devarim

It seems that, for his next project, Steven Spielberg is tackling the murder of eleven Israeli atheletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Olympics and the subsequent retaliation by Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence agency. There are plenty of complicating political issues surrounding this film, and (as reported by the New York Times article), according to associates:

Mr. Spielberg has sought counsel from advisers ranging from his own rabbi to the former American diplomat Dennis Ross, who in turn has alerted Israeli government officials to the film's thrust. Mr. Spielberg has also shown the script to Mr. Ross's old boss, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton's aides said Mr. Spielberg reached out to him first more than a year ago and again as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Spielberg is also being advised by Mike McCurry, Mr. Clinton's White House spokesman, and Allan Mayer, a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis communications.

In the statement, Mr. Spielberg called the Munich attack - which was carried out by Black September, an arm of the P.L.O.'s Fatah organization - and the Israeli response "a defining moment in the modern history of the Middle East."

Mr. Spielberg's interest in the question of a civilized nation's proper response to terrorism deepened, aides said, after the 9/11 attacks, as Americans were grappling for the first time with similar issues - for instance, in each new lethal strike on a suspected terrorist leader by a C.I.A. Predator drone aircraft. In Mr. Kushner's script, people who have read it say, the Israeli assassins find themselves struggling to understand how their targets were chosen, whether they belonged on the hit list and, eventually, what, if anything, their killing would accomplish.

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Mr. Spielberg's statement indicated that, despite the implications for other conflicts, his movie - to be shot in Malta, Budapest and New York - was aimed squarely at the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

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Mr. Spielberg's advisers say he is studiously avoiding the most glaring potential trap: drawing a moral equivalency between the Palestinian attack and the Israeli retaliation.

I can't decide what will be worse: humanizing the Mossad agents too much (leading audiences to wonder what kind of sick people could have so many doubts and still go through with the assassinations) or not making them human enough (leading audiences to believe that the IDF is made up of a bunch of heartless killing machines). Of course I'll wait to pass judgment until I see the film (which hasn't even been made yet), but in the meantime I'm more than a little worried about the fallout of any Spielberg film on this topic.