Meinberg tries to tell the real story
צילום: סי די בנק
The other ‘Munich’
There is no doubt about the timing of Ron Meiberg's documentary about Israel's pursuit of the terrorists who killed Israeli Olympians in Germany. Meiberg also leaves no doubts about morality or patriotic justice
The host network and the timing are not incidental. Ron Meiberg's "Hit List", a documentary that tracks the reprisals following the Munich Olympics massacre, found a home on Israel's Channel 2, which is slowly but surely expropriating all possible national values.
The timing clearly stems from the anger and embarrassment that Spielberg's "Munich" has stirred up. It is also a declaration: It is not a work of fiction, but rather a careful and detailed documentation of the events following the massacre. In other words, Meinberg tries to tell the real story of Munich, in direct contrast to Spielberg's version.
To be sure, it is a top-quality, upbeat and assertive documentary, held together mainly by monologues of relevant operatives. The interviewer's questions were left on the editing room; as a result there is a confession-like effect in the reports of some of the speakers, veterans of Israel's security apparatus whose names still cannot be revealed and are identified only by the first letter of their first name.
Minimal, intelligent and informative narration fills in the gaps where the plot is not supported by archival material or interviews. Aaron Klein, author of "Striking Back" which documented the hits, served as the in-house expert into the secrets of the Mossad, and its departments and personnel.
Rare insights
The film unfolds on several levels that are not easily put together without a framework story. The plot is a series of rare peeks into the secret lives of the senior hush-hush, macho operatives.
Gadget lovers are once again be impressed by Mahmoud Hamshiri's assassination in Paris by an explosive device inserted into his telephone at his apartment. Others are sure to have a renewed sense of nostalgia for operation "Fountain of Youth" by hearing Ehud Barak's description of how he put on makeup ahead of the operation for the hundredth time.
And spy book readers just what they love, and wherever the visual effect was not dramatic enough, there was a musical embellishment to send shivers down the spine.
"Hit List" does not pretend to be a documentary only of heroics, and it also carefully examined the screw-ups: agents that were killed or injured, the Lillehammer fiasco in which Mossad agents accidentally killed a man they mistook for one of the Munich terrorists, and other things.
Most speakers in the movie keep maintain a restrained tone and refer to these incidents as "malfunctions" or "mishaps". But as Israel's hit lists grow longer, every innocent bystander is defined as a "mishap".
Absolute morals, absolute justice
The film also deals with the moral story in several ways that, of course, serve to conjure up the impression of absolute justice. You would have to be a rationalist and a cynic from Mars not to see the symbolism in the Munich massacre – "a few kilometers from the Dachau extermination camp."
But you would also have to be an uncompromising Israeli patriot to connect Dachau and Munich in a direct line, without wondering even for a moment about the connection between Israel's actions towards the Palestinian population since 1967 and the massacre.
But this correlation is totally absent in the movie, and its absence strengthens even more the overall narrative, in which everything fits in logically, morally and absolutely.
Meiberg chose the patriotic narrative. Following the events of September 11, sociologist Slavoj Zizek defined the American patriotic narrative as the story of a total attack on innocence. Israelis have defined it similarly – day-by-day, hour-by-hour, since the beginning of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Only through such a definition can a democratic government authorize such extreme acts of revenge, and then adorn itself with a sense of justice and instill it in its operations. As N. says in the film, "it was a sacred mission, a national mission for the Jewish people, for the Israeli people".
No one argues with sanctity. The interviewer failed to challenge the speakers, instead allowing them to act on the morality of the mission in lukewarm terms: "If we could have brought them to trial, we would have."
People that are sent on these sort of missions usually shut themselves out, and Rafi Eitan, in a chilling confession says it simply: "You become an executioner… you become the hangman."
A broad perspective
Apart from the patriotic narrative, one can dispute the point at which Meiberg chooses to end the movie.
Munich was a watershed event in the fight against terrorism, as we are told over and over throughout the film. Against this perception, one should pose a broader perspective on terrorism and counterterrorism, since much earlier than Munich, Israel was busy sending mastermind killers, as they were called at the time, to the afterworld.
Even after names were scratched off the Munich list (during the most chilling point in the film, Ilana Romano, a Munich widow, says that every so often anonymous callers would phone her up and report that one more assassin was killed, and then hang up), additional names were added. What started off as a singular act of vengeance turned into policy, the effectiveness of which has yet to be proven.
Even the rationale – avoiding civilian casualties – was abandoned.
Meiberg did not seek to create a history of disputes among executioners, but a sharp and concentrated, patriotic story, in which good guys are butchered and their successors must avenge their deaths.
The choice and the story are totally legitimate, but surely there are other ways to tell it, with a much broader perspective and greater depth. One day, when we can break free of the "the-whole-world-is-against-us" routine, perhaps someone will figure out how to tell the story differently.
