Bookworm forced herself to listen to Tony Kushner, screenwriter for Munich, interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. Her review of the interview offers fascinating insight into the mentality and moral sense which went into producing the moral travesty disguised as a thriller. Read the whole thing.  A sample:

 When Terry Gross asks Kushner about objections to his showing the Mossad agents as having moral doubts about the targeted assassinations, Kushner brushes that aside. He's confident Avner had doubts and says that it would be disrespectful to the Mossad agents to assume that they didn't have doubts.

I find this an interesting argument. Kushner is trying to say that he's giving the Mossad agents the moral high ground insofar as he is presenting them as people of conscience. However, it doesn't seem to occur to Kushner that people of conscience might quickly resolve their doubts, precisely because they do distinguish between right and wrong.

Here, on the one hand, we have ruthless killers who slaughtered the innocent and helpless. These same killers then got a free pass from myriad European governments, removing them from the reach of a regular criminal justice system. On the other hand, we have men who believe, based both on ancient principles and the recent Nazi experience, that one can never stand aside when Jews are killed because they are Jews, and expect world governments to act. One can also never stand aside and allow evil freedom to act. One must always raise up roadblocks.

It seems to me that the moral calculus isn't that difficult —— there is, simply, a difference between murder and justice. And when the European courts deny justice, there is nothing wrong with the Israeli government taking upon itself the duty to enforce it.

(Incidentally, because no conversation with a liberal can ever avoid Abu Ghraib, Kushner manages to throw it in to his ruminations about the morality of targeted assassinations against killers.)