Steven Spielberg's unforgivable 'sin'

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1136102665051&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In 1961 Leon Uris initiated a war of words with Philip Roth over the way Jews should be represented in popular culture. "These writers are professional apologists," the author of Exodus told The New York Post, referring to Jewish writers who conceded weaknesses. "We Jews are not what we have been portrayed to be. In truth, we have been fighters."

In response, Roth suggested Uris pick up a copy of Elie Wiesel's Dawn, whose hero, a Jewish fighter in British Mandate Palestine, agonizes over his task of executing a British major who has been taken hostage.

"I should like to tell Uris that Wiesel's Jew is not so proud to discover himself in the role of a fighter," Roth wrote, "nor is he able to find justification for himself in some traditional Jewish association with pugnacity or bloodletting... No matter how just he tells himself are the rights for which he murders, nothing in his or his people's past is able to make firing a bullet into another man anything less ghastly than it is."

Fast forward 45 years, to the current clamor over Munich, Steven Spielberg's most complex and conflicted film to date, and the battle over Jewish representations is as fierce as ever. One of the more vociferous criticisms of the film is that Spielberg and his co-screenwriter, Tony Kushner, allowed the film's protagonist, Mossad agent Avner, to be plagued by doubts about his mission.

(cont)...

and if he was going to give a real -- HUMAN -- account of theses folk -- of course they were conflicted.

That's exactly what it says. Of course, I just realized that JPost requires a login ID (though free), so maybe I'll edit the excerpts to give a better representation of the piece as a whole.

I got right in. :)

I can't think about anything political I'm not conflicted about.

Conflict is sanity.

"We are in a sad state of affairs if, almost 60 years after the creation of Israel, we must banish this topic as taboo and deny discussion of our all-too-human experiences of pain and moral doubt.

The writer, based in New York, is the author of The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe"

... about life-and-death issues was part of the human condition, and that I shouldn't be ashamed about having doubts -- and that it wasn't a sign of weakness, stupidity, or lack of morals. He said that thousands and thousands of people, over many generations, have wondered about this too, and that thinking and talking about such inner conflicts brings us closer to them.

I suppose there are Jewish people who are cruel and rejoice in violence (for retribution or otherwise) -- but I haven't met any so far.