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Ninth Kill - Arab guard

They didn’t spend too much time on this kill but what they showed was fairly accurate.

Other Notable Differences:
At the beginning of the mission, one of Avner’s superiors stresses the fact that above everything else, he should get receipts. It’s kind of a funny, lighthearted moment before the team gets on their way with their mission but according to former Mossad agent Shimron, it was also inaccurate. He told Reuters that they were discouraged from keeping receipts as this could from a paper trail that would make it easier for them to get caught.

In the movie, three Mossad members are killed but we have different information from Michael Bar-Zohar, who wrote The Quest for the Red Prince about the Israeli Hunt for Ali Hassan Salameh, the PLO leader who masterminded the Olympic Games Massacre. He told Reuters that only two officers were killed during the missions.

Although the movie left out a couple of people that the Mossad team killed, the most notable omission is the one that occurred in Lillehammer. Mossad had gotten some information that their number one target, Ali Hassan Salameh was in Norway. Unfortunately their top agents were on other missions so they had to send officers with no field experience to do the job. Not only was the team spotted but the person they killed wasn’t even Salameh. It turned out that he was just an innocent waiter.

There was also a very important scene that was completely fabricated. After the team comes back from their mission in Beirut, they go to Athens to Kill Muchassi. The Frenchman set up a safe house for the team in the area. But as luck would have it, a team of PLO agents had also made arrangements to stay at that house. After a brief standoff, the two teams agree to share the space but the Mossad agents don’t reveal that they are Israeli. In the middle of the night, Avner and the PLO team leader wind up having a conversation at a staircase. Because he doesn’t realize that Avner is a Mossad agent, he speaks to him candidly. The Palestinian tells Avner - and by extension the audience - why Palestinians want so badly to regain their home. It’s a manipulative scene but powerful nevertheless.

But the liberty Spielberg took with the Munich that sparked the most heated debate is at the center of the movie. In Spielberg’s film the Mossad’s agents - well a couple of them - experienced some real doubts about what they are doing. They questioned the effectiveness of their actions, if they were still different from the people they were hunting and what all of their killings were doing to their souls. They are bold questions but it seems they are questions that the Mossad agents never actually raised themselves. Aaron Klein, who interviewed 50 current and ex-Mossad agents for his book about Israel’s response to the Munich massacre, said that no one he talked to expressed remorse or doubts for the work they did. The Avner interviewed in Jonas’ book and the agents who speak on the Mossad documentary all echoed these sentiments.

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