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And what about the victims? The big miss of the new series about the massacre in Munich - voila! culture

2022-09-09T02:54:46.629Z


Three series - "The Goal: Munich", "Munich 72" and "Munich 72: Blood in the Olympics" - were recently inspired by the murder of the 11 victims of the Olympics. Despite all the differences, they have a common sad message


And what about the victims?

The big miss of the new series about the Munich massacre

No fewer than three series in different genres emerged last week inspired by the murder of the 11 victims of the Olympics, which happened exactly 50 years ago. Each in its own way illustrates how the memory of terrorism is always present in the Israeli consciousness, but due to the many reconstructions, a rare opportunity was missed to illuminate the forgotten story of the murdered

Nadav Menuhin

09/09/2022

Friday, September 9, 2022, 04:45 Updated: 05:43

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In Videof, a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the massacre of the athletes in Munich with the participation of the families and President Herzog (Photo: Reuters and AP)

A few months ago, when reporters ran around Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv filming terrorism live, many viewers were shocked.

Even in terms of the voyeuristic, intrusive Israeli media, there were those who argued that some threshold had been crossed.

But the bitter truth is that the threshold was crossed a long time ago, and that terrorism orders cameras on a regular basis.

This is his goal: to arouse terror and give it as much resonance as possible, thus changing the balance of power.



There is no need to exaggerate the global effect created by the ISIS beheading videos, or the documentation of the planes colliding in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

Before all of these stands the massacre of the 11 athletes at the Munich Olympics.

In Central Europe, in the center of global attention and in front of cameras from media outlets from all over the world, a squad of terrorists kidnapped Israeli athletes inside the Olympic village, and murdered them.



This brutal show left a tremendous impression.

This crazy event, beyond the fact that it is horrifying in itself, found an unusual setting for it - precisely in the only Olympics hosted by Germany since World War II, precisely in an event that is supposed to serve as a respite from the never-ending national battles.

The grim stages of the negotiations, as well as one of the failed rescue attempts - were transmitted live to screens all over the world.

Accordingly, several images from this event, for example the one of the masked terrorist standing bent over on the balcony, were burned into the Israeli consciousness.

She stars in all of our collective nightmares.



Admittedly, the massacre of the athletes is to some extent already a treated trauma: it has been extensively discussed in the past on most of its aspects, and it even inspired Steven Spielberg's masterpiece "Munich" - which was able to describe so well how the memory of terrorism is always present in the Israeli subconscious.

However, marking the 50th anniversary of the massacre that took place this week, Biss and Bhot released no less than three new works that return to it through different genres: docu, docu-drama and drama - and prove that Spielberg's insight is very true even now, and how much this phenomenon preoccupies the discourse The Israeli even now.

A cruel show.

Media crews in Munich in front of the kidnapping scene, 1972 (Photo: GettyImages)

"Munich 72: Blood in the Olympics" bis docu was first on the screen.

It is a French work in three parts, whose authors include the Israeli journalist Yossi Melman.

The idea behind it is original: to recreate the drama through three different perspectives - the planner of the attack Abu Daoud, the German police chief who managed the failed event, and the head of the Mossad at the time Zvi Zamir, who witnessed the massacre and is the director of the organization that carried out the revenge.

This is a holistic trio: the representative of the victims, the representative of the victims and the representative of the failed force that tried to stop the nightmare without success, which are also divided according to the three national angles that were present at the event: the Palestinian, the Israeli and the German.

In between, Esther Roth Shahmarov, Ehud Barak, who was then commander of a patrol of the General Staff, the pilot who escaped the attack, and more are also interviewed.



It's beautiful on paper, but the result is far from there: it's a film that tries to highlight all the informative aspects of the event, but it's as monotonous as a boring lecture.

The testimonies of the three protagonists are dubbed into French, which creates a foreignness to the happening, since not a single moment of this drama was conducted in that language.

The film moves between the various scenes of the events, completing the undocumented part with animation, and does not give up any detail.

Apparently it has everything, but its dry tone is at odds with the intensity of such a shocking event, which has angles from the field of security, politics, sports and the media.

To summarize, this is a reasonable film, but not one that would have made the Olympic criteria.

Everything was recorded, live.

The events of Munich 1972 (Photo: GettyImages)

Compared to "Munich 72: Blood in the Olympics", the docu-drama presented by Hot and answering to the original name no less "Munich 72", is already able to qualify for higher stages.

The three-episode series created by Roman Shomonov ("Bernstein: The Last Partisan", "As long as in the heart") and Shani Haziza ("The Hidden Rabbi") also tries to cover the event from all its angles, and dares to go further and talk about its far-reaching effects, Although, in my opinion, she does not go far enough in this direction, but is content with tasting.

If the previous series was helped by illustrations, this one recreates what was not recorded using flesh and blood actors.



It's a very fast-paced, fast-paced docu rich in interviews and information, which spreads a very wide canvas and illustrates the many angles of the event.

Among other things, the series pays significant attention to the journalistic angle of the event, through the eyes of Broadcasting Authority envoy Dan Shilon;

Brings the story of the only athlete who escaped the kidnappers, Gad Sabri;

And does not miss the Olympic angle and the consequences for the world of sports.

Even if not all the interpretations appearing in it sound convincing to the same extent, the series does manage to impress the viewers and offer them something beyond the obvious.

Maybe not everything needs to be restored.

From "Munich 72" (photo: official website, courtesy of HOT8 and SIPUR)

However, despite the pleasure of seeing Anat Waxman play Golda Meir, the drama is ultimately illustrative and not necessary, and in some parts quite unnecessary, for example the scene where Zvi Zamir examines the bodies of the athletes to see if one of them is still alive - a scene that Zamir testifies to himself Orally, and its illustration is in bad taste.



Unfortunately, both documentary series miss the victims of this tragedy.

Apart from Moshe Weinberg and Yosef Romano - who were murdered at the beginning of the event - and Amitsur Shapira who comes forward thanks to his son's testimony and especially thanks to that of Ruth Shahmarov, who trained with him - almost nothing was said about the rest beyond their names, if at all.

who were they

What field did they work in?

What led them to this moment?

The series ignores these questions and misses an opportunity to do belated favors with those who have become symbols against their will.

A simple investigation could have immortalized them - and not just the way they died.

More in Walla!

The families of those murdered in the Munich massacre: "The victory - we grew to be a family"

To the full article

Anat Waxman as Golda Meir, from "Munich 72" (photo: official website, courtesy of HOT8 and SIPUR)

If that's not enough, the drama series "Target: Munich" also became popular - a puzzling translation considering the more sophisticated and easy-to-translate international name of the series, "Munich Games".

The Israeli-German co-production was written by creators from here (Michal Aviram) and from there (Martin Banki), and although - at least from its first two episodes sent to journalists - it does not deal (almost) directly with the massacre of the athletes, but this trauma hovers over it deeply.



The focus of the series is a friendly match between two soccer teams held in Munich, Israeli and German.

Mossad personnel try to monitor potential terrorist threats that threaten the sporting meeting, and cooperate with the German law enforcement authorities, which creates a series of frictions: the Israelis are sure that the German security establishment is impotent, as it was then, and they, for their part, are shocked by the ease with which the Israeli agents invade people's privacy based on initial suspicion.

The two investigators leading the investigation - Yosef Sweid as a Jewish analyst with no experience in the field and Sainev Saleh as a German agent of Arab origin - do not quite get along, and if that is not enough it turns out that the financial entanglements of the owners of the Israeli group, played by Doval' Glickman, may also blow up the game .

Glickman on the background of the monument to the memory of the athletes, from "The goal: Munich" (photo: official website, courtesy of HOT and NEXT TV)

If so, the city where everything takes place, the sporting background, the frustration between the various security services and of course the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cite the events of September 1972. However, apart from some nice original music, there is not much more to "The Goal: Munich" than that.

Its characters are designed in a strange and unconvincing way, and the discussion that takes place within it is superficial.

It is much more interested in being a generic suspense series - and as such it delivers certain goods according to the familiar formula, with a measured dose of action at the end of each episode.

A series that can pass the time, but definitely not an event that cannot be missed.



Beyond the deep sadness that watching these three series evokes, they all have another frustrating element in common, a sentiment that bubbles through the voice of the creators: the sad message, covert or overt, that in fact we have not progressed too much since then - terrorism has not disappeared but only improved, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not going anywhere Place but only became less intractable, and the media did not develop better strategies to deal with such events but only became more infantile.

Is this really the case?

Perhaps, after all, there are reasons for optimism: the opening of the German archives and the provision of compensation to the families of the victims, may help to heal the wound a little.

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  • The massacre of the athletes in Munich

  • Munich 1972

  • Munich Olympics

Source: walla

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