We watched Munich after hearing an interview with Tony Kushner (author of “Angels in America” which I have written about before) on a Haaeretz podcast. Interestingly there is a production of Angels in Tel Aviv right now that is supposedly amazing. Munich is a movie from 2005 directed by Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner about Mossaud’s attempt to assinate those involved with the deaths of Israeli Athletes on black September 1972 Olympics. The lines could be lines directed toward all of us today. Like all good art it reaches across space and time to speak to us about our own condition.
Ali: Eventually the Arab states will rise against Israel. They don't like Palestinians, but they hate the Jews more. It won't be like 1967. The rest of the world will see by then what the Israelis do to us. They won't help when Egypt and Syria attack. Even Jordan. Israel will cease to exist. What?
Avner: This is a dream. You can't take back a country you never had.
Ali: You sound like a Jew.
Avner: Fuck you. I'm the voice inside your head telling you what you already know. You people have nothing to bargain with. You'll never get the land back. You'll die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine.
Ali: We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.
Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them... and thinks you animals.
Ali: Yes. But then the world will see how they've made us into animals. They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.
Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs.
Ali: You're a Jew sympathizer. All you Germans, you're too soft on Israel. Well, you give us money, but you feel guilty about Hitler. And the Jews exploit that guilt. My father didn't gas any Jews.
Avner: Tell me something, Ali.
Ali: What?
Avner: Do you really miss your father's olive trees? Do you honestly think you have to get back all that... that nothing? that chalky soil and stone huts? Is that what you really want for your children?
Ali: It absolutely is. It will take a hundred years, but we'll win. How long did it take the Jews to get their own country? How long did it take the Germans to make Germany?
Avner: And look how well that worked out.
Ali: You don't know what it is not to have a home. That's why you European Reds don't get it. you say, "It's nothing," but you have a home to come back to. ETA, ANC, IRA... we all pretend we care about your international revolution... but we don't care. We want to be nations. Home is everything.
And then this scene
Avner: If these people committed crimes we should have arrested them. Like Eichmann.
Ephraim: If these guys live, Israelis die. Whatever doubts you have Avner, you know this is true.
[Avner walks away]
Ephraim: You did well but you're unhappy.
Avner: I killed seven men.
Ephraim: Not Salameh. We'll get him of course.
[Avner continues to walk away]
Ephraim: You think you were the only team? It's a big operation, you were only a part. Does that assuage your guilt?
Avner: Did we accomplish anything at all? Every man we killed has been replaced by worse.
Ephraim: Why cut my finger nails? They'll grow back.
Avner: Did we kill to replace the terrorist leadership or the Palestinian leadership? You tell me what we've done!
Ephraim: You killed them for the sake of a country you now choose to abandon. The country your mother and father built, that you were born into. You killed them for Munich, for the future, for peace.
Avner: There's no peace at the end of this no matter what you believe. You know this is true.