Munich

So yesterday I read my first review of Munich, the new Steven Spielberg movie about Israel's counterterrorism operation against the Black September terrorists who massacred the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. And my conclusion is this: movie reviewers shouldn't write about politics. Now, granted, this review was in The Onion, but still. The review was peppered with several of the grating tropes that populate commentary on the Middle East by people who don't know much about the subject.

The movie concerns the psychological and moral toll taken on the Israeli agents who carry out the killings, which is certainly an improvement over standard action movies where heroes kill without any remorse or second thoughts. It also has the important benefit of being true to the real story, and true to what we know about soldiers in general. However, the implication that reviewers have drawn from the movie (which I think is Spielberg's intention, given his comments elsewhere) is that basically, the movie shows the futility and immorality of vengeance. They note the uselessness of the "cycle of violence" and the "tit for tat" that characterize politics in the Middle East.

The frustrating thing about these terms is that they are both condenscending (to both the Israelis and the Palestinians) and largely meaningless. First of all, the "cycle of violence" is condemned loudly and often by all manner of commentators, but almost always with the implied solution that Israel should not retaliate against Palestinian atrocities. That is, Israel should step forward and put morality first. Rarely if ever are the Palestinians the ones encouraged to break the cycle. This is insulting to both sides. It seems to imply that the Palestinians are incabable of moral reasoning, and therefore cannot be expected to restrain themselves. It likewise holds the Israelis to a higher morality - they should countenance atrocities in the name of the peace process.

Furthermore, the "cycle of violence" seems to imply that A commits an atrocity, and then B commits an atrocity, and then A, and then B ..., as if all atrocities and all violent acts are equal. This is simply not the case. Some acts, such as the Munich massacre, are on such a scale (whether in terms of lives lost or the callousness of the act) that they cannot simply be brushed aside and lightly forgiven or ignored. And this goes both ways - when it appeared in 2000 that the Israeli army had deliberately gunned down a child, Muhammed al Durah, this was an act which went beyond the day-to-day violence and tragedy in the Middle East. The Palestinians could not simply forgive this crime (or alleged crime, as it now seems that the event may have not occurred as originally reported). In these situations, a response is necessary, and the response is necessarily violent.

But too often, these responses are dismissed as simply "vengeance," meant to imply that there is no other purpose than killing the killers to get even. But this is not true. Counterterrorism is concerned with killing the killers because that prevents them from striking again, because it puts them on the defensive, because it holds the individuals responsible accountable, because it achieves the strategic end of not giving in to terrorism. It short, there are a number of good reasons to kill those who have attacked you, especially when the attack is brazen and indiscriminate. Vengeance this is not, it is strategy, it is politics.

Finally, critics of the "cycle of violence" fall back on one last argument - what has 50 years of violence achieved? Well, Israel has survived. It has maintained and even expanded its borders. It is prosperous and modern. It is democratic. It has given the Jewish people a homeland. In short, 50 years of violence has accomplished a great deal. This is not to say that peace would not have been preferable. But peace was never really a choice. Instead, Israel has made hard choices, and they have included several mistakes. But to dismiss out-of-hand what has been remarkably successful strategy is simply unfair.