Scandalous and shameful, spewing salacious lies

Rating: 1/10 (25 December 2005)

'Equally as unjustified'.
That's the quote I read at the end of someone else's review.
(paraphrase) 'The tragic events of Munich led to Israel's doing something equally unjustified'...
And you see, Mr. Spielberg, that is precisely the problem. You release a film that poses a lot of questions, raises a lot of doubts...the sorts of things that would be best explored in the privacy of a library, or on the internet, for you to research and discover and discern and figure out, using solid sources and sound research techniques. But when you air your gripes in a popular format like a movie, wild theories and unanswered questions have a way of freezing themselves into the public consciousness. Perceptions are altered, people's understanding of history warp into the twisted and perverse theories your mind entertains, and blasphemy is born.
To suggest that Israel's hunting down of terrorists is 'morally equivalent' to terrorists kidnapping and executing 11 innocent athletes is mind-boggling in its Stockholm-esquire insanity. How do you feel, Mr. Spielberg, knowing that your artistic venture caused such thoughts to creep into the mind of at least one, and who knows how many other fertile minds? Irrational, morally relativsitic thoughts like this stem from your planting absurd thoughts into people's minds. What the filmmaker views as an artistic or intellectual exercise, others view as immutable proof of reality. So for example, when some of the Israelis in 'Munich' repeatedly question whether their ring leader has seen the evidence implicating their terrorist targets, the intelligent viewer understands this as the reasonable worries, fears and doubts anyone in an extraordinarily stressful, life altering position might think about, if only to keep his sanity. The uninitiated viewer, on the other hand, sees such an exchange as a none-too-subtle swipe at the justification for the Israeli government's selection of targets, and thus comes to such conclusions as Israel's pursuit of the terrorists being morally on par with the terrorists' gruesome actions.
And when the opening credits divulge the name of the book upon which the film is based, and include the words 'inspired by real events', the discerning viewer who takes the time to do a little research knows that the book was written by a widely-discredited figure who has been repeatedly accused of fabricating all kinds of stories, and of claiming connections to events or places or organizations in which he never took part. The uninitiated, on the other hand takes the film, many of whose moments of intrigue and blunder were no doubt ramped up in the name of artistic license, as gospel.
The cadence of Spielberg's piece however, and quite possibly his raison d'etre in creating this terrible affront, is the implication that the State of Israel has lost its Jewish character. The film takes breaks from the main cat-and-mouse aspect of the tale repeatedly to remind us, via long speeches spoken by many characters, about what 'true' Jewish virtues are: righteousness, goodness, justice etc. Certainly, Spielberg is no anti-Semite. But he then proceeds to demonstrate -- most vividly in the final 15 minutes -- how, in his view, Israel has deviated from that paradigm. How it is willing to do anything and everything to justify its existence and continued survival, even when those actions run contrary to the core of its collective spiritual being. Golda Meir says it, Avner's mother says it, Geoffrey Rush's character's whole being says it...and we, as an audience who sympathize with Avner, find such a stance increasingly reprehensible. And this reprehensible idea is not brought up in the abstract or in a vague and ambiguous vacuum, but as the 'official position' of the State of Israel, and by extension, represents the raison d'etre and collective zeitgeist of the State. That the state and its officers treat him so callously and coldly throughout -- certainly with far less admiration or affection than th Palestinian has for his daughter -- is one very disconcerting image that anyone who has been through the very family oriented aspect of Israeli political and military life can tell you is patently false. But it really comes to a shocking head in the very last line of the film. Avner, in a gratuitous line completely out of character, invites his nemesis to 'do something Jewish' with him. (Until this point, Avner has made no mention of his Jewishness, no desire to engage in anything remotely religious. It can only be assumed that Spielberg/Kusher included this only to drive their terribly anti-Zionist point home; that Israel has extricated itself from Jewish values.) When Geoffrey Rush's character refuses, it is the ultimate sign of Israel's (represented by Rush) complete break from all manner of Jewish values, which we've been schooled throughout the film to see as the epitome of virtue. This is the terrible, scurrilous point of the whole film, the way Spielberg manages to impugn the integrity and validity of the state while avoiding the charge of being 'anti-Semitic'  as if to say, I'm critical of Israel, but Israel does not represent Judaism. Israel, is in fact, the antithesis of Judaism, which is virtuous and righteous.
This is an argument used to justify and hide anti-Semitic attacks on Israel by Jew-haters for decades.
Shame on you, Stephen Spielberg, for buying the bile and advancing such a horrendously offensive theory.
For shame.