Spielberg film draws Israeli criticism before it opens

[Fiona]

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.

Yahoo! News

[richard]

Israel attacks Spielberg over 'Munich', his movie on 1972 Olympics massacre

Steven Spielberg had hoped that his new geopolitical thriller, Munich, which opened on limited release in the United States yesterday, would generate debate on the morality of the Bush administration's war on terrorism and offer, as he put it, a "prayer for peace". Instead, the director finds himself at the centre of a storm, with conservative commentators, pro-Israel lobbyists and even the Israeli government accusing him of creating a false moral equivalence between the "terrorists" he depicts and those mandated to hunt and kill them.

The film recounts the aftermath of the notorious kidnap and murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, sends agents to kill those it believes are responsible, but the effort becomes bogged down in moral ambiguity as doubts emerge about how closely the targets for assassination were involved, and whether perpetuating the cycle of violence ultimately achieves anything.

The parallels with today's world, in which President George Bush has characterised the hunt for al-Qa'ida as a battle between good and evil, are both compelling and a big part of the reason why the film has touched such a raw nerve. The Bush administration doesn't like to be accused of moral ambiguity any more than the Israeli government does, which explains why defenders of both have attacked Spielberg in similar terms.

Two weeks ago, Israel's consul general in Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch, emerged from an advance screening and promptly denounced the film in a series of interviews as "presumptuous" and "superficial".

Accusing Spielberg and his team of putting Mossad and the Palestinian guerrilla group Black September on the same moral plane, he complained: "This is an incorrect moral equation. We in Israel know this."

Yesterday, after several days of doubt over whether he was speaking officially or merely giving his personal reaction, Mr Danoch's remarks were fully backed up by the Israeli foreign ministry, according to a report in the entertainment newspaper Variety. That had to come as a surprising slap in the face to Spielberg, who has donated generously to Jewish and Israeli causes in the past through his Holocaust charity, the Righteous Persons Foundation.

In an effort to counter the charges against his film - which several critics and supporters say are unfair and unjustified - Spielberg has retained the services of Eyal Arad, a senior adviser to the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to organise screenings and generate more sympathetic opinions. Spielberg's staff say he has also been talking to numerous Israeli officials and Mossad officers.

The PR effort has already had some success. Earlier this month, two widows of the athletes killed in Munich were treated to a private screening in Israel in the company of Spielberg's producer, Kathleen Kennedy, and one of the screenwriters, the renowned playwright Tony Kushner. Ilana Romano, whose husband, the weightlifter Joseph Romano, was killed, said: "I feel Mr Spielberg has put the tragedy of our loved ones into a billion homes the world over. Munich handles the terrorist attack and the plight of the Israeli victims with great accuracy."


Source
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
Published: 24 December 2005
independent.co.uk

[richard]

Munich mastermind spurns Spielberg's peace appeal

The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation.

The Hollywood director has called "Munich", which dramatises the 1972 raid and Israel's reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), his "prayer for peace".

Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film.

He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and accused Spielberg of pandering to the Jewish state.

"If he really wanted to make it a prayer for peace he should have listened to both sides of the story and reflected reality, rather than serving the Zionist side alone," Daoud told Reuters by telephone from the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Daoud said he had not seen the film, which will only reach most screens outside the United States next month.

But he noted that Spielberg arranged previews in Israel, where some have accused "Munich" of lacking historical accuracy.

Several Israeli historians have also complained about what they see as a moral symmetry in the film between slain Olympians and the Palestinians assassinated by the Mossad spy service.

"Spielberg showed the movie to widows of the Israeli victims, but he neglected the families of Palestinian victims," said Daoud. "How many Palestinian civilians were killed before and after Munich?"

MOSSAD ASSASSINS

The Munich attack was "one of the pivotal moments of modern terrorism", the Los Angeles Times said last week.

Daoud used different terms.

"We did not target Israeli civilians," he said.

"Some of them (the athletes) had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier."

Spielberg's producer, Kathleen Kennedy, told a preview audience at Princeton University that a Palestinian consultant was used for "Munich". She did not say who it was.

"I do feel that we spent an enormous amount of time in discussion and put effort into exploring a fair and balanced look at the Palestinians that were involved in the story," she said, according to an official transcript of the event.

Historians noted that "Munich" presents Mossad assassins as having hunted 11 members of the PLO, while other accounts put the final Palestinian toll at as many as 18.

Daoud survived a 1981 shooting in Poland that he blamed on a Mossad mole in the rival Palestinian faction of Abu Nidal.

Though Israel allowed him to visit the occupied West Bank after 1993 peace accords, and Mossad veterans say the reprisals are over, Daoud said he feels he could still be targeted.

"When I chose a long time ago to be a revolutionary fighter I prepared to be a martyr. I am not afraid, because people's souls are in God's hands, not Israel's," he said.


Source
GAZA (Reuters)

Image: An undated publicity photograph shows director Steven Spielberg (2nd L) conferring with actors Daniel Craig (L), Hanns Zischler and Eric Bana (R) on the set of his film "Munich". The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. REUTERS/DreamWork Pictures/Handout

[richard]

The other 'Munich': Israeli spies tell their side

A pocketful of receipts helped blow the lid off Israel's most notorious intelligence bungle.

It was in 1973, after spies dispatched to Norway killed a waiter mistaken for the Palestinian mastermind of a raid on the previous year's Munich Olympics where 11 Israeli athletes died.

The assassins might have got away, except that one of them was not a trained member of Israel's spy agency Mossad but a Danish-born volunteer brought aboard for his language skills.

Hoping to recoup expenses, he had kept his receipts. Once detained by Norwegian police, he provided a paper trail that led to the capture and prosecution for murder of the rest of team.

So when director Steven Spielberg, in his new film on the post-Munich reprisals, showed a Mossad case officer ordering agents to hoard receipts while in deep cover abroad, eyebrows were raised among veterans of the intelligence service.

"It's an absurd version of the modus operandi," former field agent Gad Shimron said when asked about the thriller "Munich."

"Agents are expected to account for their expenses, but not if it means incurring the risk of discovery. They can just as easily declare their expenses from memory when they return home, and it's accepted on trust," he told Reuters.

That is just one of a list of complaints made about "Munich" by those with direct knowledge of the Israeli reprisal campaign.

Spielberg's version paints a grim picture of what befell five men sent by Israel to track and kill members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) blamed for the Olympics raid.

The film is based on "Vengeance," a 1984 book purporting to chronicle the confessions of an assassin who broke ranks in protest at Israel's two-fisted tactics. It portrays a hit-team unleashed on Europe and the Middle East with little supervision, torn by self-doubt and on the run from Palestinian gunmen.

Spielberg was careful to add the disclaimer that the film was merely "inspired" by real events, but many Israelis say they are disappointed in the Hollywood director famed for his fastidiously researched Holocaust epic "Schindler's List."

"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.

CHOSEN BY GOLDA?

"Munich" shows the Olympic attack, followed by another established fact: Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir instructing Mossad to track down and kill the Palestinians held responsible.

In the film, Meir goes further, personally recruiting the hero, Avner, to lead the team. Shimron said this was unheard of.

"I know it's tempting to see Golda as a sort of Zionist version of 'M' from the James Bond films, but she had nothing to do with Mossad personnel," he said.

Spielberg shows a hit-team isolated in the field for months, and including a forger and bomb-maker so it can function alone.

But Mossad veterans say the reprisals, like all top-priority missions, were executed by a large number of agents, in stages.

First, case officers posted abroad were told to look out for Palestinians on the hit-list. Information came from a variety of sources, the most important being paid PLO informers; the Munich raid was carried out by Black September, a PLO splinter group.

Once the targets were found, specialized agents went through elaborate practice runs in Israel to prepare the assassinations.

"We would set up 'models', by choosing areas in Israel that resembled the place where the person in question would be hit. Then we would drill to make sure the mission went without a hitch," said a retired operative on condition of anonymity.

"The hit-teams were assembled and sent out on an ad hoc basis. Everything was in place for them, so they never spent more than a few days -- or, at most, weeks -- in the field. They were monitored and withdrawn as soon as each mission was over."

The assassins in "Munich" are shown as occasionally inept, especially when it comes to planting novel booby-trap bombs.

But Shimron noted that by the 1970s Mossad had perfected this tactic. As for having a forger, Shimron doubted this would be considered for such short-term missions as no forger would be able to produce high-quality documents under such conditions.

Shimron was more damning of the all-male makeup of the team.

"It's standard practice to include female agents in such operations," he said. "Anyone who has been on a stakeout knows that having a lady on hand helps you avoid being spotted."

TOUGH GUYS DON'T DOUBT

Much of the criticism from Israelis in the know focuses on the film's depiction of the moral debates that burden the team.

A former Israeli special forces officer who took part in a Mossad assassination in the 1980s called this fanciful.

"Look, we all did mandatory military service, we all had combat experience, and we all accepted the necessity of hitting out at our enemies. Israel is a country at war," he said.

"So you go, you do the job, and you hope you'll be back in time to eat breakfast with your kids and take them to school."

Shimron said Mossad provides in-house psychologists to help any agents who develop doubts about their work.

"Munich" also shows three assassins being killed. Other accounts do not mention this, although at the time the PLO did strike at Mossad case officers permanently stationed in Europe.

Michael Bar-Zohar, who wrote an authorized history of the operations, said two officers were shot in Madrid and Brussels.

"But as for Black September, it was wiped off the map for months," he told Israel Radio.

Bar-Zohar noted Spielberg shows the hit-team hunting 11 Palestinians, and said this built an overly simplistic moral symmetry with the number of Israeli athletes killed in Munich.

Historians say the final Palestinian death toll may have reached as high as 18. In 1981, Black September mastermind Mohammed Daoud survived a shooting attack at a Warsaw hotel. In 1992, PLO official Atef Bseiso was shot dead in Paris.

Israel neither claimed nor denied responsibility for those operations, but Mossad veterans said that prior to 1993 there was no reason for the post-Munich reprisals to be called off.

That year, Israel and the Palestinians signed an interim peace deal in Oslo, near the site of the botched 1973 hit.

"We decided then that as long as they are not killing us, we would not kill them," said the retired senior operative.


Source
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters)

Image: Director Steven Spielberg (L) is seen in the town of Rabat, outside Valetta, while filming his film, "Munich," based on the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre and the subsequent Israeli retaliation, July 5, 2005. Spielberg was careful to add the disclaimer that the film was merely "inspired" by real events, but many Israelis say they are disappointed in the Hollywood director famed for his fastidiously researched Holocaust epic "Schindler's List." REUTERS/Darrin Zammit