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'Munich' should make Spielberg take notice of the LTTE

'Munich' is a Stephen Spielberg movie. That's a realization which dawns very much after a viewer is bowled over by the movies' gimmicks, the glamour, and the gory scenes of a Dutch temptress being done-in with a silencer enabled gun. It's a slick scene of honey-trapper being confronted in her own boudoir, and removed.

Eventually the Mossad agent who is detailed to kill a dozen men who kidnapped Israeli athletes from the Olympic village, gets contrite. His superiors are given the list of killings and counter killings by the Mossad and its enemies over a short period of time following the Munich kidnappings.

He hangs his head and ponders 'why all this?' Makes us wonder whether LTTE gunmen here get contrite in a similar way - - whether they question the cycle of killings, or whether they say that its better to kill and rule, rather than vote on a ballot paper the size of a bedsheet? When the Munich kidnappings happened, the LTTE had not been heard of.

Which is why, its queer - - eerie almost - - hearing a Palestinian say that "with the kidnappings we were able to make the world listen up and take notice about the plight of the Palestinian people.'' If he said that today in front of a forest of microphones and a gaggle of reporters, he would have probably, considering this day and age, got a free ticket to Guantanamo Bay.

But in Munich and Libya those days, terrorists looked like celebrities, whether the Israelis liked it or not.

Terrorism in that interval in time smelled fresh as a daisy, and had barely arrived on the public spotlight. Munich (...the real thing) unfolded in the 70s as if it was a movie in the first place, as these kinds of momentous events hadn't taken place, and somehow those who were caught up by the sudden energy and suspense of it all, cried themselves to sleep saying ''ooh this is terrible, but if they are doing it, there must be some justification for it anyway.''

That was before the floodgates opened to international common or garden terrorism, after which terrorism became as commonplace and mundane as the newspaper wrapping that comes with the Daily containing the day's sensational terrorism induced headlines.

But, those days, the fresh energies of the militant terror movements were so mysterious as to make even the involved actors want to think, and think hard about what they were doing.

The Mossad operative in the movie 'Munich'' thinks - between making babies - that there is a dehumanizing anti civilizational quality about all that he is involved in. He kills for a cause, he is sure, but in his less zealous moments he does wonder if the other man's cause must be of some import -- because there has been an orgy of killing on both sides since the whole spiral of assassinations began, after the Olympic village incident.

But, romanticism has to be artificially infused today into similar kinds of campaigns on the contrary, which is probably why Tamilchelvan smiles so much.

He doesn't get an automatic promotion to the status of world television hero after any bombing campaign is carried out. Terrorism has outlived, therefore, its usefulness as a device for making people sit up take notice, get shocked, and get activated.

So it is quaint that yesteryear's zealotry, and the tactics of that age are now showcased by Hollywood in the way the Mafia was showcased by Fredrick Ford Coppola in the Godfather series. We can now watch terrorism suitably distanced, while we are doing mundane chores, cutting our toenails, walking the dog or taking out the garbage.

Terrorism has reached the level of being made into a historical artifact, but then it's under these circumstances that the LTTE survives, and gets into the position of hosting high tea for diplomats from various European capitals.

The LTTE's viability therefore appears to be a media construct, with worthies such as a certain regular columnist side-winding the LTTE by saying things such as "Jaffna was theirs after Elephant Pass'' - after which the international community supposedly stepped in to bail out Sri Lanka ''the failed state.'' The Gratiaen award for creative writing should therefore rightfully go to them, the LTTE strategists.

They have squeezed out such tall tales the way a jujube goes through gaps in a boy's teeth - with consummate ease, even though not necessarily under very pleasant circumstances.

Considering that the Gratiaen doesn't attract any talent - and when it does the award is more often than not given to the wrong 'un - the LTTE hurrah boy lobby should definitely enter the shortlist.

At this point its pertinent to ask why the LTTE's thesis of being hard done by when it was about to finish the war doesn't hold out.

This was the time the long-range reconnaissance patrols were having their most celebrated successes. Prabhakaran was personally feeling besieged, and this was best seen when he spoke at the April 2001 press conference, where Balasingham flanking him apologized to the press and said "we had to ensure maximum security as the LRRP has been systematically attacking us.' By sleight of hand the LTTE was able to get rid of the LRRP, and follow that up by one of the most amazing campaigns to make black white, and white black.

Therefore, the besieged has been portrayed as the Goliath, which makes all of this literary pirouetting done on behalf of the LTTE material now for another one of Stephen Spielberg's essays after the fact. The strange thing is, when it happens, people do not see through the inanity of romanticized destruction and mayhem. It takes Spielberg to arrive 30 years later, and lay bare the pathetic absurdity and the tragic-comic outcomes of yesterday's suspenseful dramas.

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