war on terror, and a rebuke
to those who believe that violent acts of terrorism must be
met with force. Time, which made this a cover-story event,
calls Munich Spielberg's "boldest feat
yet," and a "masterpiece."
For his part, Spielberg calls the film a
"prayer for peace" and tells Time that the film is
about the human cost of a quagmire. He says that the biggest
enemy isn't the Israelis or the Palestinians, but rather
"intransigence,"
whatever that means.
Writing in the liberal New Republic,
Leon Wieseltier says the message of the film is that
"terrorists and counterterrorists are alike." He
adds, "This is an opinion that only people who are not
responsible for the safety of other people can hold."
In other words, it is typical liberal
Hollywood propaganda, designed to convince the public that the
real threat to America comes from the Bush Administration, not
the terrorists that it seeks to capture or kill. Viewed in
this context, the film has to be seen as a direct assault on
the Bush Administration for using every option available in
safeguarding the American people from global Islamic
terrorism.
No Other Option
One of the key lines of the film is when
Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir says that "Every
civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with
its own values." It is true that Meir agonized over the
decision to send out teams to eliminate the terrorists. As
Livingstone and Halevy note, she "worried that the
decision to target individual terrorists might be morally
corrosive or somehow antithetical to Israel's liberal
traditions." But faced with a threat to its very
existence, Israel had no other serious option than striking
back.
It is apparent that the movie is not
only supposed to be historical but meant to send a message to
Israel, the U.S. and the Bush Administration. The film's
website even says that "the film takes audiences into a
hidden moment in history that resonates with many of the same
emotions in our lives today." Spielberg intends to
convince us that responding to terrorism with military force
is hopeless.
The story is said to be "inspired
by" the events at the Munich Olympics in 1972, when Black
September, one of the most ruthless and violent Palestinian
terrorist organizations, took 11 Israeli Olympic athletes
hostage, before killing all of them. Two were murdered by the
terrorists at the Olympic village and the others were killed
by the terrorists at a German airport, where the terrorists
were expecting to be taken by plane to an Arab country. On the
tarmac, under fire from German policy, terrorists threw a hand
grenade into one helicopter with Israeli hostages and opened
fire on a helicopter with the others.
The bodies of five dead terrorists,
killed by German police, were sent to Libya, where they were
given a hero's funeral. Three surviving terrorists were sent
to jail in Germany but never stood trial. When a German
Lufthansa jet was hijacked seven weeks later and the hijackers
demanded freedom for the three terrorists, the German
government let them go.
The 1999 Academy Award-winning
documentary, One Day in September, examines these
events in graphic detail. The film even says the German
government, which refused to permit any Israeli involvement in
a hostage rescue mission, colluded in the plane hijacking and
freedom for the three captured terrorists.
This is the kind of appeasement policy
that Spielberg seems to be advocating in his film.
Film Is Criticized
There has been some excellent reporting
on other problems with this film. The Israeli newspaper
Haaretz says that "the movie is based on a book in which
there is no truth." It is based on a book called Vengeance,
by George Jonas, who relied on the word of Yuval Aviv, said to
be the inspiration for Avner, the leader of an Israeli
assassination squad. Aviv claimed to have been a Mossad agent
who parted ways with Israel over their tactics used to seek
justice. By most accounts, however, this is not true. In fact
Aviv's only security experience was working as a guard, or
screener, for El Al, the Israeli airline.
There are other problems with the film.
Contrary to its implication, Israel didn't send one team to
track down everyone. Rather, it had its agents looking out for
the people on their hit list. When one was located, a team was
dispatched.
Time includes a shameless plug for an
upcoming book called Striking Back, by Time reporter
Aaron Klein, who claims that the Israeli counterattack was
ineffective. He insists that the Israelis "had to settle
for smaller targets, killing activists who for the most part
had nothing to do with the Munich massacre and leaving alive,
to this day, some who were involved." It's true that
Israel didn't get all of the top terrorists. But this is
really an argument for a more effective counter-terrorist
strategy.
According to the best information,
Israel killed some-where between 18 and 20 terrorists over a
20- year period, ending the pursuit at the time the so-called
Oslo peace process began in the early 1990's. In one case, an
Israeli squad killed an innocent man, an Arab mistaken for a
terrorist operative.
Tony Kushner, the award-winning
playwright chosen by Spielberg to write the film, has a long
record of hostility towards Israel, though both are Jewish.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Kushner has called the
creation of the state of Israel "a historical, moral,
political calamity" for the Jewish people. He said that
Israel has engaged in "a systematic attempt to destroy
the identity of the Palestinian people." And he has
called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, recently
incapacitated by a stroke, an "unindicted war
criminal."
Blaming Israel
In the Time magazine story, Spielberg is
quoted as saying, "I'm always in favor of Israel
responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a
response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just
creates a perpetual-motion machine...There's been a quagmire
of blood for blood for many decades in that region. Where does
it end? How can it end?"
Spielberg chooses to ignore the fact
that Israel, because of its aggressive policy against
terrorism, has reduced the number of terrorist attacks by up
to 90 percent, through targeted assassinations, heightened
intelligence, and a security fence designed to keep the
terrorists out.
The real problem with the film is the
moral equivalence, as Spielberg talks about
"intransigence" and complains about "response
to a response," as if Israel is at fault for trying to
defend itself. What he seems to forget is that Israel is
fighting for its very existence against an Arab/Muslim bloc of
nations that still preaches hatred and destruction of Jews and
Israelis.
Roger Ebert, who gave the film a big
thumbs up, says about Spielberg's approach: "By not
taking sides, he has taken both sides." But how can that
be morally correct or defensible?
It is certainly true that Israel has
made mistakes. And Israeli policy across the board cannot be
defended. But the country is still a democracy, while the
Arab/Muslim countries that surround it are not.
Enemy Has No Regrets
The nature of the enemy can be seen in
the report by The Times of London that Mohammad Daoud, who led
Black September, says he still doesn't regret the athletes'
deaths. They were soldiers, as he viewed it. The article
referred to his 1999 book, Palestine: From Jerusalem to
Munich in which Daoud, who now lives in Syria,
"claimed that [PLO chief Yasir] Arafat, who professed no
prior knowledge of the Munich operation, had been fully
briefed beforehand and had given the mission his
blessing."
The word "Munich" has long
been synonymous with the appeasement that pushed Hitler into
more aggressive actions leading up to World War II. Now Steven
Spielberg is giving it a new meaning: that if we reason with
the terrorists or give them what they want, they won't blow up
innocent women and children.
Should the U.S. have gone after al Qaeda
after 9/11? In Spielberg's mind, retaliation is inherently
more counterproductive than it is necessary. His
"solution" apparently is appeasement—the same
policy that encouraged Hitler's global aggression. He seems to
be opposed not only to invading Iraq but Afghanistan, where al
Qaeda was based, as well.
As for Israel and the Palestinians, the
real answer is for the other Arab states to help the
Palestinian people achieve a better life and not blame Israel
for all of the problems in the region. Israel has eagerly
embraced peace when given the chance to do so by Egypt and
Jordan. The reason Israel still controls the areas where some
of the Palestinians live is for security reasons, certainly
not a desire to control these people. Israel does not want to
occupy the Palestinian territories. It is clear that, if the
Palestinians would only lay down their arms, and end their
culture of hatred for the Jews, Israel would reward them with
aid, technology, and a state of their own.
Spielberg has created a film that the
Left is trying to use to make the argument that our current
war on terrorism is a "quagmire," that Bush has been
"intransigent" and abusing his power, and that we
are "compromising our values" by pursuing the enemy
with every available option. When Spielberg made Schindler's
List, about saving Jews from Hitler's regime, there was
no moral equivalence between good and evil. There shouldn't
have been in this film either.
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