Munich did not win the Oscar for best film. Not a movie critic by any stretch, I m not in a position to say whether Munich deserved the award. However, from the perspective of this column, I think the film should be looked into because the 1972 Munich Olympics, upon which the film is based, brought, for perhaps the first time, sports and politics together with deadly effect.
To recap the real thing, the 1972 Games had been a great success for the first 10 days. Swimmer Mark Spitz was on his way to winning an unprecedented seven gold medals, while Russian gymnast Olga Korbut captured the hearts of millions. But the picture darkened on Sept. 5 when a group of eight Palestinians raided the Israeli team headquarters.
Two athletes were killed in their rooms, while nine others were taken hostage, as the captors demanded the release of hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners. Over the next 24 hours, the tense standoff between the kidnappers and police was played out in front of TV viewers worldwide.
A rescue attempt by German police went horribly wrong and ended in a gunfight. Nine Israeli hostages, along with four of the Palestinians and a German policeman were killed.
The three Palestinian survivors were never tried, and were handed over to Libya in exchange for the freedom of hostages when a jet bound for Frankfurt was hijacked seven weeks later. The Israeli secret service, Mossad, formed a special unit that hunted down and killed two of the three surviving Munich gunmen.
Munich, by Steven Spielberg, begins where the 1972 Olympics left off, as seen through the eyes of young Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) charged with hunting down the men behind the attack.
The Israeli assassins begin their killing spree, eliminating nine. They are convinced they are fighting for a just cause. But as the deaths pile up, the hit men begin to have anxiety attacks. With each assassination, there is a Palestinian reprisal: A bomb in a bus station, a shooting spree, etc. The eliminated are simply being replaced before the dead are interred by men even more “dangerous.
Still, they continue to kill, even though they suspect the Palestinian intellectuals and diplomats on their hit list had no connection to Munich.
Munich seems to be a bit on the Palestinian side. It questions Israel s policy of swift and full retribution for every attack. To proffer the Palestinian perspective, Spielberg provides an intellectual debate between a Palestinian with Avner about how the Palestinians have resorted to the only methods left to them, how they are willing to wait generations to achieve their aims, and how the concept of “home is precious beyond all others.
The proof that the film is slightly pro-Palestinian is Israel s criticism of it and of Spielberg. It has gotten flak from Israelis for suggesting equivalence between the hostage taking and Israel s response to it. In consequence, Spielberg has been rebuked as “no friend of Israel.
Spielberg, in truth, is a very good friend of Israel, a Jew well known for his deep affection for his faith and for the Jewish state. To make such a film that pays at least a little bit of attention to the Palestinians is admirable, but not enough.
Spielberg never gets into why and how Palestinians are driven to such desperation as hostage-taking and suicide missions. There is no mention of the daily hemorrhage of Palestinian lives, the illegal Israeli practices which continue to deliberately bleed the Palestinian civilian population and of being stuck in the most terrible position of suffering and despair.
Spielberg fails to take Israel to task for not accepting the reality of the Palestinian people as equals, nor ever admitting that their rights have been scandalously violated. The war crimes, destruction and humiliation, maiming, house demolitions, agricultural destruction and death imposed on Palestinian civilians are never shown for the daily, completely routine ordeal that they are. There is no contrition for the horrendous amount of damage the occupation has done, the sheer systematic humiliation of every single Palestinian, man, woman and child.
“I don t think any movie or any book or any work of art can solve the stalemate in the Middle East today, Spielberg said of Munich. He s right. Every effort has been made to deny, avoid, or negate the Palestinian reality. There can be no erasing of the historical truth that the existence of Israel is predicated upon the obliteration of another society and people. This is why there is no peace.
