[Chris Alger]

I haven't seen Paradise Now. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

When Meir says that there should be a price to be paid for killing Jews, she is implicitly saying that those who were targeted were culpable, a theme that's constantly echoed throughout this "revenge" movie, although the occasional doubt surfaces. The real story is that Israel murdered people who were just as innocent as the Israeli athletes. That point didn't come across in the movie. As for the portrayals of the assassination victims as gentle people, you'll recall that Rush claims without contradiction that all of them were actually terrorists guilty of specific acts of terrorism if not Munich itself, and that their deaths saved innocent lives. The movie leaves the viewer wondering why anyone should care if the victims were guilty of other murders instead of those at Munich. It's a variation on the theme that when confronting terror, one can't expect the Israel or the West to obsess over legal nicities and neatness, a view that is as conventional as it is dangerous. It's hard for me to imagine anyone leaving this movie with new second thoughts about U.S. support for Israel's killing machine.