This commentary (rr) by Charles Krauthammer gives some of the reasons why I won’t be seeing Spielberg’s new movie Munich.
He could also have mentioned that killing murderers is not the same as murder.
Munich
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Well said by both of you.
I don't think that Krauthammer actually saw this film.
When I watched it, I saw a film about the futility of revenge and the personal price to paid for killing no matter how justified the act may or may not be. The violience is not romanticized, the characters (Jewish or Arab) are not glorified, and the political tone is kept to a minimum.
Ultimately I thought it to be a morality play that examined "eye for an eye" politics. Some of the Mossad agents began to question their mission because it became unclear how related certain targets were to the Munich murders. (How far this is from the truth I do not know.) Is six degrees of seperation close enough for justifiable homicide or maybe three or four? It's moral mathematics as its most fundamental.
Either way I would reccommend seeing it for yourself and then decide.
The conundrum Jason presents: you don't want to support (pay) the moviemakers, but you want an educated opinion.
Bittorrent is your friend
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Also, Jason… if things aren't even, if there really is one side doing wrong, then an even-handed approach is wrong. I'm not saying Israel is correct in all it's actions in history, just correct in this specific case.
How do you think Spielberg would feel if someone remade Schindler's List without brutal Nazis? Such an "even-handed" approach would be totally inappropriate.
Can I ask an honest question?
First, let me point out that I am ethnically jewish and in no way an anti-semite.
Do you all think that Isreal should have been established in the first place?
I'm asking because, I honestly don't know much about the situation besides that it was land given by people who didn't own it on the basis of ancestral homeland. that just doesn't hold much weight with me. Somebody was probably on that land before the Jews were. Couldn't they at least have bought the land from whoever was there or even built a jewish nation someplace else? Are there other arguments in favor of Isreal's existance that I don't know about? Please, don't cut off my head for this.
Josh,
Re; "Do you all think that Isreal should have been established in the first place?"
Short answer, no. Which is not to say that we should let them go under now. But we should definitely learn a lesson about meddling.
Jews began arriving in what is now Israel late in the 19th century, with the permission of the relevant political authority, the Turks. Even the King of what is now Jordan wanted them to come in to a blighted Palestine to develop it. Which they did.
The Jews bought swampland and drained it, they didn't take anything from anyone. Read Mark Twain or Herman Melville to find out how little was in Palestine prior to the Jews reestablishing a community there.
It was after WWI that Britain got a Mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations that the trouble started. The precursors of Yasser Arafat rioted and killed Jews trying to drive them away. They sided with Nazi Germany during WWII, and that had a lot to do with the United Nations voting to establish Israel (though the Jew's socialist leanings helped convince Stalin to support it).
After the 1947 vote David Ben Gurion broadcast a speech–which you can read online–that is magnanimous toward the Arabs; asking for cooperation, and peace. That was rejected by the Arabs. They chose war. Which they lost. And lost again, and again, and again.
The Arabs have only themselves to blame over Israel.
A few months ago, I was reading an old National Geographic, I believe from somtime around 1910. Anyway, it had an article about Jewish settlers in Palestine, and basically they were farming with modern (for that time) technology and methods, while the Arabs were using the same techniques that had been passed down over the years. Of course, this allowed the much more productive Jews to raise capital to expand their farms, buying land from Arab landowners in mutually beneficial transactions.
In fact, many Arab farmers were observing this and began adopting the methods of the Jews, and were slowly increasing their own productivity. The article portrayed the two races as living in harmony and peace (though this may have been wrong, and I believe there was some mention of past violence). There is something quite different between literally "stealing" land through force and subsequent occupation as opposed to simply buying "traditional" land that had been in Arab hands for ages. I really wish I would have bought that magazine, but that was the only good article so I simply read it in the store.
Although there may have been deep emotional attachment, any claims that it land should be redispersed according to ancient tribal guidelines is absurd.
After the failure of Arab states in multiple wars (often started as means to deflect their own internal problems), it was evident Israel's military was too great to be overcome conventionally, especially by poorly paid, trained, and motivated Egyptian and Syrian (and, of course, sundry other Arab nations') troops using inferior technology. So, because the Palestinian Arabs (or, many of them) did not have the capital to simply buy the land they desired as the Jews had done long ago, some resorted to terrorism.
Of course, all the strife caused by the multiple wars and riots had caused Israeli politics to move to a more pro-defense stance, and the Palestinian case, worsened by a sky-high birthrate that left large amounts of people in small spaces, was increasingly co-opted by terrorists like Arafat.
Sorry, your post is demonstrably false and you should change it to be accurate.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another. The Israeli hit squads were operating unlawfully in the countries where they acted, and probably under Israeli law as well.
This is not in any way to excuse the despicable acts to which they were responding nor the despicable acts to which the respondees were responding nor the . . . well you get the idea or would if you saw the movie.
This is only to point out that people always seem to find reasons for killing each other, and assuming for themselves the crown of all truth and goodness.
If both sides tried less killing and greater effort to have empathy with the experience of others the world would be far more peaceful.
I am not Jewish, Palestinian, or anything other than a human who tries to have empathy for and find peace with all other humans and who abhors killing.
Try it, it really is wonderful.
Best regards.
If the evil ("torture is sometimes OK") neocon shrink Krauthammer thinks Munich is bad, that's all the more reason to see it!
BTW, I have seen the movie and it's one of the best of the year. It challenges the viewer to think and offers no easy answers.
This blog posts a lot of opinion that runs counter to popular thought. I'm surprised to see such a closed-minded attitude here. It is possible that Krauthammer is correct. But isn't it also possible that he is a doctrinaire and his cinematic opinions are informed by this?
"there's only one thing I can't tolerate – and that's intolerance" so the words tolerances is not means assimilation but only accepted and respected as it is. What happened with them is just only their ego of superiority over the other; and it would never be happy ending stories could be achieved.
Krauthammer didn't see the movie.
The "Dutch prostitute" was actually an assassin who was hired by the PLO to kill one of the members of their team in retaliation for one of their bombings. Calling the woman a "prostitute" who was “apolitical, beautiful, [and] pathetic” indicates that he was either (A) asleep during the film or (B) heard about the film second hand from another source.
More importantly, the actual film bears no resemblance to what he describes in his article. The film is supportive of Israel's right to exist and simply takes a skeptical view of brute force political remedies.
Additionally, had Krauthammer actually seen the film he would know the reason that most of the assassination targets were portrayed in a non-murderous light is because most of them had no connection to the Munich massacre. The Mossad couldn't get a hold of most of the actual perpetrators, so they opportunistically filled the list with PLO leaders who had little, if any, connection to the massacre. This is made very clear in the film.
As for Tony Kushner being an anti-Zionist, Krauthammer is manipulating a single quote of Kushner’s – made in a speculative context – to imply that he is an Israel hater. At the end of “Angels in America,” Kushner, through one of his characters, makes it abundantly clear that he supports Israel’s right to exist. I’m no fan of Kushner or “Angels in America” – but Krauthammer is simply wrong of this issue.
Oh, and BTW, “killing murderers” before they’ve been tried and convicted is vigilante justice – which, if I’m not mistaken, still counts as murder.
I like the Israeli’s as people, but some of their government’s actions have been shameful. I won’t say otherwise to please the likes of Krauthammer – and neither should the makers of “Munich”.
Russell, see the movie and judge for your self.
Rule of law requires a fair trial by a jury of peers, something Americans are becoming less and less aquainted with these days. My curiosity has been aroused enough to want to see this movie now.
The Zionists (not all Jews are Zionists, you know) certainly may have legitimately begun their modern settlement of Canaan (Palestine being the name given to this land by Europeans)by buying the land. However, with the advent of their war for independence methods were employed that were less than you know what.
Does the Jewish secular mentality have a place for just war theory? The Libertarian tradition had its roots in this theory by virtue of its emergence from the Catholic Christian tradition. As Libertarianism, European, and popular American thought (ironically, especially evangelicals) loses its connection with just war we make vulnerable many, if not all, of our inherited rights. America lost its conscience in this regard during the Civil War when Union soldiers were encouraged by their officers to attack and impose force upon civilians. The southern gentlemen (let it be known now that I was born and raised a Yankee, now abiding in the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees known as CARY, NC) would not have considered such action against an enemy an option. It was the fascist (read: do whatever appears necessary) government of Abraham Lincoln that allow such attrocities to go unpunished and launched such a culture upon on unsuspecting world. The Great White Fleet, Commodore Perry, and every American military action since then have gradually eroded what little was left of just war opinion on this continent. Now we consider torture of our enemies legitimate, and invasion of citizens privacy constitutional.
We must remember that the nature of constitutional government arises from a tradition honoring worldview and that most constitutional law before America was unwritten. We must look beyond our written constitution to the traditions it was founded upon to interpret what is written and protect the liberties we hold dear.
To be honest, I think Ed has a good idea.
Whatever happened to the elementary school rule of "two wrongs dont make a right", or the biblical law that Jesus taught "turn the other cheek". I know not everyone believes in such things, but maybe if we gave peace a chance as opposed to starting wars and killing people, we might be able to work towards a more peaceful world.
That's fucking bullshit. In my world, two wrongs make a right.
And in any wise man's world, if some terrorists decide to screw with your people, you give them a fast, quick trip to hell.
Yes killing murderers is infact still murder, any sort of rationalization you make for it has to be logically unsound and pretty much a phylosophical joke
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