August 31, 2011, - 5:14 pm
“The Debt”: Fast-Paced & Thrilling, But It’s Fiction & Defames Mossad
“The Debt,” a thriller about Mossad agents debuts in theaters, today. It’s fast-paced, thrilling, the acting is very good (even the Israeli accents aren’t bad), and the young stars are gorgeous, but like every other movie about the Mossad, these days, it’s defamatory fiction. The Mossad doesn’t screw up. It never lost a high-value Nazi target in its possession, but in this fiction, Mossad agents repeatedly screw up and their Nazi hostage easily escapes. Oh, and the Mossad agents are a menage-a-trois. The slutty female Mossad agent (Jessica Chastain) sleeps with both her male colleagues, getting pregnant by the “wrong” one.
The last time I saw a movie with a Mossad agent who was proud of her job, did it successfully, and didn’t whine, mope, and endlessly pontificate, it was the ’80s TV movie, “Steal the Sky,” in which Mariel Hemingway plays the Mossad agent who seduced and blackmailed one of Saddam Hussein’s pilots into flying a Soviet MiG to Israel. She doesn’t feel guilty that she did her job. And she doesn’t screw up. Since then, whether it’s “Walk on Water,” or “Munich” (read my review), or “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” (read my review)–and now, “The Debt,” Mossad agents have been portrayed on-screen by Hollywood and Israeliwood as basket cases, guilt-ridden incompetents, and people who just aren’t happy that they got rid of mass murderers and scumbags. Or, in this case, that they lost a Nazi target, after screwing up.
In real life, that’s just not the Mossad. It’s the best spy agency and assassin team in the world, even beating out the elite Navy SEAL Team Six (in a head-to-head contest played out on Spike TV’s “Deadliest Warrior”). In recent months, the Mossad swiftly and cleanly eliminated an Iran-backed HAMAS arms dealing terrorist murderer from the face of the planet. Despite multiple accolades from the media for the Inspector Clouseau-esque police chief of Dubai, the assassins who did the Mossad hit were never caught. Not even a whiff of them. And after that, Mossad agents mysteriously kidnapped HAMAS’ chief rocket engineer (the man who found a way to send missiles farther into Israel) on a Ukraine train, ushering him to Israel without anyone the wiser, until the man was indicted. This is the real Mossad, not the fictional, angst-ridden, soap opera version in “The Debt.”
I mention Israeliwood because “The Debt” is a remake of the Israeli original, “HaChov (also spelled “HaHov”) [The Debt],” written by yet another leftist Israeli Mossad hater. And two gay Israeli filmmaker lovers made “Walk on Water,” in which a Mossad agent doubts himself for going after HAMAS terrorists and can’t even bring himself to murder an easier target–a dying Nazi. It takes the Nazi’s gay grandson to do the job because the Mossad guy is so wimpy and emotional. That movie, incidentally, is dedicated to the far-left mother of one of the gay filmmakers. She’s involved in a group that harasses Israeli soldiers at checkpoints, to distract them from effectively checking Palestinians for bombs and terrorist affiliations. Yes, these are the kinds of people who make the Mossad movies. So it’s no surprise that the Mossad movies are anti-Mossad. It’s like making a movie showing the SEALS as emotional headcases who can’t bring themselves to shoot Bin Laden. As we know, that’s just not how it goes down.
Another reality check: the Mossad never ever lost a Nazi in its custody. It masterfully captured Adolf Eichmann in South America and swiftly transferred him to Tel Aviv. That was positively depicted in the TV movie, “The House on Garibaldi Street.” But that was in the ’70s. They don’t make pro-Mossad movies like that anymore. While Israel never caught Josef Mengele, it could have. Mossad operative Isser Harel, author of the Garibaldi book on which the eponymous movie is based, disclosed that the Mossad received reliable information about the whereabouts of Mengele and was planning to capture him. But the agency was already in the midst of its Eichmann operation and it would have jeopardized that, since both targets were in South America not far from one another, and the capture of one would have tipped off the other that the Mossad was coming for him. So, the Mossad passed on Mengele, and never again did it receive credible information on his new whereabouts after he hid deeper upon learning of the Eichmann capture. (The only “big” Mossad “screw up” on record is when agents shot a suspicious Muslim Norwegian waiter, believing him to be one of the Munich terrorists.)
Israel never had Mengele. Thus, it never lost him. But that’s not the story “The Debt” tells you because it’s a rule in both Hollywood and Israeliwood:
Thou shalt not speak well of the Mossad. The truth is verboten.
FOUR ARAFATS PLUS A NASRALLAH PLUS A BIN LADEN
Tags: anti-Mossad, HaChov, HaHov, Hollywood, Israel, Israeliwood, Isser Harel, Josef Mengele, Mengele, Mossad, Mossad agents, movie review, Movie Reviews, Nazi, Nazis, Surgeon of Birkenau, The Debt, The Debt movie, The Debt movie review, The Mossad, The Surgeon of Birkenau, Vengeance Comes at a Price
Who funded the movie? I will bet there was Arab money behind this production.
There is a television show on cable called “Covert Affairs” on the USA Network. About one episode each season involves an agent from Mossad. Although cocky and a little arogant, he is portrayed as a good guy who helps Israel and the US. The Arabs are not portrayed in a good light, for once.
Not a great show, but entertaining, and about the only show I have seen on television that portrays the Mossad in a good light.
On another note, the number of people going to the movies continues to drop. Maybe if the message was not so anti-Christian, anti-US, anti-Israel, or anti-Semitic, more people would fill the seats of the movie houses.
Jonathan E. Grant on August 31, 2011 at 5:25 pm