Gideon's Spies полностью

For two years Mossad had carried out a carefully planned, clinically executed series of assassinations. The first was shot dead in the lobby of his Rome apartment eleven times—a bullet for each Israeli athlete he helped to murder. Another died when he answered a phone call in his Paris apartment; the bomb in the receiver blew off his head. The next to die was expertly pushed under a London bus at rush hour. In Nicosia, Cyprus, a bomb exploded in a bedside lamp. Hours before they died, each man’s family received flowers and a condolence card bearing the same words: “A reminder we do not forget or forgive.” After each kidon execution, a notice about the dead terrorist was published in Arab language newspapers across the Middle East. The flowers, cards, and notices had all been sent by LAP, Mossad’s department of psychological warfare. While the kidon carried out the executions, it had required a team backup of some eight units. One group was responsible for tracking down each Black September killer. Technicians from yaholomin, Mossad’s vaunted communications unit, set up eavesdropping equipment to monitor each terrorist as he was located. Another team organized dead-letter boxes in a dozen European capitals to receive messages from informers. Safe houses were rented for secret meetings in London, Paris, and Madrid.

Now, thirty-four years later, Steven Spielberg, arguably one of the world’s most successful moviemakers, has transposed the massacre into a $65 million film. When Dagan had heard of Spielberg’s intentions, he had been surprised to learn that Spielberg had made no approach to Mossad for, if not exactly seeking cooperation, at least asking for guidance on the accuracy of the screenplay. It was based on Vengeance by George Jonas, which had been published in 1984 to be quickly dismissed by Mossad as “mostly pure fantasy.”

In the book Jonas claimed to “explore at first hand the feelings and revulsion and doubt that gradually came to haunt each member of the Mossad hit team and which, in the end, inexorably changed their view of the mission and themselves.” He concluded that his story—the genesis of the Spielberg movie—“will inspire and horrify. For its subject is an act of revenge that goes to the very heart of the ancient biblical questions of good and evil, or right and wrong, which ultimately remain the deepest concerns of the Jewish people and which continue to haunt ‘Avner’ and his comrades on their mission.”

But the book’s mysterious “Avner”—who was the movie’s leader of the hit team—had never worked for Mossad, let alone been selected to be a member of kidon. Even before Meir Dagan settled down for a private viewing of Munich, he knew that other members of Mossad had trashed the movie. David Kimche, the former deputy director, had castigated it “as a tragedy that a person of the stature of Steven Spielberg, who has made such fantastic films, should now have based ‘Munich’ on a book that is a falsehood.” Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence service, had dismissed the film as “a children’s adventure story.” From all over the world other retired members of Mossad had joined in the criticism.

In the film the kidon are portrayed as increasingly filled with doubts about the morality of the mission. Conversely the terrorists are given a platform to rationalize their murders, just as the apologists for suicide bombers today defend their atrocities. All this was done with the consummate skill of a great filmmaker. What angered the real-life members of the hit team, together with current members of kidon, was that like the book, the movie did not explain Israel’s well-established justification for hunting down and executing terrorists who cannot be brought to trial by the usual means of arrest. In the movie the hit team is depicted as being isolated in the field for months. Two of its members are a forger and a bombmaker.