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Howard Galganov manages the Promar Media Group, an advertising agency that specializes in the hospitality industry. He was the host of a popular Montreal radio talk show and a cofounder of the Quebec Political Action Committee (QPAC) that promoted equal citizenship for Quebec's minorities. He now lives with his wife on a small horse farm in southeastern Ontario. More articles by Galganov and information about his book, Bastards can be found on his .
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By Howard Galganov
December 27, 2005
I've been hearing and reading a great deal about Spielberg's movie "MUNICH". The reviews haven't been good.
My sister and brother-in-law saw the movie last night (December 25, 2005) in New York City (it hasn't opened yet in a theatre near me).
What she said was:
Spielberg made a movie that showed Israel, and the Israelis involved in the assassination of the Palestinians who murdered 11 Israeli athletes as being either incompetent, vicious, and/or so remorseful, that they lost their souls.
In essence; Spielberg couldn't have made Israel look worse if he tried.
She also went on to say that MUNICH shed some of Spielberg's insight into the Palestinian psyche, showing their human side.
Much of what I've read about this movie from Israelis and Israeli reviewers was boiled down in one Israeli article: "Spielberg is a suicide bomber with a camera".
As people were leaving the New York Theatre where my sister and brother-in-law saw the movie, my sister overheard one movie-goer say: "This is the worst dreck I've ever seen".
I read an in-depth interview with Spielberg in today's (December 26, 2005) National Post Newspaper on page 2 no less, where he defended his movie like a person would defend himself, who just got caught sleeping with his best friend's wife.
He used a great many words to say nothing. He emphasized how much he loves Israel, and how much he agrees that Israel has a right to attack those who attack them.
In other words, he has no problem with Israel delivering retribution for TERRORIST attacks. But according to this interview in the National Post, we should see both sides of the conflict.
Spielberg intimated that there is no simple way to look at Israel's response to the murder of 11 of her athletes at the Munich Olympics. And that people who view this film should be confused since it is such a complicated story.
Here's a new's flash for Spielberg. It isn't complicated.
A group of bloodthirsty Arab TERRORISTS came to the 1972 Munich Olympic Games with the single purpose of murdering Jewish Israeli Athletes. And they succeeded.
If people (Liberals) like Spielberg think that it's so important to show moral equivalence in everything, such as he did in his movie MUNICH: why then didn't he do it in Schindler's List?
Why doesn't Spielberg do a movie that shows the other side of the Holocaust? Were the Nazis so wrong, that even he couldn't find for them any redemption?
But for the Bastards who murdered the Israeli Athletes, in Spielberg's mind, there seems to be some kind of moral equivalence between Palestinian murderers and the Israeli Jews who hunted them down.
It's enough that famous Hollywood types think that their fame and wealth give them some kind of edge on moral superiority. But for Spielberg to make a "documentary" such as this, goes beyond enough.
As Israeli Jews endure worldwide threats everyday, the last thing they need is a Spielberg piling-on with conjecture of his own, vis a vis Michael Moore with his embellished "documentaries".
Israel has to face virtually EVERY Palestinian, whose only dream is to drive every last Jew out of Israel.
Israeli Jews are denied access to United Nations institutions and committees, that the most horrific and obscene nations are accepted in with outstretched arms.
In addition to everything else Israel has to deal with, they also have to bear the burden of intellectual and commercial boycotts throughout the Western Democratized World.
And then there's Iran with its soon-to-be nuclear arsenal.
The screenwriter for this Spielberg movie is Tony Kushner, who long before this movie, is on record as saying: "He wishes Israel was never born". Some balance?
For all the great entertainment Spielberg has brought to the giant screen. And for his incredible story of Schindler's List, none of it means a thing to me now that he has used his remarkable talent and spectacular reputation to deliver a below the belt body blow to Israel.
Even though I believe my sister and brother-in-law, and so many of the critics who can't find enough bad things to say about this movie, I will still see it for myself.
And if what I see is different from everything I've heard and read, I will be writing an apology.
But if I were you, I wouldn't be holding my breath any time soon for the apology that will most probably never have to be written.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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