That stadium brings up a whole lot of memories, some of them quite relevant today. The Montreal Summer Olympic Games took place in 1976, mere weeks after the Israeli raid on Entebbe to free the hijacked passengers of Air France flight 139. Like pretty much every Summer before that, I spent my entire school vacation, essentially two months, in Israel. That Summer though, the last one before my Bar-Mitzvah, was very different. There was a certain euphoria over what had just happened in Entebbe. Soldiers who appeared in uniform to any movie theatre got their tickets for free. Falafel stands did the same with their wares. You could feel it in the air: people were happy, proud. The nations of the world had nothing but praise for Israel (well, for a couple of weeks at least). These Olympic Games were also the first Summer games since the Munich massacre of 1972. So on the day of the opening ceremonies I was sitting in front of our old black and white TV watching every country march into this Olympic Stadium, and then it happened. The Israeli team walked in. All the athletes were wearing white hats. As soon as the banner with the word "Israel" appeared, the entire stadium got up and started applauding. It was definitely spontaneous. It was also one of the most moving moments I can ever remember. It was clear that there was both admiration for Entebbe and respect for Munich ‘72 behind this, but even at 12 years old I sensed that I was witnessing something very significant. Then the announcer’s voice called out the word “Israel”, and at that precise moment the entire Israeli team took off their white hats in a synchronized move, to salute the public. The applause intensified even more. I remember tears streaming down my eyes. I also remember the Israeli TV announcers getting all chocked-up at what they were witnessing.
Which brings us to last night. Dani and I went out to see Steven Spielberg’s “Munich”. I am not going to get into the whole debate over whether this movie is “good for the Jews” or not. That’s not my place. What surprises me is that the man decided to make this movie to begin with. The movie is based on a book by George Jonas which I remember reading back in 1984. In French it was entitled “La Vengeance d’Ephraim”, in English plain “Vengeance”. It was pretty controversial back then for the same reasons that the movie is. The book then served as inspiration for the 1986 TV movie “The Sword of Gideon”. The role of Avner played by Eric Bana in Spielber’s version, was portrayed by Steven Bauer, and Golda Meir by Colleen Dewhurst. My point is that the story had already been told. Maybe it did not have Spielberg’s flair for drama and gravitas, but it’s been done before. The source material had been denounced and debunked back then already, so why base a movie so many years later on the same, seemingly unreliable material ? Spielberg has said in interviews that he found other sources and only loosely based his movie on that book. But having just seen the movie I can assure you that almost the entire book was in there. There are maybe three things he added in his movie which might redeem (in his eyes at least) the entire project. First and foremost he does show us the entire 1972 attack in all its ugliness. Of course some people will object to the fact that the final moments, the most heart-wrenching in fact, showing the terrorists eliminating the last hostages still alive, are shown mixed with Avner making love to his wife. You can’t please everyone, but the point is, apart from the 1976 TV movie “21 Hours At Munich”, (which I highly recommend seeing, by the way, assuming one can still rent it somewhere), I don’t believe the Munich massacre was ever dwelt upon in any movie and it certainly deserves this attention. It afforded me the ability to discuss these events with Dani, so as an educational tool it has value.
The second addition (and the one causing most of the controversy), is the fictional (assuming the rest of the story isn’t, of course) conversation Avner has with a Palestinian terrorist in Athens about the chances of survival of the State of Israel and Palestinian national aspirations. This is the Hollywood political-correctness bull that this movie did not need, but I’ll leave my opinion out of that debate.
Finally there is an interesting scene with Ehud Barak dressing as a woman in Beirut in 1973 in a daring raid to execute a terrorist (a story now made famous from Barak’s own biographies). Chances are the movie will be nominated for some Oscars, and maybe Spielberg may even get his hands on some, but it sure ain’t no “Schindler’s List”.
