Here's the take from the Libertas Blog (August 17th)
Note ">>" equals a quote from the story that Libertas is commenting on:
Whatever nonsense Steven Spielberg hopes to convey in his film Munich, the documentary One Day in September, which won the 1999 Academy Award, is absolutely clear eyed and absolutely damning. It takes for granted the moral squalor of the terrorist position and devotes itself instead to a searing indictment of the German government, which was effectively complicitous in the murder of the eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. As the film reveals, the entire anti-terrorist operation was incompetent beyond any rational explanation. After refusing to allow Israel to send a team of commandos, the Germans, for legal reasons not made clear, refused to give themselves permission to send in their own army units, and left the initial assault on the Israeli compound to untrained “border guards.” In any case, the Germans had to call off the assault when it finally occurred to them that the terrorists had been watching the preparations unfold on TV. At the airport there was yet more comedy: five sharpshooters for eight terrorists, and the undercover team planted on the jet waiting to whisk the terrorists out of the country refused to participate in the operation at the last minute because they felt it was too dangerous. There were supposed to have been armored cars as well, but somebody apparently forgot to make the phone call. There’s more – a lot more – but you get the idea. And in the end, of course, the Germans elaborately conspired to let the three surviving terrorists go free, necessitating the assassinations which presumably prompt so much hand-wringing in Mr. Spielberg’s film.
So incompetent and lackadaisical and indifferent do the Germans seem that one can’t help wondering if the old anti-Semitism was at work. Certainly some of the German officials interviewed for the film give grounds for suspicion. General Ulrich Wegener, who was, I believe, in charge of the counter-terrorist operation, recollects the gun battle at the airport:
>>[The terrorists] fired at the [airport] tower and I told >>[the Israeli minister] that he should lie down and he >>touched down under the desk.
At this point, Wegener inexplicably breaks into mirthful laughter.
>>Very funny, from our view today!
Dead Jews still get a laugh in Germany, it seems. And the head of the Olympic Village, who participated in the initial hostage negotiations, has this to say about the terrorist in command:
>>In a way I didn’t like Issa of course because of what he >>was doing, but I could have liked him if I had met him >>elsewhere. He was not violent.
Notice the telling qualifier “in a way.”
The film includes extensive conversation with Jamal Al Gashey, the lone surviving terrorist, who now lives in Africa with his wife and daughter. He says that he remains proud of his part in the murder of the Israeli athletes. I can only say that I hope that Mossad has not given up the trail, and that there remains a bullet with his name on it.
Kathleen Blanco was a German elected official?