Munich
I just watched the movie "Munich" directed by Steven Spielberg. The movies revolves around the killing of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes during the Munich Olympics (1972). Israel, in retaliation assigns five men to kill eleven Palestinian leaders who were responsible either directly or indirectly for the Munich killings.
Excellent movie, with a superb performance from Eric Bana (Whom I have loved since watching him as the incredibly heroic Hector in the movie "Troy"). Although the movie was more than two and a half hours in length, it certainly did not seem so.
In any case, it was not my intent to write a review on the movie itself, but rather to highlight one particular aspect of it's presentation that I was not as happy about.
I will be honest - I know very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I tried to read "O, Jerusalem" but even Dominique Lapierre's exceptional writing could not keep me interested. I do not know any Israelis or Palestinians personally, but I certainly felt that the Israeli assasins were shown as being far more civilized, to the extent of being compassionate, while the Palestinians were uniformly shown as being ruthless, trigger-happy cut-throats.
For instance, during the second planned assasination, the Israeli team plants a bomb in the telephone of the target. Their plan is to detonate the bomb when the target picks up the phone. The target happens to have a wife and a daughter both of whom leave the home, during which time they plan to carry out the killing. Unfortunately, the daughter comes back to pick up the books and so when one of the Israelis calls the target's phone, she picks up. At once, at immense personal risk, two of them run frantically and tell the others not to detonate the bomb. All very sweet and all, and maybe it actually happened, but to me it smacked of an attempt to sugar-coat the core fact that the Israelis were performing actions that were as cold-hearted and vile as any other assasin in the world.
What is the difference between killing a girl who happens to be the daughter of a wanted terrorist and dropping huge bombs onto defence-less residential neighborhoods thereby killing 1000's?
Excellent movie, with a superb performance from Eric Bana (Whom I have loved since watching him as the incredibly heroic Hector in the movie "Troy"). Although the movie was more than two and a half hours in length, it certainly did not seem so.
In any case, it was not my intent to write a review on the movie itself, but rather to highlight one particular aspect of it's presentation that I was not as happy about.
I will be honest - I know very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict. I tried to read "O, Jerusalem" but even Dominique Lapierre's exceptional writing could not keep me interested. I do not know any Israelis or Palestinians personally, but I certainly felt that the Israeli assasins were shown as being far more civilized, to the extent of being compassionate, while the Palestinians were uniformly shown as being ruthless, trigger-happy cut-throats.
For instance, during the second planned assasination, the Israeli team plants a bomb in the telephone of the target. Their plan is to detonate the bomb when the target picks up the phone. The target happens to have a wife and a daughter both of whom leave the home, during which time they plan to carry out the killing. Unfortunately, the daughter comes back to pick up the books and so when one of the Israelis calls the target's phone, she picks up. At once, at immense personal risk, two of them run frantically and tell the others not to detonate the bomb. All very sweet and all, and maybe it actually happened, but to me it smacked of an attempt to sugar-coat the core fact that the Israelis were performing actions that were as cold-hearted and vile as any other assasin in the world.
What is the difference between killing a girl who happens to be the daughter of a wanted terrorist and dropping huge bombs onto defence-less residential neighborhoods thereby killing 1000's?
Comments