Bret Stephens, former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, currently a member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, wrote a stinging rebuke of “Munich” over the weekend. Together with another one yesterday by Andrea Levin in Front Page Magazine, and still another one today by Rachel Neuwirth in The American Thinker, which followed Ed Lasky’s article there the day before — all of which are worth reading in their entirety — the essays represent a remarkable phenomenon: nearly two weeks after the movie opened, essays continue to appear criticizing the film — and its Jewish producer and Jewish screenwriter — for the movie’s perceived attack on Israel.
Are Jews required, as Jews, to support Israel? The final scene of “Munich” sets up an apparent dichotomy. Avner, the Mossad agent who has lost faith in the morality of Israel’s anti-terrorist campaign, rejects a request from his Mossad contact to return to Israel. Instead, Avner extends an invitation to his contact to come to Avner’s home for dinner, to break bread as Jews — an invitation that in turn is rejected, and Avner walks away in the opposite direction.
In thinking about the obligations of Jews to Israel, it is useful to read a remarkable essay that Bret Stephens wrote about loyalty — “the loyalty that Jews owe the State of Israel” — published in In Character. Stephens examines the obligations to community that arise from a seeming accident of birth:
A “Jew,” strictly speaking, is simply the child of a Jewish mother: Nothing more is required. And yet . . . this does not amount to an accident of birth. Rather, it suggests that one’s relationship as a Jew to the Jewish community inheres first in one’s relation as a son or a daughter to one’s mother. Put another way, the loyalty a Jew properly owes the Jewish community is the same as the loyalty he owes his mother.
What kind of loyalty is that? Here, I’m tempted to resort to Jewish mother jokes of the Elaine May-Mike Nichols variety, the essence of which is that the mother’s expectations of loyalty nearly always exceed the child’s willingness or ability to meet them. (Question: What’s the difference between a Jewish mother and a rottweiler? Answer: Eventually, the rottweiler lets go.)
But while there can be little doubt that a mother’s expectations frequently exceed what can be reasonably demanded of her child, neither can there be much doubt that at least some of these expectations are reasonable. . . . The same applies to the obligations of a Jew toward the Jewish community. Surely it cannot be expected of every Jew that he will live an observant life, or participate in Jewish community life, or engage in Jewish causes, much less that he move to Israel and enlist in an elite army unit. . . .
But as in the case of mothers and sons, so too in the case of Jews and the Jewish people: Just because
everything is not owed does not mean nothing is owed. . . . And for as long as Israelis continue to will their democracy by participating in it, it will be the central, the largest, and the most legitimate expression of collective Jewish life.
Keeping faith with Jews means keeping faith with all of them, and with their right to a collective national life, particularly at a time when that right is under attack, as it was in 1972 and as it is today.
Israel is a collection of Jews living in their own country (largely because both European and Arab countries alike expelled them), restoring their home in the land that gave them birth, to which their history extends unbroken over at least 3,000 years. It is a community that includes, as Stephens writes, ethnic Jews and religious Jews, “Jews of the Left and of the Right . . . the ‘Peace Now’ activists no less than the militant hilltop settlers; the secular Tel Avivians no less than the Orthodox Hebronites.”
Which is why the final scene in “Munich” is deeply troublesome, regardless of what one thinks of the moral issues presented by the movie. One can criticize Israel — it is Jewish to criticize — but one cannot turn one’s back. Not without breaking faith with those one was born to keep faith with.
Still Still More: Jonah Goldberg has an interesting article and an even more interesting comment:
[I]t dawned on me that one of the lessons of Saving Private Ryan directly contradicts the lesson [in] Munich. In Ryan, they let one German soldier go and they come to regret it. Similarly, when the young translator freezes with terror, his friend dies at the hands of a Nazi. Most people I know took the lesson of these scenes to be that ignoring or refusing to face up to evil will only lead to greater tragedies down the road. In Munich, the lesson is the reverse. Killing terrorists is foolish because to do so only “creates more terrorists” and replaces the bad guys with worse guys. I don’t think these two morals can be reconciled.
I don’t either. It is one thing for “Munich” to point out that the world is a slippery slope, raising moral issues not only for the bad guys but the good ones as well. It is another thing entirely to take the position that, because the world is a slippery slope, the proper (“moral”) thing to do is get off — turn around and go home for dinner.