July 1, 2005, - 1:38 am
Spielberg “Vengeance” Update: Steven’s Stockholm Syndrome Worse Than I’d Earlier Diagnosed
By Debbie Schlussel
A New York Times article, today, confirms everything I’ve written ( and ) and worse regarding Steven Spielberg’s upcoming “Vengeance” movie. It is now a certainty that Mr. “Schindler’s List” will expend the capital he earned on that film to now HUMANIZE(!) Palestinian terrorists who murdered the Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972.
It’s bad enough that Spielberg ran the script by Arafat-fan Bill Clinton–Arafat ordered the Olympic athlete massacre–and other assorted Clintonistas who drooled over Arafat, like Mike McCurry and Dennis Ross.
Worse is the revelation that playwright Tony Kushner (a self-avowed socialist and gay activist) is praised for “humanizing the film’s hunted Palestinians and giving a fuller sense of their motivation.” Can you imagine if someone did a film humanizing Mohammed Atta and giving a fuller sense of his motivation?! Or perhaps he can do “Schindler’s Other List,” humanizing the Nazis and giving a fuller sense of their motivation. Unbelievable. We don’t need more psychobabble about understanding the terrorists and why they hate us. Who cares why they hate us? A better question is: Why don’t we hate them enough to quit doing crappy, Stockholm-Syndrome movies like this?
If the Times doesn’t make Spielberg’s intentions—-clear once, it makes them clear twice. Kushner was hired by Spielberg “to humanize what he felt was too procedural a thriller,” as written by another screenwriter.
Spielberg released a statement calling the Munich Olympic massacre “a defining moment in the modern history of the Middle East,” as if he’s proud of that. It wasn’t a “defining” moment. It was an EXTREMELY TRAGIC moment!
One hint Spielberg is playing for the wrong team: “Vengeance” is being shot in Pan-Arabist Malta, which criminally prosecuted columnist Simone Endrich for criticizing Palestinian terrorists, homicide bombings, and the Maltese Prime Minister for participating in a pro-Palestinian demonstration. So glad Spielberg picked such an even-handed locale for “Vengeance.”
Other signs Steven Spielberg is glorifying the Munich Olympic terrorists: He
* is concerned the project may be “misconstrued in the public mind” (if “Vengeance” denounced the terrorists, instead of humanizing them, there would be no reason for concern);
* is being advised by “a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis communications” (if the film were against terrorists, there would be no need);
* is worried about “jeopardiz[ing] his tremendous stature among Jews” and that “admirers of his Holocaust work could misunderstand his new film and regard it as hurtful to Israel”;
* released a short statement not just to the Times and Ma’ariv, but to Arab television network Al-Arabiya; and
* is “studiously avoiding the most glaring potential trap: drawing a moral equivalency between the Palestinian attack and the Israeli retaliation,” his advisors tell the Times. Morally equivocating terrorists and their victims is not a glaring trap or something that needs hard work in order to avoid. It’s a no-brainer, but not apparently in this film, which apparently will do exactly this kind of moral equivocation he needs to “work so hard” to avoid.
Unfortunately, Spielberg’s idea of “Israeli assassins find[ing] themselves struggling . . . slowly giving way to troubling doubts about what they were doing,” is nothing new. Been there, seen that. Another gay socialist Jewish screenwriter (just like Spielberg’s Kushner) wrote a similar Mossad-assassin-has-doubts-about-killing-Islamic-terrorists-and-becomes-sensitive-guy thriller. It’s called “Walk on Water,” and I doubt Spielberg can improve upon that dreadful celluloid spittle.
Given all this, it makes the disappointing, Oscar-winning Munich Olympic Massacre documentary, “One Day in September,” look almost appetizing.
Just two years after the Munich massacre, Yasser Arafat and company were rewarded with a Palestinian U.N. mission. One wonders what they’ll get after Spielberg releases this propaganda piece, later this year, just in time for holiday gifts.
Tags: advisors, Al-Arabiya, Bill Clinton, criminally prosecuted columnist, crisis communications, Debbie Schlussel, Dennis Ross, Hollywood spokesman, Israel, Ma'ariv, Middle East, Mike McCurry, Mohammed Atta, Mossad, Munich, Munich Olympic, New York Times, Olympic, Olympic athlete, One Day in September, Oscar, Palestinian U.N. mission, Prime Minister, Schindler's List, Screenwriter, self-avowed socialist and gay activist, Simone Endrich, Steven Spielberg, Stockholm, television network, the Munich Olympic, the Olympic, the Times, Tony Kushner, Vengeance, Yasser Arafat
It seems to me that these terrorist attacks WERE a defining moment in modern Middle East history. A disgusting, deplorable act, but a defining one, nonetheless. Often it is just these deplorable moments which define a culture for years to come. The Holocaust was an extremely tragic episode in history, but who would say its not a defining moment which shaped the history of many people, yourself included? Who cares why they hate us? We all should. Can’t swift punishment for crimes also be accompanied by an attempt to understand where such hatred comes from? Isn’t it only through some sort of intellectual discourse that we can win a war on terror? There was once a country where the citizens blindly followed a fanatical Christian leadership. A country which invaded other countries in a preemptive strike against attacks which were not imminent. A country which took an entire group of people and sent them to ghettos and then to camps, because it saw their “radical” ways as a threat to the freedoms and glory of the homeland. The Nazis didn’t seem to want to understand the Jewish “terrorists” either. They just sent them to camps, much like we’ve been doing. How many prisoners (after being held for years with no access to lawyers) did we release with no charges? Are we not, through acts like this, creating a new wave of American-hating terrorists? Is the father of the “unfortunate casuality of war” in Iraq who then picks up arms to avenge the death of his child a terrorist, or simply trying to avenge a murder? What would any of us do if it was our child? The bomb that kills a civilian is always a terrorist bomb, regardless of where it came from. By your logic, that father is justified in his fight to avenge the death, and shouldn’t bother trying to undersand the motive behind our actions. If we don’t question our leaders, if we don’t seek more understanding of others in the world, we are doomed to follow in the footsteps of Nazi Germany.
jared on July 2, 2005 at 8:11 am