Munich mastermind spurns Spielberg’s peace appeal
GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg’s new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation.
The Hollywood director has called “Munich,” which dramatizes the 1972 raid and Israel’s reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his “prayer for peace.” Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film.
He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and accused Spielberg of pandering to the Jewish state.
“If he really wanted to make it a prayer for peace he should have listened to both sides of the story and reflected reality, rather than serving the Zionist side alone,” Daoud told Reuters by telephone from the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Daoud said he had not seen the film, which will only reach most screens outside the United States next month.
But he noted that Spielberg arranged previews in Israel, where some have accused “Munich” of lacking historical accuracy.
Several Israeli historians have also complained about what they see as a moral symmetry in the film between slain Olympians and the Palestinians assassinated by the Mossad spy service.
“Spielberg showed the movie to widows of the Israeli victims, but he neglected the families of Palestinian victims,” said Daoud. “How many Palestinian civilians were killed before and after Munich?”
MOSSAD ASSASSINS
The Munich attack was “one of the pivotal moments of modern terrorism” he told Los Angeles Times in rare interview last week.
Daoud used different terms.
“We did not target Israeli civilians,” he said.
“Some of them (the athletes) had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier.”
Indiscriminate murder. That is what this was. If there were intellectual honesty here he would admit it and just leave it at that, but instead he tries to hide and spin it.
Not every soldier is a combat soldier. Some are nothing more than janitors/ secretaries with a military rank. You can’t make peace with people who have this kind of mentality.
Good intentions do not always pan out into good actions.
Well-said, Jack, Though well-intentioned, Spielberg is so sorely misguided…
How many people have I got to hurt before I get the privilege of denouncing a film without even having to actually see it?
Nah, it’s less labor-intensive to see the movie and formulate an informed opinion. This is why I’d be no good as a murderer, or a terrorist, or a commando, or a freedom-fighter, or whatever.
Why don’t I find these things surprising anymore?!
The irony of the situation is beyond belief. Spielberg goes out of his way to alienate his Jewish fans by producing a film that tries to morally equate the killing of terrorists with the killing by terrorists, in the hopes of appeasing said terrorists. And by their very words, they prove him wrong again. “The Mossad is not the same as us. We are MUCH MUCH MUCH worse than you thought!”
I wouldn’t expect anything else form heartless murderers.
What’s incredible is that have the gall to criticize the movie! What are tbe afraid of? That the movie ill portray them with a tiny bit of humanity?