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Spielberg film draws Israeli criticism before it opens

Posted on: Monday, 12 December 2005, 22:44 CST

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Steven Spielberg's new film, "Munich," about Israel's reprisals for the slaying of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, has not opened yet but already many Israelis are convinced that the world-famed creator of "Schindler's List" has missed the point.

Many veterans of Israeli spy agency Mossad are among those up in arms at the film Spielberg calls his "prayer for peace," even though it won't open in the United States until December 23 and in Israel on January 26.

Former Mossad agents say that the 2-1/2 hour movie suggests wrongly that their decades-old fight with the Palestinians is as much a matter of score-settling as self defense and only continues the Middle East's tit-for-tat cycle of violence.

Spielberg's film paints a grim picture of what happened to five men sent out by Israel to assassinate Palestinians connected to the killing of 11 Israeli Olympians -- an event that riveted world attention. He based his film on a book called "Vengeance," by Canadian journalist George Jonas, which purportedly chronicles the confessions of a team member who quit in protest at his country's two-fisted tactics.

"I think it is a tragedy that a person of the stature of Steven Spielberg, who has made such fantastic films, should have based this film on a book that is a falsehood," said David Kimche, a senior Mossad official in the 1970s.

"Then, as now, it had nothing to do with vengeance," he told Reuters. "It had everything to do with the prevention of more terror attacks against innocent people."

"The Munich massacre was a turning point in our whole attitude toward terror and terrorism. We were at that time very much, I would say, at the epicenter of many, many threats of terror attacks. I think few people in the world realize what was going on at that time as far as terror was concerned."

JUSTIFIED DETERRENCE

Israel has never formally acknowledged responsibility for the targeted assassinations -- shootings, bombings and commando raids -- that killed members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) blamed for the Munich attack.

All but a few Israelis hesitate to assert that the operations were a justified means of deterrence -- for Israel's armed forces more than 30 years later still track and kill Palestinian militants spearheading a revolt in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

While Israel insists that its methods have been effective, many in the international community caution that it just continues the cycle of violence.

Spielberg, who garnered world acclaim for his Holocaust epic "Schindler's List," said in an interview with Time magazine, "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."

SYMMETRY? NEITHER SIDE THINKS SO

Both sides of the conflict deny such a symmetry exists. Palestinian guerrillas are massively outgunned by Israel's firepower, while Israelis contend with suicide bombings by Palestinian Islamists bent on destroying the Jewish state.

Michael Bar-Zohar, who wrote an authorized Israeli history of the post-Munich reprisals, noted that "Vengeance" puts the number of Palestinians killed at 11 -- although other accounts suggest the final toll reached as high as 18.

"There are 11 Jews killed in Munich, 11 Palestinians that we killed -- in other words ... 'eye for an eye'," Bar-Zohar said, reflecting Spielberg's portrayal of events.

"This balancing act is simply outrageous, because anyone who sees our fight with those who want to destroy us as ... balanced does not know what he is talking about," he added.

In "Munich," Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner invent a scene in which an Israeli assassin meets one of the PLO targets and hears his arguments for the creation of a Palestinian homeland.

But to one Israeli diplomat, the scene was too pro-Palestinian. "There is no counter-monologue to this monologue," Ehud Danoch, Israel's consul-general in Los Angeles, said in a radio interview after seeing the film.

"There is a certain presumptuousness in this attempt to handle a painful conflict, which has lasted many years, with a few rather superficial statements over the space of 2 1/2 hours," he said. "These are problematic messages."

For the select few Israelis with a direct knowledge of what happened after Munich, Spielberg's film makes other mistakes.

Gad Shimron, a former Mossad field operative turned journalist, dismissed as improbable the story line whereby the hero, "Avner," develops conscience pangs at all the killing, breaks ranks and then is hounded by his Mossad handler.

"One of the best parts of the Mossad is that if you have anything on your mind, you can come and speak out. It does not have to develop into a problem," he said.

Source: REUTERS

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