16 March 'Munich - important issues, but much missing...'

(originally posted 16 March. Reposted here)
I just saw Munich recently, and was disappointed so little was made of what was a tragic yet fascinating event. The murder of the Israeli hostages, and the subsequent hunt and killing of those deemed responsible, showed the depths reached by both sides in this unending conflict. On the one hand there was a radical palestinian faction kidnapping and killing innocent atheletes, on the other was a democratic country deciding to act outside of both it's own and international law, not just for pre-emption, but also for revenge.

One film is of course too short to handle all aspects of any story properly, but even still Spielberg concentrated largely on the actions of one side - Israel. The palestinian side was portrayed mainly from the news bulletin perspective, and apart from a brief speech given by a PLO activist, no insight was given into how they had reached this bloody stage. This is not to dimish the actions of Black September, but just to point out that apart from the basic newsreel facts of what happened, the film gave no insight into why they did what they did.
Which, given the time limitations, is fair enough. Indeed, while it is of course important to understand the actions of reactionary forces which are often alien to us, it is perhaps sometimes more important to examine the action of the governments and societies which they are reacting to/against - since these are our governments, and so their actions are in a small part ours too.
I am not an Israeli, and of course only a handful of Israelis are ultimately involved in choosing such actions as targeted assination, but Isreal as a democratic, modern country, is a member of a club of which we are all members (if we live in non-authoritarian regimes) or at least aspire to be (if we don't), and how one member acts has significance for the club as a whole.

So examining just the Israeli side of things is a worthy exercise, since it tells us about how 'our' kind of countries might act, if the same thing happened to them. This I think explains why sometimes there seems to be a contradiction between how upset some people get about Israeli actions, when those actions while brutal, often pale beside the deeds of some other countries and groups. The reason I think is this sense that it as a country is 'one of us'. NOT in a 'western', Judeo-Chrisitan sense, but as a democratic and modern country. And as 'one of us' we have perhaps stronger feelings on how 'we' should (or would) behave then when confronting appalling acts by groups less easy to identify with. While not perfect, this slightly imbalanced view is actually quite a good way of looking at things - since it focuses on the problems of 'our' systems - and does not just blame everything on incomprehendable 'other' systems. And it will hopefully stop us from destorying our system in the name of preserving it. It is not just 'evil-doers' that cause problems in the world...

So it is fair enough that the film dealt primarily with the Israeli response, doing so by personifying the hunt in the figure of Avner, the leader of one of the assination teams. He was portrayed as having a young family he wanted to protect, being concerned about innocent civilians, and haunted by the thoughts of the atheletes' final moments, all of which can be used as a metaphor for how a leader might feel about a country in times of crisis. However what is of relevence in the Munich incident is not the actions of one man, or even of a radical group, but the conscious adoption of a contorversial (and illegal) policy by a modern country. And when examing a policy it is not enough to simply look at its background and execution as one might do when trying to understand or judge a man's actions. Instead, with a policy, what is of more importance is not where it comes from, but where it leads to, and this was not properly covered by the film. What is so confusing about this is there was one very clear tragic consequence of Operation Bayonet, the killing of an innocent waiter by another Israeli team, which was blaringly conspicious by its absence. Whatever about the justification - punishment, revenge or pre-emption - in extra-judicially killing the members of Black September, there is no doubt possible that the killing of an innocent waiter who had nothing to do with it is also a tragic and critically important element to the whole Munich story. Even if we grant a death penalty is needed, and even if the guilt of those involved can be decided without using the normal legal processes, then there is still the looming question of whether it is better that one innocent man dies than 10 guilty men live. To me the fact that the film ignored this issue makes it fundamentally flawed. What is most concerning about this is the fact that most people will only know the Munich incident through the film - and at a time when shoot-to-kill and pre-emptive policies are current issues - this is downright irresponsible.