Steven Spielberg called his upcoming film about the 1972 massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, and subsequent reprisals against Palestinian terrorists, a “prayer for peace.” The Hollywood director spoke to Time magazine about “Munich,” breaking his silence after months of mounting speculation about the thriller’s historical sources and how it would present Israel’s assassination of the PLO terrorists who masterminded the attack at the Munich Games. “We don’t demonize our targets,” Spielberg said. “They’re individuals. They have families.” Drawing parallels between the 1970s and today’s Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Spielberg said, “Somewhere inside all this intransigence there has to be a prayer for peace … Because the biggest enemy is not the Palestinians or the Israelis. The biggest enemy in the region is intransigence.” Spielberg also took the opportunity to announce a new goodwill initiative to distribute video cameras to Israeli and Palestinian children who will record their lives and then view each other’s footage.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.