A New Movie Does Justice to the Munich Massacre

Steven Spielberg’s 2005 Munich took its name from the location of the 1972 Olympics, where Palestinian terrorists captured eleven Israeli athletes and then tortured and murdered them. But the film is not about this brutal attack, but about the Mossad’s mission to kill the perpetrators, and the deep moral ambiguities supposedly involved in eliminating terrorists before they can strike again. As Rick Richman explained in an essay on Hollywood’s portrayals of Israel, Munich demonstrates both moral and historical obtuseness. Now a new film, September 5, tells the story of the massacre itself, and, according to Nicole Gelinas, avoids the pitfalls into which Spielberg fell: