Munich: A reflection of the world’s moral myopia

The movie Munich directs a world that is struggling with its moral compass in the wrong direction. I was anxious to see Spielberg’s new movie because I remember the 1972 Olympics vividly. It was one of those events that impacted my life in a powerful way. I had just turned eleven years old, was living in Israel, sports was my obsession and the Olympics were a worldwide forum for my heroes to compete. When the Palestinian terror faction, Black September, shot dead two members of Israel’s Olympic team and took nine other team members hostage, I was heart broken. Watching the masked terrorists on TV hour after hour and feeling the tension the adults around me were enduring was disconcerting and haunting. Somehow I just felt that the athletes would be ok, they would survive. I was on the couch about ten feet away from my mother when she answered the phone, suddenly she burst into tears, my world stood still, she sobbed, “they murdered all of the athletes”. That moment sucked the naiveté of my youth from my core and replaced it with a gut punch whose impact will stick with me the rest of my life.

I thought a movie titled “Munich” would be about how the Black September terrorist’s murdered eleven innocent athletes on a world stage that was meant to symbolize peaceful cooperation between nations. Instead, I saw a movie that preached how there is no difference between people that target and architect the deaths of innocent civilians and the people who try to stop them. It is all jumbled together, terrorist…counter terrorist, what’s the difference? Munich portrays charming Black September leaders, one having a neighborly interaction with a local grocery store proprietor while buying wine and cheese; another has a nice family with a cute child playing piano. Never mind that they have the athlete’s and many other innocents blood on their hands. Munich barely shows the suffering of the athletes and the fact that they were husbands and fathers.

Munich’s theme is about the moral struggle of the Israeli Mossad agents whose mission is to kill the terrorists that are responsible for the Olympic massacre. They are anguished and keep questioning if they are doing the right thing by killing the terrorists.

It is critical for a society to question its actions, to stop and ponder the morality of its strategies, tactics and methods. But, the context in which this is done is essential to the process. When a movie is called Munich it must be about the iniquity of the terrorist actions, instead Munich spends almost three hours implying that there is a moral equivalence between terrorists and those trying to stop terrorists.

The real 1972 Munich tragedy is a story that is fraught with moral failings. Israel offered to send in a counter terrorist commando unit to help free the hostages. Germany, despite having no anti terror forces and no experience with this type of hostage situation, refused the Israeli offer. The result was a German rescue fiasco that left the Israeli athletes shot to death. The botched rescue left three of the terrorists alive and in German hands. Doing what terrorist groups do best, Black September terrorists simply hijacked a Lufthansa airliner less than two months after the Olympics and demanded the release of the three captured Munich terrorists, Germany immediately crumbled and released the three terrorists. After the Olympics, Israel requested help from European nations in trying to stop the flourishing Palestinian terrorist operations based in Europe but they would not cooperate. Lastly, The International Olympic Committee despite numerous requests continually refuses to have any type of memorial to honor the slain athletes for fear that it might offend some participating countries. These are the events of dubious moral substance that should define the 1972 Munich tragedy.

Israel continues to target terror masterminds in its fight to quell terrorism. To explore its effectiveness as a tactic in reducing terrorism is fair. To doubt if it is a proper tactic on moral grounds is not. People must see through the muck and lock their gaze on the magnitude of difference between targeting and killing children in pizza shops and targeting and killing the terrorists who kill the children.