Dark Angels in America

"Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team" (George Jonas)

E arrependimento:

Inevitably, Spielberg's film will have 21st- century answers to 20th-century questions — and progress isn't necessarily for the better. I researched and wrote my book in 1982 and 1983. By the time Spielberg's film went into production in 2005, the world had become a different place. People had adjusted considerably their sense of right and wrong. In 1984, when Vengeance was first published, no state admitted sending hit teams abroad to perform extrajudicial killings. But while the morality of counterterrorist violence would have been questioned, the immorality of terrorist violence would have been beyond dispute.

In 1972 the hooded terrorists of Black September were the bad guys. Even terrorist chieftains like Yasser Arafat tried to distance themselves from Munich-type massacres. By 2005 matters were far more equivocal. Terrorists and counterterrorists alike were coming out of the closet. No longer abashed, both were flaunting their stuff on TV. Security forces coordinated with CNN News to display live broadcasts of targeted assassinations, while video spots on al-Jazeera portrayed the beheadings of hostages and the apotheoses of suicide bombers. Disputing the moral high ground of counterterrorists, terrorists started claiming justification and legitimacy for their acts themselves. Soon the media were describing hijackers and shoe-bombers as "militants" and "insurgents," elevating the blowing up of shoppers and travellers to a legitimate method of political expression. News clips of airliners slamming into the World Trade Center sent people dancing into the street throughout the Arab world. The new millennium was turning into the Terrorist Century.

...

Spielberg's Munich follows the letter of my book closely enough. The spirit is almost the opposite. Vengeance holds there is a difference between terrorism and counterterrorism; Munich suggests there isn't. The book has no trouble telling an act of war from a war crime; the film finds it difficult. Spielberg's movie worries about the moral trap of resisting terror; my book worries about the moral trap of not resisting it. The story could be called A Tale of Two Avners.

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The result isn't so much a celluloid fable of moral equivalence, as a triumphant — indeed, orgasmic — battle hymn of the dove. Its climax has "Avner" fornicating in a grotesque montage, intercut with violent visions of the Olympic hostage drama. The inspiration for it probably comes from the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, whom I quote in Vengeance, celebrating his new-found potency after Israel's initial setbacks in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Qabbani is sexually aroused by Arab warriors crossing the Suez Canal. Spielberg and Kushner see "Avner" sexually aroused by the massacre at Munich. There's no accounting for tastes.

Pouco mais de vinte anos, entre o livro de George Jonas e o filme de Steven Spielberg/ Tony Kushner. Vinte anos foram suficientes para reduzir o discurso moral ao subjectivismo — a versão atomista do multiculturalismo. Tenho saudades da Guerra Fria.