other great movies about the conflict?

"Obsession" is garbage. If you're recommending that movie, then I sincerely doubt "A Time of Favor" is any good either.

What do u really mean by "paradise now" not based on hard facts? Do u think the movie portrays anything less than truth?
Do u have any idea what "truth" means?

Answer me one thing, which part of the west bank u live in?

I have to reply to your post with this review :

Anti-Munich
8/10
Author: tieman64 from United Kingdom
1 May 2009

"Munich" and "Paradise Now" were both released in 2005. Both films claimed to be "humanistic" and both attempted to address the Palestine/Israel conflict. "Paradise Now" wants you to understand why Palestinians take up terrorism, "Munich" wants you to empathise with the traumas of an Israeli assassin.

Already we see the ideological problems. Palestinians have long been the victims of a very sophisticated form of ethnic cleansing. The very "point of view" of "Munich" is problematic, the audience not being asked to condemn Western oppression, the very cause of Palestinian aggression, but to sympathise with the moral dilemmas of Avner, a Jewish assassin.

"Munich" begins with Palestinian terrorists violently gunning down Israeli athletes. The film then shows Israeli assassins hunting down the terrorists that were responsible for the massacre. From here on, director Steven Spielberg swathes all his characters in an untruthful layer of even-handed gimmickry. Avner's team goes to great lengths not to cause collateral damage or injure little girls. When their bombs do harm innocent bystanders, it is only because the French deliberately gave them overpowered munitions. Far from a remorseless killer, Avner frets and worries every time he pulls the trigger.

Of course, because Avner frets he must be guilty of something. He is Jewish guilt personified. He is a sense of national disgust. But disgust at what? The film dare not show. No air-raids, no helicopters, no bulldozers, no checkpoints, no spermicide, no walls. The very injustices that causes the Palestinians to lash out are avoided, jettisoned entirely.

So what is Avner really guilty of? He is guilty, the film says, of killing the Munich terrorists. But the film never gives the Munich massacre any context. It is a slaughter. A barbaric killing spree. So of course the audience knows Avner is guilty of nothing. He is brooding the death of Palestinian mass-murderers, not because he feels for them, but as an act of selfish expiation.

We can see the bloody horror of the Munich massacre, we can see Palestinian violence, and not his own personal actions, haunt Avner's dreams, but we never see the Palestinian cause. And so there is never any doubt that Avner's response is legitimate. His killings are morally justified, not because of the horrific intensity of the Munich massacre, but because no light is shed on the symbolic gesture of Munich. "Munich" is asking you to equate Avner's act of hunting down the Munich terrorists with the Palestinian act of killing athletes. These two actions can not be equated - dramatically or philosophically - unless the killing of the Olympic massacre is given context.

To quote Slavoj Zizek: "In contrast to the simplistic opposition of good guys and bad guys, spy thrillers with artistic pretensions display all the "realistic psychological complexity" of the characters from "our" side. Far from signalling a balanced view, however, this "honest" acknowledgement of our own "dark side" stands for its very opposite, for the hidden assertion of our supremacy: we are "psychologically complex," full of doubts, while the opponents are one-dimensional fanatical killing machines. Therein resides the lie of Spielberg's Munich: it wants to be "objective," presenting moral complexity and ambiguity, psychological doubts, the problematic nature of revenge, of the Israeli perspective, but what its "realism" does is redeem the Mossad agents still further: "look, they are not just cold killers, but human beings with their doubts, whereas the Palestinian terrorists..." One cannot but sympathise with the hostility with which the surviving Mossad agents who really carried out the revenge killings reacted to the film for there is much more honesty in their stance. Humanising the other, the actual other (ie the Palestinians), may be one of the best ways to understand the basis for conflicts."

And so Avner becomes the classic Jewish victim, in a situation in which he is precisely not the victim. Now consider the film "Paradise Now", where two Palestinian terrorists navigate the rubble of the West Bank. We see what it is like for two men to be beaten down, dehumanised, psychologically brutalised, losing the very will to live. And in their state of depression, we understand why they would so readily turn to violence. "Israel has adopted the stance of both victim and oppressor," one says, "so we must become both victim and murderer." But the film then goes further and places the burden on the Palestinians to end the violence, after all, if your enemy hopes to wipe you out, you can hurt him most only by living.

"Paradise" illuminates the problems on both sides, and then preaches a message of non-violent resistance. "Munich" wants the same effect but is too timid to face any truths. "Paradise" makes it clear that the targets of Palestinian hit men are innocent Israeli civilians, but forces us into a state of empathy nevertheless. In contrast, "Munich" dare not show the truths of Israeli oppression/colonialism.

And so, Israel's sins hidden, the audience's eyes misdirected, "Munich" encourages forgiveness. But sins must be illuminated before they can be forgiven. Spielberg's film is thus too self consciously politically correct to convey any truths. "Munich" is a giant game of "tit for tat", not between the ruthless and the repressed, but between equally matched assassins. But in the real world, there is no "eye for an eye". The idea that for every Mossad killing there is a relative Palestinian response is ridiculous. Just look at the immediate Israeli response to Munich: the instant airbombing of several Palestinian refugee camps.

7.9/10 - "Paradise's" biggest achievement is that it seduces us into wanting thriller movie violence and then punishes us for our lusts (the film missteps hugely by showing a last act detonation- let the audience choose). See "Hotel Terminus", "The Remains of the Day" and Yoav Shamir's "Checkpoint".