Posted on 01/22/2006 4:02:16 PM PST by wagglebee
Steven Spielberg hit back at critics of his latest film "Munich" about the targeted killing of Palestinians behind the massacre of Israelis during the 1972 Olympics, in an interview to be published Monday ahead of the picture's German and Israeli release.
Spielberg, 59, told German news weekly Der Spiegel that "Munich" aims to reclaim the debate about the moral costs of the struggle against terror from "extremists" and engage moderate forces in the West and the Middle East.
"Should you leave the debate to the great over-simplifiers? The extreme Jews and extreme Palestinians who consider any kind of negotiated settlement to be a kind of treason?" he said in remarks printed in German.
"I wanted to use the medium of film to make the audience have a very intimate confrontation with a subject that they generally only know about in an abstract way, or only see in a one-sided way."
"Munich", which hit US screens last month, depicts an Israeli campaign to hunt down and kill Palestinian radicals behind the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes and coaches during the Munich Olympics.
The drama ended in a massacre: 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and one German police officer were killed.
The film, which will be released in Israel and Germany this week, looks at the psychological and moral toll the assassinations took on the Israeli agents. It is billed as "inspired by real events" to deflect criticism about its historical accuracy.
"Munich" was blasted by some US Jewish commentators who accused Spielberg of equating the Israeli assassins with the Palestinian militants.
Spielberg dismissed the charges as "nonsense".
"These critics are acting as if we were all missing a moral compass. Of course it is a horrible, abominable crime when people are taken hostage and killed like in Munich," he said.
"But it does not excuse the act when you ask what the motives of the perpetrators were and show that they were also individuals with families and a history.... Understanding does not mean forgiving. Understanding does not mean being soft, it is a courageous and strong stance."
Just before 5, the Arabs knocked on the door of Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg. When Weinberg opened the door he realized something was wrong and shouted a warning to his comrades. He and weightlifter Joseph Romano attempted to block the door while other Israelis escaped, but they were killed by the terrorists. The Arabs then succeeded in rounding up nine Israelis to hold as hostages.
At 9:30, the terrorists announced that they were Palestinians and demanded that Israel release 200 Arab prisoners and that the terrorists be given safe passage out of Germany.
After hours of tense negotiations, the Palestinians, who it was later learned belonged to a PLO faction called Black September, agreed to a plan whereby they were to be taken by helicopter to the NATO air base at Firstenfeldbruck where they would be given an airplane to fly them and their hostages to Cairo. The Israelis were then taken by bus to the helicopters and flown to the airfield. In the course of the transfer, the Germans discovered that there were eight terrorists instead of the five they expected and realized that they had not assigned enough marksmen to carry out the plan to kill the terrorists at the airport.
After the helicopters landed at the air base around 10:30 p.m., the German sharpshooters attempted to kill the terrorists and a bloody firefight ensued. At 11, the media was mistakenly informed that the hostages had been saved and the news was announced to a relieved Israeli public. Almost an hour later, however, new fighting broke out and one of the helicopters holding the Israelis was blown up by a terrorist grenade. The remaining hostages in the second helicopter were shot to death by one of the surviving terrorists.
At 3 a.m., a drawn and teary-eyed Jim McKay, who had been reporting the drama throughout the day as part of ABC's Olympic coverage, announced: "They're all gone."
Five of the terrorists were killed along with one policeman, and three were captured. A little over a month later, on Oct. 29, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by terrorists demanding that the Munich killers be released.
The Germans capitulated and the terrorists were let go, but an Israeli assassination squad was assigned to track them down along with those responsible for planning the massacre. According to George Jonas in Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team, eight of the 11 men targeted for death were killed. Of the remaining three, one died of natural causes and the other two were assassinated, but it is not known for sure if they were killed by Israeli agents.
Meanwhile, the mastermind of the massacre remains at large. In fact, in 1999, Abu Daoud admitted his role in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Palestinian Terrorist. He claims his commandos never intended to harm the athletes and blamed their deaths on the German police and the stubbornness of then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (JTA, May 4, 1999).
The massacre of 11 Israeli athletes was not considered sufficiently serious to merit canceling or postponing the Olympics. "Incredibly, they're going on with it," Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times wrote at the time. "It's almost like having a dance at Dachau."
More precisely, it allows them to lay a guilt-trip on the rest of the world.
I didn't pose the question, but that aside,
I didn't understand where you were coming from. Now I do.
Yeah, I was wondering if you said that...right after I posted.
LOL, sometimes I lose track of who says what also.
True. I wonder if the "rewriting of history" was more Spielberg or Tony Kushner?
So please don't rewrite history.
Five of the terrorists were killed; three terrorists were captured. A month later, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by terrorists, who demanded the release of the Munich terrorists. The Germans capitulated and the terrorists were let go.
Tell me again how the fine German government tried the Munich terrorists. Oh wait - it didn't happen. Germany KNEW who was responsible, and let them go.
Horse Feathers!! It is a sign of muddled thinking, "fellow-feeling" with the criminal (as T.R. put it), and moral cowardice!
Hey Schpielturd...you can sell out your people, just dont ask us to help you.
What do you expect when the screenwriting credits for Munich belong to Tony Kushner, one of the most radical Left playright and screenwriter out there?
I go to see no movies directed by leftie propagandist Speilberg because my money goes out of my pocket into his pocket and then into the pockets of the liberal, commie, traitorous, anti-America, anti-troops politicians he personally supports.
I don't feed the hand that bites me.
I hope I made my thinking clear in these few words.
I guess I'm non-intellectual.
Leni
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"Extremist Jew," as per the Spielbergian Dictionary: "Any Jew that wants to live.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=munich.htm
Maybe this is what is bothering Spielberg. 38 million isn't exactly a blockbuster. That's what you get for moral equivalence.
I don't feel bad about seeing "Walk the Line" or "Underworld: Evolution" instead of "Munich"
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