Steven Spielberg's Munich is absolutely brilliant. I can hear readers groaning already. It won't open in Britain until next Friday. But in the United States, Arabs have condemned the movie about the Israeli assassination of Palestinians after the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics as an anti-Arab diatribe that dehumanises an entire people suffering dispossession and occupation . . . .(Hat tip: Martin Kramer)
Spielberg's movie has crossed a fundamental roadway in Hollywood's treatment of the Middle East conflict. For the first time, we see Israel's top spies and killers not only questioning their role as avengers but actually deciding that an "eye for an eye" does not work, is immoral, is wicked. Murdering one Palestinian gunman - or one Palestinian who sympathises with the Munich killers - only produces six more to take their place. One by one, members of the Mossad assassination squad are themselves hunted down and murdered. Avner even calculates that it costs $1m every time he liquidates a Palestinian.
Related: The Counterterrorism blog offers an eloquent letter from the father of a suicide bombing vicitm about the movie "Paradise Now."
Tags: Munich, Paradise Now, Spielberg, Fisk
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