[Chris Alger]

The most recent book about the kill squads Mossad sent out after Munich, Striking Back, by Aaron J. Klein, apparently just came out on December 20. Klein asserts that nearly all of those Israel murdered did not plan and had nothing to do with Munich (to say nothing of the Moroccan waiter in Norway murdered in case of mistaken identity, a story that's been known for years). Indeed, the only Black September member directly involved in Munich wasn't killed until 1992. Klein also claims that Israel's operational goals had more to do with "deterrence" than actual revenge, although whether Israel sought to deter "terrorism" from those who weren't involved with terror rather than political activism by those who were politically active remains an open question. The book isn't moralistic or judgmental, according to the reviews, but raises questions about the nature and effect of assasination. Klein's bona fides appear sound: he's an Israeli journalist specializing in intelligence topics and reserve captain in IDF intelligence. He had unprecedented access to the Mossad guys who carried out the killings. In his NPR interview Klein points out that much of the movie is pure invention, such as the use of only one hit squad and the weirdly apolitical French family that supplies "Avner" with much of his intelligence.

The movie Munich isn't based on Klein's book but on another that came out in 1984 (republished last November), Vengeance, by right-wing Canadian journalist George Jonas. According to the Amazon blurb, it purports to be the account of only five "ordinary Israelis" (?) who embark on "a heroic endeavor . . . bought at a terrible cost to the idealistic volunteer agents themselves." Like the movie, it's basically a LaCarre tale "inspired" (as the movie puts it) by other facts.

I haven't read either book but just returned from the movie. There are several telling hints about the bigger and more important story that Klein reports but they're basically smothered by the spy movie stuff. Spielberg has claimed in interviews that he wants to raise questions about the cycle of Israeli-Palestinian violence, but other than some rhetorical dialogue it's hard to find where he did. After all, the victims in the movie are all psychotic Arab terrorists or their enablers, and the Israelis are reluctant and filled with angst about being sure to get the right guys and no civilians. Palestinians murder innocents, and Israelis murder those guys. It's the same old black-white propaganda line you see everywhere. There is one admission that maybe Israel shot some of the wrong guys, but the Mossad character who acknowledges it washes it away with the standard excuse, which goes uncontradicted: if the targets weren't involved with Munich they were involved with other specific terror acts.

All in all, Munich is just another layer of shmaltz on the ossified morality fable that constitutes popular understanding of the conflict, with all the trappings: Israel wants peace, never deliberately kills innocents, acts righteously if zealously in self-defense, cares not a fig for territorial aggrandizement, and so on. The notion that Munich bravely "humanizes" Palestinian terrorists to the point of challenging Israel is a joke.

Any real movie about this conflict would at least mention the following, all of which are forbidden in mainstream discourse:

1. Zionism was not a response to the holocaust but a direct offshoot of 19th century racial-supremacist colonialism. Israel remains a proud and determined ethnically supremacist state, unabashedly pledging perpetual adherence to the racist ideology of its founders.

2. Israel was born through an act of mass ethnic cleansing, precipitated by massacres, indiscriminate killings and rape, and throughout its history has been a serial cross-border aggressor.

3. Israel has killed more innocent civilians than all Arab terrorists in history and terrorism, defined as the deliberate use and threat of violence against civilians to accomplish political ends, has been a continuous Israeli practice since its founding and before. The worst offenders (Begin, Shamir, Sharon) rank among Israel's most powerful and respected leaders.

4. Israel has never accepted that the Arabs of Palestine are entitled to the same national right that Israel considers absolute, inviolable and even sacred for Jews: a national home in the land where they and their ancestors were born.

A movie in the 1980's, Little Drummer Girl, an actual LeCarre story, at least mentioned Deir Yasin. Don't expect Hollywood to do that anymore. Too many people who think we're at war with terrorism will call it treason.