On a Zionist collision course
RAKESH MEHAR
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Steven Spielberg's Munich, which joined the list of this year's controversial Oscar nominees, opens today
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FIVE-MAN ARMY The Israeli team that set out on Operation Wrath of God
As many people see it, primarily those with pro-Zionist sentiments, this year the Oscars have had a significant anti-Jewish component. After all, both the Best Foreign Film and Best Picture categories had a nominee each that dealt with the Israel-Palestine conflict in one form or another.
Hany Abu Assad's Paradise Now, nominated for Best Foreign Film followstwo Palestinians recruited for a suicide bombing who are forced by the entry of the daughter of a martyr, to reconsider the means to the end. The film courted controversy because of the somewhat heroic treatment it affords to the protagonists.Steven Spielberg's Munich, nominated for Best Picture, deals with the Israel counter-terrorist operation in the aftermath of the tragedy at the Munich Olympics in which members of the Palestinian group Black September killed 11 Israeli athletes. A team comprising of young Israeli intelligence officer Avram (Eric Bana), South-African getaway driver Steve (Daniel Craig), German Jew Hans (Hanns Zischler), toymaker-turned-explosives-expert Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz) and "clean-up" man Carl (Ciaran Hinds), is hired for Operation Wrath of God; to hunt down and eliminate the men accused of masterminding the operation. At the heart of the film, which opens this week, is the story of the psychological effects of this assignment on the men, who find it a hard task to complete despite the "glorious" cause behind it.
The story told in Munich has been condemned for creating what many call a moral equivalency between the murdered Olympians and the Palestinians assassinated by Mossad. A significant section of Zionist supporters see the film as Spielberg's betrayal of the Jewish cause, and a negation of the goodwill afforded to him as a result of Schindler's List.
However, Spielberg retaliated to these sentiments in an interview with Roger Ebert, the celebrated film critic of the Chicago Sun Times in which he asserted that the people who attack the movie based on "moral equivalence" often also say diplomacy itself is an exercise in moral equivalence, and that war is the only answer. He went on to say that these individuals also believe that fighting terrorism involves dehumanising the terrorists by asking no questions about who they are and where they come from. Ironically, the film has also faced censure from Palestinian supporters who say the film only shows the Israeli side of the issue. Despite the burdensome baggage that comes with the subject being dealt with, critics say that the film is less weighty than Spielberg's previous creations such as Schindler's List. The film has received a fast-paced treatment typical of the action film genre, mainly due to the questionable nature of the source for the movie's script. Written by the unlikely duo of Tony Kushner, who penned Angels in America and Eric Roth of Forrest Gump fame, the script derives almost completely from a book named Vengeance by Canadian journalist George Jonas. Vengeance, in turn, was based on information given by Yuval Aviv, who experts say has never even worked for Mossad, much less participated in Operation Wrath of God. Tellingly, despite a lot of critical acclaim, Munich hasn't done very well at the box office. If this failure comes from a lack of mass appeal or from the questionable content of the film, one will never know.
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