Spielberg's new fiction-`The Warm, Cuddly Freedom Fighters of Munich'

Steven Speilberg has performed a wonderful service to us all with his new film `Munich'.

Y'see, those Palestinian terrorists who murdered those Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972 were really just misunderstood freedom fighters...and warm, cuddly guys with families besides.

Who knew?

The movie is a revisionist take on the deliberate targeting by the PLO of Israeli atheletes at the Munich Olympics, which ended up with 11 defensless Israeli athletes slaughtered like sheep. And the aftermath, in which the Israeli government dispatched Mossad hit teams to track down and liquidate the perpetrators.

The original script apparently was too pro Israeli and (heaven forbid!) actually demonized the Palestinian terrorists, so Spielberg hired Leftist playwrite Tony Kushner to do a rewrite. Kushner's politics are all over the film like fecal matter in a used diaper. And with a similar aroma.

Kushner, you see, has a thing about Israel and `Zionists'. From the safety of America, of course.

Last year, in an interview Kushner said, “I think the founding of the State of Israel was for the Jewish people a historical, moral, political calamity.... I wish modern Israel hadn’t been born.”

Kushner also co-edited, along with Alisa Solomon, an viciously anti-Israel book called 'Wrestling With Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict' that could easily have been written by Ramzy Barzoud, Nabil Shaath, Rachel Corrie, Saeb Erekat or any other Palestinian groupie you care to name. The Forward`s Ami Eden wrote of that book: “... reading [it] takes you to an alternative universe, where the Israel of today has reoccupied Palestinian territories and is adopting harsh security measures — but not in response to a Palestinian-launched intifada bent on blowing up babies on buses. Instead, Israel’s presence in the territories today is primarily the product of — Kushner and Solomon’s words — ‘Ariel Sharon’s mad, bloody dream of Greater Israel, which he and his comrades of the radical Israeli right have pursued for decades.’ ”

Kushner's agenda is pretty obvious...and odious.

So it's no mystery that the film shows no difference between the deliberate Palestinian targeting of innocent civilians and the Israeli retaliation against terrorists. To Spielberg, Kushner and company it's all one even handed `cycle of violence' in the best progressive tradition. Of course, one thing conveniently omited from the film is the reason why Israel unleased the Mossad; because those progressive European nations were deathly afraid of Palestinian terrorist retaliation and refused to extradite any of the known perpetrators to Israel for trial.

The film is ultimately boring because it trips over itself trying to balance the unbalanceable. And it has no place for Israel, because it refuses to recognize the reason for for Israel's existence in the first place.

Spielberg himself obviously set out to make this kind of a movie.

Here he is in an interview with Time’s Richard Schickel: “I think the thing I’m very proud of is that [screenwriter] Tony Kushner and I and the actors did not demonize anyone in the film. We don’t demonize our targets. They’re individuals. They have families. Although what happened in Munich I condemn.”

Gee, Steven, why condemn it? Isn't it all part of the `cycle of violence'? After all, why demonize the Palestinians for killing Jews? If you take the stance that Israel has no real purpose for existing, why would Munich or any other manifestation of Arab terrorism against Israel be a problem?

Perhaps Spielberg is simply more comfortable with Jews as victims than he is with the idea of Jews defending themselves against their avowed enemies.

The real problem with 'Munich', aside from its nauseating take on Israel and Zionism is that it equates counterterrorism with terrorism, as though they are one and the same and come from the same motivations.

Only a clueless and irresponsible person who's never smelled terrorism up close could hold such views.

One thing about the film..it's aptly named. With its political stance of appeasement and `understanding their rage', the title`Munich' is quite fitting.

Munich, 1938 that is.