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Customer Reviews of The Tragedy of the Munich Games

befuddled reporting
What you're looking at here is an hour-long documentary broadcast a few years ago by ABC News on the infamous kidnapping and murder of 11 members of the Israeli olympic team in Munich in 1972, an event which many commentators have cited as marking the birth of international terrorism. <
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>A passable effort, it features interviews with many people who were involved in the action (no Palestinians, though), from retired German police officers, to Peter Jennings, to the orphans of the slain athletes. There is also plenty of news footage taken from broadcasts of the time. But, perhaps mercifully, there are no "re-enactments" with costumed actors, a common phenomenon in such documentaries these days. <
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>As with many products of the mainstream media, you can count on this documentary to totally fail to clarify what was really going on: why did those Palestinian gunmen think it okay to to murder a bunch of Jews? Why were they so angry? What did they want? How did this situation come to be? The viewer is left to fill in the blanks for himself. <
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>What's most hilarious (albeit in a sick way) is the lack of interviews of virutally any Arabs on the matter. This is because, despite the saccharine, conciliatory conclusion of the documentary (in which we are treated to recent footage of the orphans of the murdered athletes applauding the Palestinian olympic team), to this day, the average Arab considers what happened in Munich in 1972 a great victory. When the surviving terrorists were shipped back to Libya after only a couple of months of captivity in Germany, they were hailed as conquering heroes. And that was just Libya! <
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>Knowing this, producers were evidently hard-pressed to find any Arabs that would speak of Munich 1972 in condemnatory terms. In the end, they couldn't.

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A classic
Ignore the one-star review above.This excellent documentary is not intended to be a deep exploration of why Munich happened.You can find that in the magnificent "One Day In September".This powerful film is <
>nothing more than a look at the events of September 5,1972 as covered <
>(brilliantly)by ABC,and the emotional memories of those who did it. <
>On that level,it succeeds.You will experience everything you felt that day-shock,anger,resentment.The film brilliantly intrecuts ABC's actual broadcast footage and powerful new interviews with some of the people involved.You see how the events continue to haunt them today,especially Jim McKay,who so masterfully led ABC's coverage and had one of the most powerful and memorable moments in television history when he delivered the bad news and said simply,"They're all gone".That is something you don't forget,and it's here.This is a great documentary that should be seen.

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poorly presented
If you're looking for an account of this event purely from an emotional Israeli viewpoint, this video is for you. If you're looking for an unbiased presentation of pertinent facts, find another documentary. <
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>The documentary goes to great lengths to present Jewish emotions surrounding this tragedy, from description of the psychological difficulties the athletes faced in returning to Germany after the Holocaust, to the emotional trauma Israel experienced when the athletes were taken hostage. Such reporting is insightful, however, the documentary didn't even mention the Palestinian gunmen's motives for doing what they did. While interviews of Israeli family members included discussion about them immigrating to Palestine where "there was really nothing," no mention was made of the fact that the Israeli occupation fuelled this tragic event. <
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>At the end of the documentary, the film transitions from images of masked Palestinian gunmen in Munich to airliners flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11, implying the two had some connection. The only transition between these images was the narrator saying, "These demons have yet to be exorcised." An uninformed viewer may likely draw the conclusion that Palestinian terrorism was behind 9/11, an irresponsible and misleading implication for a "documentary." <
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