Steven Spielberg has hired the public relations consultant who is spearheading Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s re-election campaign to promote his film Munich, about the hunt for the Palestinians responsible for the hostage crisis that led to the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.
The film, which has already been lambasted in Israel for its perceived sympathy for the Palestinian cause, will be promoted to Israelis by Eyal Arad before its release in January.
Arad has been a member of the Likud party for almost 30 years. His first big political client was the former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He then took his skills to Sharon. He is considered one of the advisers closest to Sharon and was instrumental in the prime minister’s creation of a new party, Kadima.
Spielberg has come under a barrage of criticism in Israel, from commentators who have not seen the film and from Israeli officials in the US who were invited to advance screenings.
Arad told Reuters that Israel was an important market for the film. ”We are talking about a film that has generated a lot of interest here, and naturally that sort of interest can entail some negative reactions as well as positive reactions,” he said.
The film is based on a book called Vengeance, by the Canadian journalist George Jonas, which details the hunt for the members of Black September who kidnapped the athletes. The athletes were all killed by the Palestinians, and the German police during a botched rescue attempt at the games.
Israel has never acknowledged responsibility for the series of shootings, explosive booby-traps and commando raids that killed 10 Palestinians linked to Black September.
According to reports, Spielberg’s film documents the self-doubt of the Israeli secret service assassins and humanises the Palestinian killers hunted by Israel.
In the Jerusalem Post, Calev Ben David attacked the director for his research, while Jack Engelhard, the author of Indecent Proposal, wrote in Yedioth Ahronoth that Spielberg, who is Jewish, was no friend of Israel. Engelhard claimed that the film’s script could have been written by George Galloway.
A retired head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, Avi Dichter, who attended a preview in Washington, likened the film to a children’s adventure story. ”There is no comparison between what you see in the movie and how it works in reality,” Dichter said.
Arad has already conducted a screening in Tel Aviv for the widows of two of the 11 athletes who died, attended by the film’s producer and screenwriter. After the screening, Ilana Romano, whose weightlifter husband was the first athlete to be killed in Munich, defended the film. ”For me, it was important that the film does no dishonour to the memory of the murdered athletes, nor to the image of the state of Israel. Both my criteria were satisfied,” she said
The reprisal campaign against Black September included the 1973 killing in Norway of a Moroccan waiter who had been mistaken for Black September’s leader. Six Israeli agents were prosecuted for the murder and Israel eventually paid compensation to the victim’s family.
Romano pointed out that Spielberg did not mention Mossad’s assassination of the wrong man in Lillehammer. ”Had Spielberg wanted to harm Israel’s image, he would have included the Lillehammer affair. Don’t let’s over-analyse Spielberg’s film,” she said.
Munich opens in the United Kingdom on December 27 and in Israel on January 26.
There has been speculation that the film could do as well at the box office — and critically — as Schindler’s List, the 1993 film on the Holocaust that won seven Oscars, including that of best director, for Spielberg. – Guardian Unlimited Â