I would like to respond to Edward Said's inaccurate and innuendo-ridden attack on my film One Day in September (Saturday Review, May 20). His article follows similar attacks in Israel and Germany. In Israel I was accused of justifying or glamourising terrorism and castigated for "humanising" a terrorist. The families of the dead Israelis have been outraged because the Palestinian voice in the film has significantly more screen time than they do. Said is correct that many atrocities have been carried out by the Israeli government which could also be the subject of a film: but they are not the subject of this film. This film deals with a single event: one day in September not 50 years of Arab-Israeli conflict.
Most audiences (and critics) emerge from the film not praising Zionism nor hating Palestinians, but shocked by German incompetence and the needless waste of lives, both Palestinian and Israeli. The events of Munich are presented as part of a wasteful, tragic cycle of Palestinian-Israeli violence.
The film is humanist not political. We tried to make it to attract a wide audience, including people who would not usually watch a film on a serious historical subject, and we have succeeded. Said could have argued this was not the way to deal with such a difficult subject. However, if he read the book accompanying the film (written by Simon Reeve and published by Faber ) he would find the story in historical context, including interviews with numerous people who were not in the film for reasons of structure and space, among them families of three of the dead Palestinians. The book was undertaken because we realised there were many aspects of the story we could not include in a 90-minute film.
Said insinuates that I show the surviving Palestinian in shadow so that I can represent him as a dehumanised person. I would have loved to have shown his face clearly and interviewed his family, but due to understandable concerns about their safety they would not let me.
Said asserts that the film contains no new information and serves no purpose except as "Zionist propaganda". The film is packed with revelations, some explosive, to do with the extraordinary level of German incompetence during rescue attempts. So new were some of these that they were on the front page of the Observer. He also asserts no Palestinians were involved in the film, and that no Palestinian name is listed in the credits. Near the top of the credits is a list of researchers, one Israeli, two Germans and Khalil Abbed Rabbo, who is identified as a "Palestinian journalist" (he is one of the most respected journalists in the region).
Said only sees what he wants to see; your readers have the opportunity to make up their own minds by seeing the film.
Kevin Macdonald
Director,
One Day In September
