Spielberg and "Munich"

As far as I am concerned, the Black September operation in Munich at the 1972 Olympic Games remains the nadir of the peak-and-trough Dance of Death between Israel and the Palestinians since 1948.

Now that the terrorist Arafat lies in his grave, there is some hope that somehow a two-state solution as envisaged by President Bush and supported by both Prime Minister Sharon and PM Abbas can eventually occur.

I say "some" because Hamas is a religious-based group given to terrorist actions which has ambitions to become a legitimate political party in the Palestinian elections this January.

Hamas may be the iron bar in the house-of-cards diplomacy between Israel and the PA [or PNA if you insist]. But I digress. Suffice it to say that, barring a miracle, the unhappy relationship between Israel and the Palestinians will not dramatically improve anytime soon.

So it's a safe bet that the movie by Spielberg about the murder of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes and the savage retribution by Mossad against alleged Palestinian terrorists behind the crime cannot dramatically improve or diminish the emotional biases surrounding the Arab/Israeli struggle.

Of course, just as terrorism ALWAYS has innocent victims, counter-terrorism OFTEN has innocent bystanders, or in the case of the hapless Moroccan waiter "accidently" murdered in Lillehammer, Norway, an extremely unlucky resemblance to one of the Palestinian ringleaders of the Munich murder rampage.

And Mossad was implicated in the murder of this innocent look-alike.

I haven’t seen the movie, so I can’t comment on Spielberg’s rendition of the entire nasty affair.

I am just happy that the Israeli raid on Osirak in 1981 was completely successful, since Saddam Hussein’s erratic and murderous behavior WITHOUT the nuclear bomb would have been dozens of times more murderous had this megalomaniac monster gone nuclear.

Thank God A.Q. Khan was unable to peddle his nuclear secrets back in ’81. We can bet that Iran has those secrets and would love to achieve what Saddam never could, a nuclear capability.

About the best I can do is pray that a just and lasting peace may someday break out between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the land holy to three world religions.