The Day The Music Died

Steven Spielberg's Munich, according to a Village Voice review, has a particular voice:

...although made from an Israeli perspective, Munich doggedly seeks to humanize the Palestinian other...

...Palestinians are humanized as nice neighbors or caring parents.

The beginning of the review makes quite clear that

More than politics, it's predicated on Spielberg's faith in the redemptive nature of Hollywood entertainment, as well as his ongoing attempt to be all things to all people.

Simply stated, Spielberg believes that life ought to imitate art, truth and reality be damned.

Speilberg, according to the New York Times reviewer, in his hubris and out of touch with reality mindset, believes that,

A war on terror amplifies terror. Moreover, the movie teaches, opposing sides begin to resemble each other. Moral credibility is destroyed along with hope.

To the Steven Spielberg, fighting Nazism made us Nazis. This is the claptrap that passes for intelligent discussion nowadays. The Times reviewer takes Spielberg to the woodshed:

The theory asserts that terrorism is a violent and extreme reaction to injustice - the last resort of the oppressed. Typically, this injustice theory is used to explain left-wing terrorism. It not only coincides with the justifications offered by terrorists themselves, but it also accompanies a belief that a just cause lies behind the terrorist attack. The theory is never applied to right-wing terrorism - whether of the brown-shirt or Timothy McVeigh variety - and thus pre-selects its proofs.

Accepting the theory also leads to other convictions. If terrorism is solely the result of injustice, then without the injustice there would be no terrorism. So the best response is to work for justice. Threats, vengeance, security strictures - anything other than the addressing of legitimate grievances is ultimately futile. In particular, since killing terrorists does nothing to alter injustice, it will do nothing to alter terror. Instead, it only leads to more injustice, turning the victims of terrorism into mirror images of the terrorists themselves.

Here's the deal, plain and simple. Fighting injustice is one of the noblest calls of mankind. To fight injustice is to respond to that call. It is in how justice is fought that we can determine the validity and morality of those engaged in that battle.

Clearly, the Palestinians are not now moral equals to the Israelis or anyone else. There is only so long the world- and the Left- can ignore Palestinians school curriculums that advocate hate an violence perpetrated against Jews. There is only so long that religious calls to slaughter and rape can be ignored. At some point, Palestinian and Arab media must be recognized for what they are: Modern day reincarnations of Julius Striecher's vile and hate filled Der Sturmer.

Shrinkwrapped, wrote in a post, Maneuvering Between The Headlines, that clearly speaks of the reality Israelis face

The liberal credo has always been that if we treat people well and follow the golden rule, they will treat us well. It would be a wonderful world if this were true. It is an extraordinary leap into a blind abyss for a liberal to recognize that no matter how you treat some people they will always want to harm you. What the Palestinians have done is to convince the majority of Israelis that they will never accept the existence of a state of Israel; that they prefer murdering Jewish children to building a home for their own children; that they exalt the murderous suicides more than those who would try to teach liberal tolerance to their own people.

He isn't done:

The logic of liberalism is that it is better to accept more Israeli deaths if it will help foster peace than to risk inconvenience or humiliation of the Palestinians. Most Israelis have finally rejected this for perfectly valid reasons. The separation wall is a last ditch attempt by Israel to avoid following the logic of warfare. If the wall does not prevent an unacceptable threshold of Israeli deaths from being crossed, the war will devolve into an existential fight to the death not just for Israel but for the Arabs as well. We must all hope that events do not bring us to such a point.

The point cannot be made more clearly or succintly. To not recognize that reality that there are bad people out there, is to be a fool, living in the Ashram of Intellectual Irrelevance. Shrinkwrapped goes on to recall that

Golda Meir once said that she hated the Arabs, not because they killed Jewish children, but because they forced Jewish children to kill them. ... is a valuable and powerful indictment of the Palestinians for their success at breeding such feelings in Israelis, made all the more powerful by her heartfelt refusal to accept those very feelings.

The morality of the Israelis is very different from that of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters.

As we have said,

Irrespective of the cause, even a cause seemingly just, killing is never the goal. The cost of a military victory is understood. Eisenhower and other Allied generals visited the Death Camps and wept, and then went into the coldest rage a human can muster- unlike their German counterparts, who posed for pictures and laughed at the plight of the 30 million dead souls. The heirs to the Nazis, the Islamists have posed for pictures with the heads of those they have decapitated. Palestinians bare bloodied hands, some holding human entrails, of Israelis they have butchered. They have filmed themselves kicking a decapitated head about on a field, as if it were just another soccer field. All the while, mosques celebrate these barbarities with music and sweet pastries.

We do not kill with joy. We do not place civilians, or schoolchildren or the sick an infirm in harms way. We do not engage an enemy, hiding behind children. We develop weapons that are ever more accurate. Others develop weapons with labratory developed poisons that can be ever more widely dispersed- and they have used them.

To kill with joy and to celebrate death, is to disregard God. To commit terror and celebrate the deaths of innocents, is to dishonor God and to refute his Dominion. Those who disregard His message corrupt and debase His message. Those who find justification or apology for such acts, or blame the victim, disgrace themselves and their faith. In the assembly of believers, they accomplish nothing but to shame themselves and their communities.

Steven Spielberg is playing with fire. Moral equivalence may work in the movies, but it's a flop in real life, no matter how good it may make some people feel.

Spielberg himself says,

"We don't demonize our targets," Spielberg says. "They're individuals. They have families.

That's nice. Terrorists have mothers. While that is an absolute truth, it in no way means terrorists are nice people.

Israel doesn't need its morality assessed by condescending Hollywood movie producers, thank you. It is the only democracy in the Middle East and does an exemplary job of retaining its morality in the face of a relentless and immoral enemy. We punish every reported misconduct within our army's ranks. We have checks and balances that ensure the juggling of the security of our people with our compassion.