Winds of Change.NET: Liberty. Discovery. Humanity. Victory.

Formal Affiliations
  • Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto
  • Euston Democratic Progressive Manifesto
  • Real Democracy for Iran!
  • Support Denamrk
  • Million Voices for Darfur
  • milblogs
Syndication
 Subscribe in a reader

Munich remembered

| 8 Comments | 2 TrackBacks

Steven Spielberg's movie "Munich" officially opens today. Since I had collected so many links for the 30th anniversary of the massacre in 2002, I decided this would be a good opportunity to repost some of them, particularly as a factual counterpoint to Spielberg's "inspired by real events" dramatization.

Munich remembered: The PLO and the Germans and the French
Munich remembered: The Athletes
Munich remembered: The Olympics
Munich remembered: The Protagonists Speak
Munich remembered, the movie: "Inspired by Real Events"
Munich remembered: First they came . . .

UPDATE: Munich remembered: the British Arabists
(I just found this one in my files, which I had forgotten to post. It's from declassified files of the British Foreign Office, basically justifying the massacre.)

2 TrackBacks

Tracked: December 25, 2005 3:24 AM
Munich Explored from Flopping Aces
Excerpt: The sad thing is that this movie seems to convey the thinking of the pre-9/11 left. If you believe America should not be seeking out those who want us destroyed then this movie is for you. If you believe the hijackers of those flights on 9/11 had va...
Tracked: December 26, 2005 3:17 PM
Munich from IndustrialBlog
Excerpt: I won't be seeing Munich in the theaters. There was no excuse for what Black September did. The world tried to take a break from its normal butchery for a few weeks of sport, ...

8 Comments

I donno. 11 people got killed by terrorists thirty years ago. AQI is making that a monthy occurance, right here and now. There something about the dissonence with which the culture treats these events that bothers me. I mean, where's the movie about the man who died trying to vote last week? Eh, maybe it takes 30 years, and in 2035 that generation's Speilberg will make 'Bagdad'.

Its amazing how differently people view the prism of what happened in Munich. If 11 American atheletes were killed at a Tokyo olympics 30 years after the war, the would be maybe a tiny comparison to how Munich resonated with Israelis and their supporters. The context of Germany and the Holocaust is critical to this. The way the Germans and Olympic committee brushed the whole affair off is as well. The fact that the captured terrorists were released (almost certainly intentionally if you believe many of those involved) cannot be forgotten. Its true, many people have died in far worse massacres, but what makes Munich seminal is its symbolism. It proved that despite all the rhetoric of Europes sorrow for the Holocaust, there was and is still a deep thread of suspicion if not outright hostility towards the jews. It might be argued the Munich was the beginning of the new age of appeasement and moral relativism that has encompassed much of Western politics and culture, particularly towards the Palestinians. Munich was a wakeup call for the Israelis, the Americans, and anyone else who thought all the factors that made WW2 such a tragedy were dead and buried.

And to others, Munich was Israel getting what they deserved.

Seth one of the athletes was an American Citizen (dual citizenship). You may view this as "no big deal" but Munich represented the deliberate targetting of wholly innocent people on purpose for the expressed view of terrorizing them. That's all that was behind it. You can draw a direct line between Munich, the murder of Leon Klinghoffer (celebrated in an Opera written by Philip Glass!) and the rest of the terrorist chic and violence worshipping by Liberals (Norman Mailer's comment that the wreckage of the WTC was more beautiful than the towers comes to mind) ... and 9/11.

The road to 9/11 started with Munich. The film itself suggests strongly that America deserved 9/11 as the Israelis "deserved" Munich.

This was also the Olypmics, where politics didn't matter & all that mattered was the sport & competition. The cold war raged on but Americans ans Soviets battled in boxing rings, ice rinks and wherever else. Even when we fought in Vietnam or Korea, the olympics still happened and the focus was on the games themselves & not politics.

Seth, Munich was a vivid experience of my childhood - as was Steven Spielberg - and I tried to explain its significance to me in this post at lgc: Munich Through a Glass, and Darkly. We have to show the killers that our memories are as long as theirs. Longer, even.

Wow, powerful post Glen. That is exactly how i feel about the matter.

And yet, Judea Pearl has a thoughtful, if perhaps a tad optimistic, appraisal of the film.

Can't for the life of me figure out what all the fuss is about. "Munich" is a copy/remake of a film called "Sword Of Gideon" made in the mid 80's.
Guess what makes it special is that Spielberg made this one. Nothing much new or different, better special effects, I guess.

Leave a comment

Here are some quick tips for adding simple Textile formatting to your comments, though you can also use proper HTML tags:

*This* puts text in bold.

_This_ puts text in italics.

bq. This "bq." at the beginning of a paragraph, flush with the left hand side and with a space after it, is the code to indent one paragraph of text as a block quote.

To add a live URL, "Text to display":http://windsofchange.net/ (no spaces between) will show up as Text to display. Always use this for links - otherwise you will screw up the columns on our main blog page.




Recent Comments
  • TM Lutas: Jobs' formula was simple enough. Passionately care about your users, read more
  • sabinesgreenp.myopenid.com: Just seeing the green community in action makes me confident read more
  • Glen Wishard: Jobs was on the losing end of competition many times, read more
  • Chris M: Thanks for the great post, Joe ... linked it on read more
  • Joe Katzman: Collect them all! Though the French would be upset about read more
  • Glen Wishard: Now all the Saudis need is a division's worth of read more
  • mark buehner: Its one thing to accept the Iranians as an ally read more
  • J Aguilar: Saudis were around here (Spain) a year ago trying the read more
  • Fred: Good point, brutality didn't work terribly well for the Russians read more
  • mark buehner: Certainly plausible but there are plenty of examples of that read more
  • Fred: They have no need to project power but have the read more
  • mark buehner: Good stuff here. The only caveat is that a nuclear read more
  • Ian C.: OK... Here's the problem. Perceived relevance. When it was 'Weapons read more
  • Marcus Vitruvius: Chris, If there were some way to do all these read more
  • Chris M: Marcus Vitruvius, I'm surprised by your comments. You're quite right, read more
The Winds Crew
Town Founder: Left-Hand Man: Other Winds Marshals
  • 'AMac', aka. Marshal Festus (AMac@...)
  • Robin "Straight Shooter" Burk
  • 'Cicero', aka. The Quiet Man (cicero@...)
  • David Blue (david.blue@...)
  • 'Lewy14', aka. Marshal Leroy (lewy14@...)
  • 'Nortius Maximus', aka. Big Tuna (nortius.maximus@...)
Other Regulars Semi-Active: Posting Affiliates Emeritus:
Winds Blogroll
Author Archives
Categories
Powered by Movable Type 4.23-en