On Screen and Off, The Real Bad Guys

There have been many disturbing articles written about Steven Spielberg's "Munich" but few have been as distressing as Henry Siegman's "The Killing Equation" in the Feb. 9 New York Review of Books.

"Munich" tells the story of the Israeli athletes slain at the 1972 Olympics, and the Israeli effort to hunt down the Black September terrorists who perpetrated the crime.

For the majority of his article, Siegman - now a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, and formerly the executive head of the American Jewish Congress - attempted to refute those who say Spielberg glorified the Palestinian terrorists and denigrated the Israeli commandos.

In fact, he argues, the director went out of his way to humanize the Israelis, who, unlike the Palestinians, agonize over their assignments and philosophize about their purpose, asking whether they have been doing the right thing or simply spreading more evil. In fact, the main terrorist becomes so disillusioned by what he's done, he decides by the end of the film never to return to the Jewish state.

There's no need to dismantle this argument. I can see how he got there, though I don't agree. I think, in fact, that through every cinematic avenue open to him, Spielberg (and perhaps even more so his screenwriter, Tony Kushner) demonizes the Israelis so that by the end they seem downright ghoulish.

But that's not what bothers me so much. His article is typical of The New York Review, which chooses some writer with impeccable "Jewish" credentials to attack Israel so that it can't be categorized as anti-Semitic (its editors are Jewish). And writers like Siegman love getting "in" with the urban intellectual elite, and all it costs them is some anti-Israel invective.

The disquieting part was Siegman's use of the film to comment on the Israeli-Palestinian problem (which seems a dangerous exercise) and what appeared to be an explanation, if not a justification, for suicide bombers.

Siegman notes that even though there's no equivalence between Palestinian terror and Israeli retaliation, for him, there's a more relevant comparison - "between how Israelis acted during their struggle for independence and statehood - not how they act long after they achieved these goals - and how Palestinians who are still very much in the midst of a war for their independence are acting now. Few seem to be aware of, and even fewer are willing to acknowledge, that important difference."

Siegman goes on to use the work of historian Benny Morris to show how the Israelis resorted to "ethnic cleansing." He insists that this does not confer any legitimacy on the "morally indefensible atrocities" committed by Palestinians, but considering what the Israelis did, what could you expect? The fact that no real comparison between these two "wars" exists- at least for those who know history - doesn't seem to phase Siegman.