Spielberg says his new film 'Munich' is a 'prayer for peace'

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"Director Steven Spielberg said his new film "Munich," the story of Israel's revenge for the killing of its athletes by Palestinian guerrillas at the 1972 Olympics, is "a prayer for peace," Time magazine reported on Sunday.

Leaders of Jewish and Muslim groups as well as diplomats and foreign policy experts will preview the film before its December 23 U.S. opening but Spielberg has shied away from the media hype and costly promotional campaigns that typically precede a big-studio movie.

The magazine said its interview was the only one the Oscar-winning director planned to do before the release of the film, which focuses on Israel's response after a Palestinian group took members of its Olympic team hostage at the Munich Games. Eleven Israeli athletes, five kidnappers and one German policeman were killed.

"Somewhere inside all this intransigence there has to be a prayer for peace," Spielberg told Time, "because the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence."

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Palestinian and Israeli kids and let them shoot footage of their everyday lives and then exchange the videos.
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The director also discussed another film project he is initiating in February, in which he is buying 250 video cameras and players and giving them to Israeli and Palestinian children so that they can make movies about their own lives.

"Not dramas," Spielberg said, "just little documentaries about who they are and what they believe in, who their parents are, where they go to school, what they had to eat, what movies they watch, what CDs they listen to."

Spielberg said the children will then exchange the videos with one another.

"That's the kind of thing that can be effective, I think, in simply making people understand that there aren't as many differences that divide Israelis and Palestinians. Not as human beings anyway," he said.

Though I wonder if the money could be spent better elsewhere. However, anything along these lines is better than nothing.

L-

we can't do a worse job........

quote........
The Jerusalem Link
who we are


The Jerusalem Link is the coordinating body of two independent women's centers: Bat Shalom—The Jerusalem Women's Action Center, located in West Jerusalem, and Marcaz al-Quds la l-Nissah—The Jerusalem Center for Women, located in East Jerusalem.

In 1989, a meeting was convened in Brussels between prominent Israeli and Palestinian women peace activists. The meeting initiated an on-going dialogue that in 1994 resulted in the establishment of THE JERUSALEM LINK composed of two women's organizations—BAT SHALOM on the Israeli side, and the JERUSALEM CENTER FOR WOMEN on the Palestinian side. The two organizations share a set of political principles, which serve as the foundation for a cooperative model of co-existence between our respective peoples.

Each organization is autonomous and takes its own national constituency as its primary responsibility—but together we promote a joint vision of a just peace, democracy, human rights, and women's leadership. Mandated to advocate for peace and justice between Israel and Palestine, we believe a viable solution of the conflict between our two peoples must be based on recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and an independent state alongside the state of Israel, Jerusalem as the capital of both states, and a final settlement of all relevant issues based on international law.

end quote......

You mean so we'd all get the equivalent of the peaceful terms of office of:

• Elizabeth I of England
• Victoria of England
• Catherine the Great of Russia
• Indira Gandhi
• Golda Maier
• Margaret Thatcher

I don't think that's quite what I'd be hoping for

Many took issue with the posters such as myself that questioned how come the Bush regime was so quick to blame bin Laden for 9/11 when there had been no claim of responsibility (mind you, this argument was right after 9/11). We wanted evidence, not just take the government's word for it!

Two years later we all find out that Bush was briefed early in 2001 on bin Laden's plans to attack the US, including plans to crash planes into buildings and national landmarks.

When Bush announced his intentions to attack Afghanistan in order to get bin Laden, something he has failed to do so far, I was among those posters that attacked Bush's rush to war. There were better alternatives to hunt down bin Laden than to invade a country and kill a lot of innocent people that had nothing to do about 9/11. The alternative that was proposed in DU, and hotly debated and rejected by people seeking revenge, was to respond to 9/11 in the same manner in which Israel went after the people responsible for the Munich Massacre.

Israel did not bomb Jordan or invade Egypt or dropped white phosphorus on Gaza to avenge Munich. Israel did not suspend the civil liberties of her citizens. Israel did not round up all Palestinians and put them in concentration camps. Israel did not sink to the moral cesspool into which America finds herself today after attacking Iraq.

While some mistakes were made, and while the decision to hunt down the terrorists remains controversial to this day, I wish America had chosen a path similar to the one chosen by Israel in responding to 9/11.

Israel has done some of those things. The massacres of Sabra and Shatila spring to mind. Not to mention the daily occupation and oppression Palestine is under, or the forced evictions of innocents, the theft of land and the destruction of livelihoods.... And that's just the beginning.

Just my $.02.

You're misrepresenting the Israeli response to Munich. Revenge,
terrorism & extrajudicial assassinations are not effective tactics
to use as part of a longterm counterterroism strategy.

'Golda's List -

December 7, 1972. Marie-Claude Hamshari steps out of her Parisian apartment building. She is accompanying her little girl to school. No sooner have they set foot on te sidewalk than a violent explosion occurs, leasing the passers-by completely horrified. Meanwhile, her husband, a Palestinian named Mahmoud Hamshari has just been serious injured. Little did he know that, by picking up the phone, he was triggering a remote detonator that would set off a bomb placed under the floorboards of his apartment. He dies a month later.

April 9, 1973. This time, the action takes place in Beirut. A loving couple is strolling happily down rue de Verdun. This is no normal couple. These are professional killers. The young woman, disguised in a long skirt, is really Ehud Barak, lieutenant colonel of the Israeli army (she is later to become Prime Minister of Israel). The tall young man she is with is Muki Betzer. He is a member of the elite commando group, Tsahal. At one o’clock in the morning, they walk into a building and shoot three Palestinians dead.

Late in the evening of June 8, 1992, in Paris, a 44-year-old Palestinian named Atef Bseisso comes out of a restaurant in Montparnasse with a couple of Lebanese friends. Two men pin him down on his car and fire three bullets into his head.

These crimes are part of a series of 13 murders that were carried out by the Israeli services over a period of 20 years. The assassinations were perpetrated in various parts of the world, including Rome, Tunis, Paris, Athens, Lillehammer, Nicosia and Beirut. These 13 killings of Palestinians had one thing in common : revenge.

All these murders seem to have been decided on the day after the slaughter at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972, when the Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, swore that the Munich incident would not romain unpunished. Nobody actually really knows how many names were listed by Godla and her advisors. But the Munich massacre was to become the motive of a secret war against the Palestinian leaders.
This documentary relates this campaign of revenge. It is back up by accounts from 3 Israeli Prime Ministers : Shimon Peres, Ytzhak Shamir and Ehud Barak, and from Aharon Yariv (Golda’s Meir advisor), Ygal Carmon (advisor for the anti-terrorist campaign), Rafi Etan (Mossad agent), Asher Susser (a historian at the University of Tel Aviv), Abu Daoud (a membre of Black September), Chuck Cogan (director of the CIA’s Middle-East department), Leila Khaled (a membre of the Palestinian Liberation Popular Front), Karim Pakradouni (of the Lebanesse Forces) and Bassam Abu Sharif (advis or to Yasser Arafat)…

Participants

Bassam Abu Sharif Yasser Arafat advisor
Shimon Pères Israel former PM
Yitzhak Shamir Israel former PM
Rafi Eitan Mossad agent
Ygal Carmon Israeli counter terrorism advisor
Abu Daoud Black September Organization
Asher Susser Historian/Tel-Aviv University
Chuck Cogan CIA Mid East Director
Amin Al-Hindi Head of Palestinian secret service
Ehud Barak Israel former PM
Aharon Yariv Israeli counter terrorism advisor
Karim Pakradouni Lebanese Forces
Leila Khaled PFLP

http://www.sunsetpresse.fr/film_e.php?id=2&context=resume

to the book "Vengeance" by George Jonas, which the movie is supposed to be based on?

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"Spielberg based his movie partly on the book by the Hungarian-born, Toronto-based Jonas. This much-debated, dramatically told nonfiction account relates the story of “Avner,” the young Mossad agent recruited to head a team of five assassins tasked with killing 11 Arabs implicated in the Olympic killings."

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"Although the movie credits Jonas’ l984 book, which is being re-issued, Spielberg publicist Marvin Levy insisted in an interview, "The book is not the book of our movie."

In a phone conversation from his home office in Canada, “Vengeance” author Jonas emphasized that he had no involvement or creative control with “Munich.” He’d previously sold his movie rights. Jonas commented that the Spielberg film comes out in a world that has changed since his book was published in the early 1980s."

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"Jonas, the author of “Vengeance,” is as curious to see the result of Spielberg’s vision as anyone.

"Spielberg is one of the most influential filmmakers in the world," he said, "and I am naturally extremely curious on what his take on it is. I am prepared to pay my $10 to see it in my local cinema."


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*Caution, contains satire*

'Beyond "Munich": The Ten Movies Steven Spielberg Has Yet To Make

1. King David Hotel: The bombing of the King David Hotel, which served as headquarters of the British administration in Palestine, killed 91 Arabs, Jews, and Brits in 1946. Two future Prime Ministers of Israel, David Ben Gurion and Menachem Begin, masterminded the attack. Disguised as Arabs, members of the Begin's Irgun gang placed 350kg of explosives inside the building. In this action-packed thriller, David (Pierce Brosnan) — a British officer ordered to hunt down the killers — falls for Margaret (Uma Thurman), an American journalist working for Life Magazine. But is Margaret really in love or is she a secret Zionist assassin out to stop David in his tracks?

2. Nakba: A story of innocent love in a time of war and tragedy. Layla (Penelope Cruz) & Salam (Orlando Bloom) are a Palestinian Romeo & Juliet against the backdrop of the 1948 Nakba, the Palestinian national catastrophe. During the Nakba, over 700,000 Palestinians fled — voluntarily & involuntarily — their homes.

4. Sabra & Shatila: It's 1982 and the war in Lebanon rages on. British war correspondent Robert Fisk (Star Wars star Ewan MacGregor) hides in the camps of Sabra & Shatilla, while a Lebanese militia aided and abetted by Israel slaughters thousands of Palestinian refugees. Sahar (Sandra Bullock) is a Palestinian mother determined to protect her family at any cost.

5. Vanunu: A political thriller set in Israel, Australia, Thailand, England, and Italy. Syriana star George Clooney plays Mordechai Vanunu, the nuclear technician who exposes Israel's nuclear weapons program and pays the ultimate price. Nicole Kidman plays Cheryl Bentov, the American Mossad agent who seduces and kidnaps him.

9. Rachel: Rachel Corrie (Gwyneth Paltrow) is the idealistic young American activist crushed to death by the Israeli army with a Caterpillar bulldozer. Sally Field, well-known for her role in "Not Without My Daughter," plays Rachel's mother.

http://www.altmuslim.com/perm.php?id=1607_0_25_0_C