One of the first terrorist attacks to receive the attention of the world was the 1972 slaughter of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. According to a recently released interview, the man (I won''t even give him the courtesy of putting his name in print) who orchestrated the attack, told his German interviewer that , "I regret nothing. You can only dream that I would apologize." He then proceeds to say that they never intended on killing the Israelis, though the facts make it clear they had every opportunity to release them instead of executing them while they were restrained. So which truth are we to believe?
This brings me to Steven Spielberg's recently released film, Munich. A recently published interview with Spielberg quotes him as saying "he would die for Israel." Who is he kidding? As a Jewish American he prides himself on "humanizing" these terrorists and suggesting the need to understand our enemy and what motivates them. I find this so outrageous I can hardly respond in language that is printable. How other Jews can judge him as anything but a blind pacifist and a traitor is beyond my understanding. These athletes were massacred for being Jews....not for anything they did. He told Time magazine that this movie was his "prayer for peace", yet he is trying to morally equate acts of the Palestinian terrorists with the Israeli response (in the movie it was fictionalized, but the ones found and killed were killed for what they did, not who they were) . I understand that somewhere near the end of the movie, there is a shot of the twin towers. How can we think anything other than he is trying to parallel the U.S. response to the terrorists attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 with the Israeli response to the massacres in Munich? This is sick! This kind of moral relativism only trivializes the deaths of those innocent young men as well as all other innocents who have been massacred by these Muslim terrorists. Is almost everyone in Hollywood morally bankrupt? ( I know the answer to that)
Until reading these last interviews, I had seriously contemplated seeing this movie, but in good conscience cannot imagine spending money to see it now. I will have to think some more about whether I want to ever see another Spielberg movie. Perhaps he would be better off making movies about gay cowboys.
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"GIZMO"
WHERE THERE IS MUCH DESIRE TO LEARN, THERE OF NECESSITY WILL BE MUCH ARGUING, MUCH WRITING, MANY OPINIONS; FOR OPINIONS IN GOOD MEN IS BUT KNOWLEDGE IN THE MAKING. by John Milton
MY SWEET BOY
"GIZMO"
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- Cynthia Freeman Pentino.
2 comments:
Well, I am taken aback! You have many hidden talents.
I don't understand why you are so upset about this film. Terrorists ARE human. They show us the darker side of existence, but they do have motivations for what they do (no matter how twisted and sick they may be). I think turning them into something grotesque and otherworldly accomplishes some things that may not be in our best interest. For example, making us feel different, more human, or more special than the terrorists makes us feel like we can avoid ruminating on the whys of their actions. We cannot afford to ignore the reasoning behind terrorism because we cannot defeat that which we cannot understand.
Ignoring their motivations allows history to repeat itself, and make no mistake, the phrase "never again" carries ZERO weight. Genocide, massacres, and other acts of violence are visited on innocents the world over every day. We know about it. We sit there and watch it on our televisions. From Rwanda's slaughter to Pol Pot's Cambodian nightmare, we sat back and watched the most heinous acts of violence be perpetrated upon thousands of innocents. But do not misunderstand me... this doesn't necessarily make us evil. It is part and parcel of what simply makes us human, warts and all as they say. This is the ugly face of fear. Fear that our party won't win the next election if we do something to jeopardize international relations, fear that we might suffer heavy casualties, fear that intervening may cause more backlash than we'd suspected, fear that our economy may be crippled if we do fight... Fear is part of what makes us human and keeps us alive even if it is ugly and distasteful at times. Some of these fears are unfounded and some are not. We just have to know where to draw that line.
You cannot completely separate who someone is from what they do. If you are a terrorist, you carry out murder and mayhem. They choose innocents in order to say, "look, this could just as easily happen to you," causing terror among the populace which can cause governments to falter or even topple. It is their raison d'etre. So, maybe being a Jew is what got each Olympian killed, and being an American is what got the Twin Tower victims killed... to an extent. And if you'd seen the movie you might ask yourself tougher questions about who was killed in the backlash and why, but I won't ruin it for you. Don't kid yourself--everything is political about BOTH atrocities. Don't oversimplify the terrorists' motivations as antisemitism because it is only a tiny part of the big picture. It is the easiest answer but not necessarily the most true.
As for Spielberg's "I'd die for Israel" comment... maybe he is overstating his loyalty--maybe not. But wouldn't you like to believe that about yourself? Wouldn't we all LIKE to believe that, given the chance, we'd kick some terrorist butt? Few of us probably would, but without the hope that we'd act like the passengers of Flight 93 and do what is right no matter how frightening and deadly, what are we? Afraid.
And your "gay cowboy movies" comment... Are you saying that homosexuality is immoral? Because if you are, that's perfectly fine--you are entitled to your opinion and the expression thereof because of the first amendment. However, we cannot pretend that they don't exist, can we? What purpose will that serve? What does a statement like that say to someone else about what you believe? You are here to seek your own truth and find your path.
And what are values if not a combination of facts and feelings? If your conscience is a conduit to God, Yaweh, Allah, then how can you hear that still, small voice without listening to your heart? And how factual are your facts? Do you question what you are told? It takes a lot of investigating to find the truth in the tangled web we weave. That's exactly what this movie is all about. I strongly recommend it.
"Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness."
William Watson
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