Just When You Thought I Had No More To Say On Munich

My fabulous pal who took me to see Munich for free gets a hat tip for letting me know the “writer,” if you can call him that, Tony Kushner, decided to try to stick up for his sorry self in an article in – surprise, surprise – The L.A. Times.

Here are only a few bits and pieces of the whole article, but they're the ones I had specific comments for...

There is no definitive account of what was, after all, a covert operation. But no one is challenging the central historical fact in the debate that "Munich" is meant to catalyze: These Palestinians were assassinated by Israel, following the Palestinian murder of the Israeli athletes in Munich.

So the athletes were murdered, but their murderers were assassinated??

I've never killed anyone, but my instincts as a person and a playwright — and the best books I've read about soldiers or cops or people whose jobs bring them into violent physical conflict — suggest that people in general don't kill without feeling torn up about it. Violence exacts a psychic toll, unless you're a sociopath, and who wants to watch a movie about sociopaths?

He misses the point. The fact is, the killing of the PLO murderers was righteous, hence why there was no need for conflict or guilt. Sort of like when he writes. Does he feel guilt when he has to cut out a paragraph that wasn’t well written? I think not. If you let yourself get too emotional in your job (whatever it may be), it makes it that much harder to do it well.

Here was another gem:

In the film, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is presented not as a matter of religion versus religion, or sanity versus insanity, or good versus evil or civilization versus barbarism or Judeo-Christian culture versus Muslim culture, but rather as a struggle over territory, over geography, over home.

Yes, true. THAT is what is wrong. That is not what the Middle East conflict is about and it’s his inability to grasp that has the rest of us exasperated. The Palestinians don’t care about a home of their own. That’s leftist baloney. Read their charter! They say what they want clear as day – “From the river to the sea…” They want Jews GONE. It really is that simple. They don’t want a homeland next to Israel but rather in place of Israel. He just doesn’t get that.

"Munich" insists that this characteristic of human behavior is not meaningless in the struggle against terrorism. In other words, we believe that one aspect of the struggle against terrorism is the struggle to comprehend terrorism. If you think understanding the enemy is unimportant, well, maybe there's a job in Washington for you.

And if he thinks he understands terrorism, I have a wonderful little bridge to sell him.