'Munich' appears as a metaphor for the Zionist dream. Spielberg
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Spielberg on Jewish survival
Munich examines essential conflict between Jewish moral values, Israel’s raison d’Etre
Steven Spielberg’s latest offering begins and ends with intimate scenes of a married couple. The husband and wife are the same, but the man, full of love and tenderness for his pregnant wife at the beginning of the film, is overwhelmed by hate and violence by the time the film ends.
What happens in between explores, often in graphic detail, the transformation of a loving husband into a virtual brute.
From Jews to Israelis
"Munich" appears as a metaphor for the Zionist dream of transforming "the meek Diaspora Jew" into "the new brave Israeli." The film focuses on the fundamental difficulty of reconciling this dream with Jewish morality.
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The plot is simple. After 11 Israeli athletes were killed by Palestinians at the Munich Olympics in 1972, Golda Meir decided to avenge their deaths and thereby prevent further terrorist attacks.
To carry out the plan, she chooses Avner, the son of a heroic Zionist family whose mother had given him up as a baby to be educated in and by a kibbutz after her entire family had been wiped out in the Holocaust. That experience cemented her belief that the Jews needed their own country.
The two women, Golda Meir and Avner’s mother, symbolize this firmness, virility and intransigence. Both are convinced Israel must dominate in order to survive. When deciding the course of action, Golda is shown to overrule a few male generals who recoil from escalating violence.
Emerging doubts
As the hunt for the Palestinians, identified by the Mossad, gathers momentum, doubts begin to creep in. It is these doubts, rather than the violence that engenders them, that the film is all about. The bomb-maker of the hit squad reminds Avner that "we're Jews. Jews don't do wrong because our enemies do wrong...we're supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. That's Jewish..."
He later dies in an accidental explosion, as if the violence catches up with him even as he tries to revert to the Jewish aspiration for righteousness.
The film reminds us that righteousness and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood", says the man with a South African accent, affirming a Jewishness that neither his looks, nor his words seem to suggest.
The Aryan-looking blue-eyed blond self-righteous man recalls the image of the "new Jew" that Zionist posters used to portray in the 1930s and 1940s.
Hostage to a dream
Avner appears as a tragic hostage of his parents’ Zionist dream. Like so many Israelis and Palestinians, he is desperate to break out of the violence into which he was born.
His country is no less desperate: The retaliation is fuelling an infernal circle of violence that has not come to an end to this day.
Finally, Avner finds peace in Brooklyn, the quintessential exile, where the broken Israeli hero takes refuge. In one episode Israelis and Palestinians warriors end up – by mistake - sharing the same sleeping quarters. One may see it as a hint at possible coexistence, perhaps in the framework of one "state of all its citizens."
Violence begets violence
Violence can only beget violence, proclaims Spielberg in his film. Israeli filmmakers, such as Eytan Fox in "Walk on Water" and Avi Mograbi in "Avenge but One of My Two Eyes," make the same point. What is different about Munich is its origin: American Jews seem to send a message of compassion and hope to their beleaguered brethren in Israel. They show the futility of attempts at domination.
The film goes to the very root of Israeli experience. As early as 100 years ago the founders of Zionist armed units in Palestine recognized that force was a way of wrenching the Jew from his Judaic past, above and beyond the simple necessity of self defence.
Essential conflict
Spielberg’s recent film brings to the fore the essential conflict between Jewish moral values and Israel’s raison d’Étre. In the attempt to preserve the nation, Zionism has changed that nation so much that in some respects it is unrecognizable—and, furthermore, constitutes a source of chronic violence.
The European nature of the Zionist enterprise is obvious in the film: All the Israeli protagonists are of European Ashkenazi stock. In this sense, Munich can be seen as a sequel to Schindler’s List, showing how extreme anti-Semitic violence in 20th century Europe continues to brutalize men and women, Israelis and Palestinians alike, and how it fuels the incessant violence in the Middle East.
If Schindler’s List explores threats to the physical survival of the Jews, Munich is all about their spiritual survival.
No evil intent
It would be wrong to attribute nefarious intentions to Spielberg, who voiced his concern in this cinematographic "midrash" (allegory). Several recent books (Prophets Outcast, Wrestling with Zion, the Question of Zion) deal with the same conflict between Zionism and Jewish values. Spielberg and his team project this conflict on the screen.
Now that it is out in the open, we must debate it as honestly and as serenely as we can. The survival of the Jews is at stake.
Yaakov M. Rabkin is Professor of History at the University of Montreal. His recent book on the history of Jewish opposition to Zionism is scheduled to appear in English under the title A Threat from Within: a Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism in Spring 2006
