Munich, a 2005 Academy Award nominee for best film and best director, goes well beyond the usual Hollywood film in dealing with a topical problem. In telling the story of an Israeli death squad given responsibility to assassinate those responsible for the deaths of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, it asks serious questions about how a national war on terrorism affects both our political and our ethical lives. In meeting violence with violence, the Israelis launch a spiral of bloodshed that has continued to this day. Although Spielberg is a Jew with a tremendous love for Israel, his film asks hard questions about the efficacy of violence and about the cost to those who employ it. These are questions that have direct relevance to us, Americans in the twenty-first century waging what we are told will be a never-ending war against terrorists by using many of their own methods against them.

Given the timeliness of its topics, Munich can prompt powerful discussion about peace in the Middle East, our involvement in the Middle Eastern peace process, the right (meaning both "correct" and possibly "moral") way to combat terrorism, and where we as people of faith should stand on issues of violence, political power, and state-sponsored terrorism. Although it is not intended to be history, Munich is historical, and it draws us not only into the past but also into our present and future.

This session discusses three clips from the film that show how the Israeli team led by Avner (Eric Bana) enters into the process of seeking justice with a clear sense of the rightness of it--and how the members discover ethical, moral, and religious complications that drive them to reexamine their task. In the process, it explores theological and ethical questions as well as social and political ones: What is justice? What is the nature of evil? What is truth? What is the relationship between our lives as people of faith and our lives as national citizens? What does it mean to be righteous?