Oscar-nominated pleas for Mideast peace spark controversy

"Munich" has five Oscar nods, including best picture, while "Paradise Now" has been nominated for best foreign film, ahead of Sunday's awards gala.

Both were touted by their creators, American movie mogul Steven Spielberg and Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, as pleas for peace, but many have objected to the tone of those appeals.

A group inspired by Yossi Zur, whose 16-year-old son Asaf was killed by a suicide bomber three years ago on March 5 -- the same day on which the Academy Awards ceremony is to take place -- collected over 20,000 signatures seeking to have "Paradise Now," nominated for best foreign film, barred from the Oscars. In an essay published in the New York Daily News, Zur dubbed the film an "extremely dangerous piece of work" that aims to legitimize suicide attacks.

Meanwhile, some have slammed "Munich" for giving voice to Palestinian extremists or mischaracterizing Israel's response to the killing of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics as vengeance rather than preemption.

Now that Hamas -- a group that relied on suicide attacks to get its message across -- has won a landslide victory in Palestinian parliamentary elections, the issues explored in the films are being brought into sharper focus.

The movies' timing could be right on target for encouraging dialogue on the conflict, experts say.

Film historian David Slocum of New York University said he hopes the films will "expand our dialogue about political violence, about what it means to be living under occupation, about what it means to feel threatened and take preemptive action" -- issues that he says have been "marginalized" from public discourse.

"Paradise," the first Palestinian film ever nominated for an Oscar, tells the story of Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman), two mechanics from the West Bank city of Nablus who are selected for a suicide bombing mission.

Faced with doubts and fears as their mission in Tel Aviv starts to go awry, one man ultimately carries out his assignment, while the other backs out.

Both Israelis and Palestinians are fed up, Slocum said, and "being fed up is one of the reasons that Hamas is there and in the position that they are."

He said the movie powerfully portrays the frustration and dehumanization experienced by those living under occupation.

"That's not to say that the Israelis are the evil-doers here. But it is to say that there are real and understandable reasons that Hamas was voted in so overwhelmingly," he said.

"That's why I believe 'Paradise Now' is so powerful, because this is a hole in our understanding of that situation."

Bill Daddio, a sociology professor at Georgetown University here, said Westerners' view of suicide bombers is that they are driven by humiliation, sorrow or poverty.

But "the truth," he said, "is that suicide bombers tend to be very altruistic in that they engage in that endeavor because they feel the need or responsibility to act on behalf of people who are disadvantaged."

Films like "Paradise Now" -- which won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film -- "may encourage somebody to learn more, to understand (the situation) more factually," he said.

"I think it's wonderful that there are two movies up for Academy Awards that face these issues," Daddio said. "That in itself is telling that there may be changes in the air."

"Munich" explores the hunt for Palestinians from the radical group Black September who were behind the killing of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches in Munich, and the internal struggles of the Israeli assassins.

Daddio said a lesson to be learned from the film is that "sometimes violence may seem necessary -- and maybe it is -- but ultimately, it's going to cast a longer shadow that peace has to overcome."

Israeli General Mike Herzog, a visiting military fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told AFP that "Munich" raises valid questions.

An open society "shouldn't shy away from discussing these questions, like 'Is it morally just to take the life of people without trial, and is it effective?' 'Is it serving the purpose of stopping terrorism?' I think the questions are the right questions to ask."

But he said the film fails to explain "the context of the Israeli activities and the Israeli reaction."

He pointed to an interview with the then-head of the Mossad, Zvi Zamir, published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in which Zamir stressed that Israel's reaction to the 1972 Munich killings was one of preemption rather than vengeance, the title of the book on which Spielberg's film was based.

"Many Israelis would tell you that they believe that what Israel did then helped stop the wave of international terrorism" by groups like Black September and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Herzog said.

Herzog, a brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces who has been involved in Middle East peace talks, said that sometimes conflict can be solved through negotiation, but sometimes "you just have to beat the terrorists until you create the conditions for a negotiated settlement.

"I think it's clear that in case of Al-Qaeda, you just can't sit and talk to them. I think the same goes for today's Hamas and I think the same was true of Black September back in the early '70s."

Though Herzog believes peace in the Middle East is achievable, he said he does not believe the conditions are right for it just yet. "So we may have to wait for a long time," he said. "Certainly until after a Hamas-run PA."

"There's a lot of dissension, there's a lot of resentment, both from the modern world and in the past, and it's going to take a long time to fix it," Daddio concurred.

In the meantime, Daddio and Slocum are hopeful that "Munich" and "Paradise Now" could help step up the public discourse, with a little nudge from Oscar.

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