Spielberg Takes On The Mossad

Perennially overrated director Steven Spielberg, who has had a few good hits like "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" and a lot of stinkers like "The Terminal" and "Catch Me If You Can," is under fire from the Israeli diplomatic corps here and a lot of ex-Mossad agents for his new film about the revenge killings of Palestinians who murdered Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. (I'm not sure it was ever fully determined if the terrorists or the bumbling German police fired the fatal shots, but the terrorists are ultimately to blame for setting the events in motion).
I haven't seen Spielberg's film and as of this writing few people have. But the discussion ahead is sure to be fascinating because it touches on Israel's ongoing quest to maintain what it calls "the purity or arms" while conducting itself as one of the mightiest armed powers in the world. Its policy of targeting those it deems terror leaders for assasination continues today, and it's fascinating to debate whether this is a wise policy or just smart politics by Israel's government to mollify the public after a terror attack.
This film will surely fuel that debate, which is made more relevant now that the U.S. is engaged in its own war on terror. I doubt too many people would pen letters of outrage if we were able to get a cruise missile into Osama Bin Laden's cage.
Bin Laden is in fact a textbook argument for such a policy. Like his Hamas and Islamic Jihad counterparts, he's a coward who stays out of danger and makes radical pronouncements while dispatching other people -- usually misguided young people -- to do his dirty work. Then when all hell breaks loose he hides like a kid who threw a snowball. Such people need to know that they are not outside the fray, and that the death and destruction they unleash against others could come calling on their doorstep at any time. Men like Sheikh Yassin, the erstwhile Hamas leader and at least one of his succesors learned that the hard way. No line should be drawn between the suicide bomber and his dispatcher. Both are combatants.
But however satisfying it is to hear that such a dispatcher -- or in the case of the Munich thugs, the perpetrators-- were themselves dispatched, there is the cold reality that such actions do nothing to prevent future terrorism. Israel can attest to that. While it certainly disrupts the terrorist infrastructure -- how many people would answer an ad for Hamas leader these days -- in the long run those close to the assassinated person are only more resolute.
That is not an argument against such reprisals, just a reality check. Just as the death penalty has never proven to be a deterrent to murder, these killings are probably more effective as a punishment and than a long-term remedy. But punishment is justification enough.
Yet also like the death penalty, we have to take into account the law of unintended consequences. Capital punishment has been banned in many parts of our country because of the possibility of error, as evidenced by the number of people exonerated through DNA testing in reopened cases. If juries and judges can make mistakes, how much more so is a general in the field prone to error when he relies on intelligence data from people who are coerced or bribed. And what of those who die as a result of collateral damage, who are unquestionably innocent. Are their lives less valuable than those we seek to protect by thwarting terror attacks.
All these questions have plagued Israel, from 1972 to today. This is not the first film to deal with the Munich-revenge plot. An excellent 1986 miniseries, "The Sword of Gideon," starring Steven Bauer also treated the subject, and I recall the moral quandary of the characters.
One ex-Mossad leader said in an interview about the Spielberg film that it was unrealistic to portray a Mossad agent in the film as troubled enough about his assignment that he quit and was pursued by his handler. "One of the best parts of the Mossad is that if you have anything on your mind, you can come and speak out. It does not have to develop into a problem," Gad Shimron, a former Mossad field operative turned journalist told Reuters.
More likely, it doesn't develop into a problem because Mossad so heavily screens its agents, especially assasins, that those troubled by these kinds of moral issues never make it into the field. Intelligence agencies, especially those fighting for the survival of a nation, can't afford the touchy-feely stuff.
Some say Spielberg is trying to use his film as a vehicle for the idea that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind, a notion completely antithetical to counterterrorism. But it serves us all well to have a moral discussion about both the moral rectitude and the efficacy of state-sponsored retribution. Just by having that discussion we demonstrate what separates us from the terrorists.