Is movie "Munich" propoganda?

[Chris Alger]

"So what, most ethnically monotone countries are like that. Try not being Japanese in Japan and see how far you get. Arabs with Isreal citizenship can own businesses, run for office, vote, and generally not be stoned in the street just for being a different race."

Israel is not "ethnically monotone" but 20% non-Jewish. (This is just within the Green Line; about 40% of all people living under Israeli rule aren't Jewish). After living under martial law for 20 years after independence, Israeli-Arabs continue to face a host of debilitating discriminatory practices, particularly relating to housing, education, public services, land ownership, employment and marriage. Israel is the only nation state in the world that doesn't purport to belong to its citizens, but to an ethnic group that includes both non-citizens and excludes its own residents. Ethnic supremacism in other countries is considered regretable, backward, a sound basis for criticism or an embarrassment. In Israel it is not only a symbol of national pride by a vital element, often put forth as the most vital element, of national identity and culture. A couple of weeks ago Congress passed another of its pro-Israel resolutions demanding that the PA recognize Israel's right to exist "as a Jewish state." Try to imagine Congress acknowledging the right of Japan, Canada or Mexico to exist as states belonging exclusively to their dominant ethnic groups to the exclusion of their minority citizens. Canada as a state for "true" Canadians, Rwanda for the Hutus, or something similar. Everyone in the world would denounce it as racist.

"Isreal was born of a 1947 partition by the UN. Isreal accepted it, and Arabs didn't. There was a war where lots of people died and were misplaced. If the Arabs hadn't invaded there would be no war and no one would have died."

Israel was not created by any UN resolution and Palestinian Arabs and Israelis were fighting and dying for six months before the armies of the Arab states invaded.

Israel didn't "misplace" its Arab population, it turned some 80-90% of them into permanent refugees, in defiance of international law and simple morality. It drove them out and mined the borders and enforced shoot-to-kill orders to prevent them from returning, killing thousands of civilians who tried to return (Morris estimates 2,700 to 5,000, based on Israeli documents) while seizing their land and property in their absence. Your passively voiced "lots of people . . . were misplaced" is like the Serbs pointing to Bosnia and saying "mistakes were made."

Since 1948 it has been Israel, not any Arab entity, that has unilaterally refused to declare its borders (even to this day) or resolve its border disputes other than by unilateral force. The non-binding resolution was in Nov. 1947; Israel declared independence without declaring bound by the borders proposed by the UN in May 1948, by which time it had already grabbed some of the land designated for the independent Arab state and was negotiating for a Jordanian Hashemite takeover of the remainder. Israeli military forces would grab even more land, including West Jerusalem, during the 1948 war. At the Lausanne peace conference, Israel refused the Arab request to negotiate on the basis of the UN partition resolution. Israel subsequently tried to grab even more land: unsuccessfully in 1956, sucessfully in 1967 and with mixed success in 1982. As the uproar over the Gaza pullout revealed, a sizeable political force that believes that all occupied territories are part of Israel and the whole spectrum of Israeli and U.S. opinion acknowledges Israel's "right" to retain its settlement colonies come what may.

In the U.S. and Israel, maps often show a unified "Israel" including the occupied territories. Palestinian maps showing Israel and the territories as "Palestine" are constantly denounced as proof of Palestinian genocidal intent, one of the many contradictions that make it hard to take Israel's legendary "acceptance" of partition seriously.

"There is a difference between targeting civilians and civilians getting caught in the cross fire."

I know, that's why I said "deliberately." I'm referring to cases where Israel pointed its guns at civilians and shot them. Shelling, bombing or strafing an apartment building or refugee camp hoping to pick off a terrorist (or "militant" or other troublemaker) is no better than blowing up a bus hoping to kill an off-duty corporal. Your argument for slaughtering civilians is very similar to that made by apologists for Palestinian terror, that since nearly all Israeli adults are reservists, Israeli civilians are equally fair game.

"Since then [1947] Isreal has made numerous attempts to have a Palestinian state . . . ."

Name one.

[Cyrus]

Excellent post, Chris Alger. Some remarks :

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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.

[/ QUOTE ] I beg to differ. In light of subsequent Israeli actions, this is an open and shut case, IMHO.

Every time the radical Palestinian factions were nearing a cease fire decision or actually declaring a provisional and unilateral cease fire, Israel assassinated a Palestinian leader (usually with lots of "collateral damage" but this is besides the point). And every time, the immediate consequence of such an action was, of course, the resumption of the terrorist and other attacks by enraged Palestinians against Israel -- and then the shelving of whatever progress towards peace was been attempted.

The reason is quite obvious. The strategy of Israel has remained constant throughout six decades. Israel strongly prefers to deal with radical rather than moderate Palestinians. When Israel's opponents are radicals (i.e. "terrorists", "animals", "brutes"), there is less pressure for peace and accomodation with the natives. (Not that there is a significant pressure on Israel in any case!) But when the opponents are moderates, Israel cannot provided justification for its continued obstinacy.

This is why, for the last thirty years, the PLO keeps making steps towards whatever Israel demands (recognition of Israel; guarantees of its security; etc) and Israel keeps demanding more. The objective is to discredit the moderates, in the eyes of Palestinians, and bolster the extremists, such as Hezbollah.

Moderate Palestinian negotiators means only one thing : potential loss of land for Israel. Radical Palestinian extremists means holding on to and "cleansing" the West Bank.

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Like the movie, it's basically a LeCarré tale "inspired" (as the movie puts it) by other facts.

[/ QUOTE ] I haven't yet seen the movie but I get the impression that it should be compared more with Arnaud de Borchgrave pap. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

[twowords]

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I don't know why you think they are incorrect. If you can provide links to the contrary go ahead. I'll go down the line:

Here's a basic reference point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab-Israeli_conflict

"The side that was mostly Jewish residents was made into Isreal, and the side that most mostly Arabs was made into Palestine."

At the time of partition the whole region was 1/3 Jewish and 2/3 Arab (remeber, huge numbers of Jews had immigrated to Isreal over the last 50 years, and more were comming). Isreal was to take 55% of available land, but the vast majority of it was uninhabited desert in the south.


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The original sentence was crap, geographically and it implied that the partition was perfectly rational and fair. Jewish immigrants were 1/3 of the population and owned 6% of the land; they got 55% of the land incuding the most fertile coast land, while the large desert section you called worthless was intensely lobbied for by the Jewish representatives in the UN debate. It allowed access to a key strategic port. There were no Jews even living there, but Jewish and American lobbying won out. We had senators and even justices calling heads of state to coerce them into accepting a partition that: a) the whole Middle East continent was opposed to and would fight to prevent and b) no outside power would enforce, making it not peacefully feasible.

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From the map you can tell that the partition palestine is much larger then the current west bank and gaza strip. Most of Isreal proper was sparsely inhabited desert in the south that niether side used. The rest of Isreal roughly follows where the Jews had settlements.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1947_UN_Partition_Plan

"The land that was suppose to be Palestine was conquered by Jordan and Eqypt."
It was, there is no dispute to be had here. Check the main source I listed at the beginning.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well yes some of it, but your statement was still not accurate; it implied that Israel stuck to its boundaries. You say that "from the map you can tell that the partition palestine is much larger then the current west bank and gaza strip" and yet these are essentially the areas Jordan and Egypt controlled in 1949. What happened to the rest of the "much larger partition Palestine" I wonder?
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"The terms of the earlier UN treaty were broken by Eqypt who allied itself with Syria and Jordan who all built up large military forces to invade Isreal."

following the Egyptian closure of the Straits of Tiran (a casus belli, according to a possible interpretation of international law), a build up of troops along the Syrian border, expulsion of U.N. peacekeepers from the Sinai, stationing some 100,000 Egyptian troops at the peninsula, and a public announcement by Nasser that he intended to destroy Israel.

"The goal was [to] the same as it was in 1948 and other times, kill every Jew in Isreal."
These quotes would be easy to find. They won't be hidden, the constant call for the destruction of Isreal has been uttered in every Arab country since 1947. Recentely it was the loudly proclaimed official policy on Iran's democratically elected president.

But here's a quick one from 1947:
"This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." (by Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam Pasha, Secretary General of the Arab League, in anticipation of victory over the new Jewish state in 1948 by the five invading Arab armies.



"suppose to be the nuetral"
As part of the 1956 peace agreement. The UN stationed a peacekeeping force there. Eqypt expelled it and stationed its own troops there for an invasion.


[/ QUOTE ]

The Israeli attack against Egypt was not a pre-emptive war. Nasser did close the Strait to Israeli shipping, but despite the rhetoric there was no invasion planned and Egypt planned to negotiate with the US to engineer a political victory. Israel invaded because this was deemed preferable to a Egyption political victory. Argument for preventative war or justified war are presentable (although still not acceptable) but arguments that 1967 was a pre-emptive war are downright laughable.

Don't bother replying with a Nasser quote along the lines of "drive them into the sea" or what not. He sent the troop into the Sinai in defensive posture, mistaken into thinking they could hold against Israeli attackers but knowing an invasion would certainly fail. He held them there for 2 weeks while sending negotiators to the States; why the hell was he waiting/negotiating if he wanted to invade?

Was it a justified attack on Israel's part? That is a tougher question, but still clearly the answer to that is no.

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"[note: Israel had significant military superiority over 3 adversaries]"
Isreal was outnumbered in manpower, tanks, equipment, economies and populations of its enemies. Eqypt had a large modern air force and nearly all the Arab states had been trained and supplied by the Soviet Union. Isreal was outnumbered and outgunned as it was in 1947-48, and succeeded only through its own cunning strategy and the complete incompetence and uncoordination of its foes.



[/ QUOTE ]

Regardless, US intelligence predicted an easy victory for Israel against all 3 Arab states.

[adios]

No it's not propaganda. It's a message movie though. I didn't find anything satisfying about this movie i.e. the killing and violence which I think was what Spielberg intended. In fact I found this movie extremely unsatisfying but that isn't a slam on the movie. I think Spielberg conveyed the message he wanted to convey and I think he did that fairly well in this movie.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

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Wowser! That's not my take on the movie at all and I couldn't disagree more with you. In fact part of the message from the movie is that the killing by the Israeli agents is not righteous as it is pointless and wrong. This movie shines an unfavorable light on Israel in many, many ways.

[Peter666]

"The reason is simple, the Palestinians don't want a two state solution. They want every Jew in the middle east dead."

Why do they want every Jew dead?

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Spielberg doesn't claim to be an historian."

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"An historian"

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I was British in my last life.

My favorite is when they say, "an hotel." [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

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John Cole prefers "a historian" to "an historian." That should settle it I hope.

[twowords]

[ QUOTE ]

Every time the radical Palestinian factions were nearing a cease fire decision or actually declaring a provisional and unilateral cease fire, Israel assassinated a Palestinian leader (usually with lots of "collateral damage" but this is besides the point). And every time, the immediate consequence of such an action was, of course, the resumption of the terrorist and other attacks by enraged Palestinians against Israel -- and then the shelving of whatever progress towards peace was been attempted.


[/ QUOTE ]

From what I know this theory of such a deliberate and manipulative Israeli policy is certainly plausible, even believable. Still, would you provide specifics/links to support it?

The first thing that comes to mind were the Palestinian academics who gave presentations on a two-state solution during the first Intifada, only to be thrown in jail for months for no reason. The government of Israel seemed to be infinitely more worried about moderate Palestinians rallying support for a peace agreement during the uprising than the uprising itself, which could be taken care of by Sharon's "break their backs" policy since those Arabs only understand force (predictably this merely escalated things).

[andyfox]

"Klein also claims that Israel's operational goals had more to do with 'deterrence' than actual revenge"

I can't remember the exact words, but the movie does show Golda Meir saying something like the world needs to know there's a price to be paid for killing Jews.

"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"

I thought the final shot was a summary of Speilberg's thoughts, namely, as one of the characters says, violence leads only to more violence. One of the victims was shown as a scholarly interpreter of books. Another was shown as an intellectual family man living an apparently upper class/bourgeois life in Paris.

Jeffrey Rush's character was particularly unlikable, deliberately so. The assassination squad's handlers don't really care what they do, so long as they get their revenge. I thought Spielberg was trying to show that evil can be found anywhere, hence the seemingly casual meeting with Meir and others where there is a lot of talk about getting receipts for the expenses of killing, but not about justice or morality.

Spielberg has been a big supporter of Israel and Jewish causes. This movie represents a big step for him from where he's been. I eat at his mother's restaurant and I can tell you it's a major step for him. As I posted elsewhere, I've seen him at our temple and his daughter has to attend under an assumed name. I see Munich as a personal exploration of why that has to be. He's one of the biggest names, if not the biggest in Hollywood history; I think a fair comparison might be how he deals with issues compared to, say, Louis B. Mayer. Speilberg comes out well in the comparison.

Have you seen Paradise Now?

[andyfox]

John's an hypocrite.