Spielberg is wrong

In a little more than two weeks, Steven Spielberg will release "Munich," his epic film about the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

But the movie, Spielberg warns us, is not really about this unjustifiable, murderous act. It's really about the human cost of a political quagmire – the Arab-Israeli conflict.

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As Spielberg puts it in the latest issue of Time magazine, "The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence."

If that is truly the message of "Munich," the film is a blatant lie, propaganda, a waste of time.

He suggests, "The worst conflicts are often those that break out between those who are persecuted."

That statement suggests, rightly or wrongly, that each side in the conflict is persecuted.

Now there is no question that the Israelis are persecuted – hated for who they are because of who they are. And there is no question that the Arab people are oppressed.

But are the Arabs persecuted?

I don't think that's the right terminology – and I say this as an Arab-American.

Though I haven't seen the film, I can judge Spielberg's words and descriptions.

It's time for someone to recognize that the Israel people are persecuted and the Arab people are oppressed by the same enemy.

That enemy is the Muslim leadership in the Middle East and elsewhere that oppresses its own people and scapegoats the Jews as a way of turning the enmity of its own oppressed people away from its rulers and channeling it toward the persecution of the Jews.

There's another reason Spielberg's premise of "intransigence" is so obviously false.

One side in the Middle East conflict – the Israeli side – has bent over backward to solve the problem. The Israelis have sacrificed concerns about their own security in an effort to give the Arabs what they say they want – a land of their own. And every time they make another unilateral move in that direction, they are met with more violence and higher stakes.

To accuse the Israelis of "intransigence" is about as big a lie as one can tell.

The problem in the Middle East, ultimately, is that one side seeks to destroy the other.

Can anyone deny that the Arabs still seek to destroy Israel and eradicate every Jew from the Middle East?

On the other hand, Israelis do not seek to destroy their enemies in the Middle East. If they sought to do so, they have the capability of doing it. They have possessed that capability for a long time. They have never used it. In fact, they have been a model of restraint even when faced with the possibility of defeat and destruction themselves.

The real danger in the Middle East, to which Spielberg appears oblivious, is that we are nearing a time when the Arabs will have for the first time the ability to destroy Israel.

That is the real thriller on our horizon.

Instead, Spielberg has chosen to make a movie about the past, about the balance of terror that has kept the quest for peace and freedom in the Middle East at an intractable impasse.

Coming very soon, the Muslim powers that have both persecuted the Jews and oppressed the Arabs will have within their arsenal weapons of mass destruction that could destroy Israel.

Will they sit on them the way the Israelis have for more than 40 years?

I don't think so. I doubt Steven Spielberg believes that. I don't know anyone in their right mind who would want to take that chance.

Steve Spielberg is a gifted moviemaker. But he fails to understand one of the central lessons of history. Appeasement of evil never works.