Spielberg, Abu Daoud and Munich

I haven't seen Steven Spielberg's new film Munich, but I do agree he would have done well to look at the account of the Olympics massacre and its planning published in a book by the former Palestinian official Muhammad Daoud Audeh, known by the nom de guerre Abu Daoud. His memoirs came out in French in 1999 and, according to Amazon, were only published in English in 2002. The book is now out of print and the publisher, Arcade, reportedly was harassed because of its intention to put the book out. I never saw a copy and wonder if it was indeed published for a wide audience. It's safe to say Abu Daoud's tale got very little coverage in the United States.

There were modest exceptions. I wrote about the book in a pair of articles, one in The Nation, the other in Slate, particularly about Abu Daoud's claim that Mahmoud Abbas, the current president of the Palestinian Authority, had secured financing for the operation. Abu Daoud's story is complex, but to me convincing, and my conclusion was that he published the book for two reasons: to delay anonymity, certainly, but also to rectify a version of Munich conjured up by the Jordanian intelligence services that, paradoxically, absolved him of the massacre. Why did Abu Daoud want to do this? Because in the Jordanian version he was made to have blamed others, whom the Israelis subsequently assassinated in Beirut.

(On a personal note, I still recall that one of the Palestinian leaders killed by the Israelis lived right behind my school, and the next morning we children interrogated the building's concierge, who had gotten hit on the head by the attackers. He was in pain, but delighted with the publicity. Abu Daoud says the Israelis killed the wrong people, but few seem to have wanted to examine that angle.)