Munich
I recently saw the movie Munich. If you don’t know, it begins with the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics, in which a group of Palestinian terrorists took hostage and eventually killed 11 members of the Israeli team. The movie follows the team of Israeli assassins who were dispatched to kill the principle planners of the Munich attack. The events of the Munich attack itself unfold in sequential flashbacks interspersed throughout the movie.
Munich is powerful and worth seeing because the film’s director, Spielberg, did something unusual: he made every person in the film human. You might expect that with the ‘good guys,’ the team of Israeli agents. But Spielberg also does this for the ‘bad guys.’
I remember another powerful film, Exodus, starring Paul Newman, about the events surrounding the establisment of the State of Israel. The ‘good guys’ are three dimensional, with doubts and hopes, pluses and minuses. You see their motivations, you understand their actions. But the ‘bad guys,’ the local Arabs and the British authorities, are just ‘bad guys.’ You are meant to dislike them, to wonder how they could be so uncaring or evil.
Munich is different. The ‘bad guys’ are human beings. You see what they believe, and why they do what they do. You see that they have friends, spouses, children and lives. And you are also continually reminded that they took a group of innocent athletes hostage and killed them.
The film has been villified by people in the US who claim that Spielberg has betrayed Israel. Among other things, they object to Spielberg’s portrayal of the Palestinians’ three-dimensional humanity. I don’t know whether they really believe that terrorists aren’t human, or whether they just object to showing them that way. Either way, it’s ridiculous.
Terrorists don’t get up in the morning and think, “Golly, I can’t wait to slaughter innocent people today.” They believe their actions are justified. Strip away the twisted hatred and false beliefs and you will find real human beings. Some of them are probably profoundly wicked. Some are probably mentally ill. And some are probably more misguided than anything else. All of them will be motivated by a complex tangle of ideas, beliefs and emotions.
People who criticize Munich for this reason want terrorists to be one-dimensional, nefarious villains. It’s easier to hate them back and easier to muster the troops and you get to enjoy being filled with righteous anger. (And don’t kid yourself: that is enjoyable.) But it’s harder to beat them. If they are in fact our enemies, we need to see them for what they are, whatever they are. We need to understand and address the injustices, injuries and insults they perceive, accurately or not, so that those perceived causes do not generate more enemies for us to fight.
February 1st, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Dead on.
“They” dont want anyone to think of the Palestinians as human beings, if for no other reason than because thinking about things leads to asking questions, which makes ruling harder, especially when what you’re ordering doesnt make much sense.
I’ve been thinking about another Spielberg film lately, “the Terminal”, which while subtler, might be just as subversive. Maybe. I’m still pondering.
Thanks. Do you think it is really such a cynical conspiracy, though? I’m curious. Please add more thoughts. - SF
February 3rd, 2006 at 9:41 am
Yea! The Spoon is back!
I have not seen Munich, and I do not object to calling/depicting/whatever people on both sides of a conflict human, but I heard the movie spent little or no time on the victims and their families, ie, making them human. (If I am wrong, please correct me.) I would be much more inclined to see the movie if both sides being depicted as human also included the victims. (again, feel free to smack me if what I heard about the victims being nearly absent from the movie is wrong)
That wouldn’t have worked, however, since the movie was about the activities of the Israeli assassins. - SF
We’ve gone back and forth on this issue many times, not sure I have much to add to the debate I haven’t already said. But I was just reading a piece in today’s (2/3/2006 — that’s Feb 3 for the Spoon’s international readers) Washington Post, and it does present some facts that deserve careful thought:
-begin excerpt-
In August 2001, Hamas sent a suicide bomber into a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. He killed 15 innocent Israelis, mutilating many dozens more. A month later, Hamas student activists at al-Najah University in Nablus celebrated the attack with an exhibit, a mockup of the smashed Sbarro shop strewn with blood and fake body parts — a severed leg, still dressed in jeans; a human hand dangling from the ceiling. The inscription (with a reference to the Qassam military wing of Hamas) read: “Qassami Pizza is more delicious.”
-end excerpt-
Disgusting. I’m not sure how it’s relevant to the movie, though. I am not suggesting that the terrorists are good people, deep down. I don’t think that showing the “humanity” of our enemies turns them into good people. Mother Theresa was human. But so was Hitler. We talk about evil, cruel acts being monstrous or inhumane, as though such things are out of character for human beings, but what blindness that is. Humans excel at evil.
Showing the “humanity” of the Palestinian terrorists in Munich wasn’t an act of charity toward them. It was simply an act of honesty. Showing why somebody does something evil does not diminish the evil.
If you really want to know what I think, though, it’s this: I think the Palestinians got screwed and are legitimately angry. They got caught in the cross-fire between the British, the UN, Israel, and the neighboring Arab countries, losing land, homes and lives. But life isn’t fair. I can’t fault the Israelis for seizing the territory they needed in order to create a defensible border, either: it’s not their fault they got attacked the day after Independence and had to fight to exist for the next several decades. It’s a complicated, dirty situation with a thick layer of injustice spread all around.
But - The Palestinians have made themselves the enemy of Israel and of peace in the region. Understanding their complaint does not change that. If the government seizes your house to build a highway, you have a right to be angry at the government. But you don’t have a right to kill the construction crew, or blow up the county courthouse. - SF