GAZA, Dec 27: The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg’s new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation. The Hollywood director has called Munich, which dramatizes the 1972 raid and Israel’s reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his ‘prayer for peace’.

Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film.

He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and accused Spielberg of pandering to the Jewish state.

“If he really wanted to make it a prayer for peace he should have listened to both sides of the story and reflected reality, rather than serving the Zionist side alone,” Daoud told Reuters by telephone from the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Daoud said he had not seen the film, which will only reach most screens outside the United States next month.

But he noted that Spielberg arranged previews in Israel, where some have accused Munich of lacking historical accuracy.

Several Israeli historians have also complained about what they see as a moral symmetry in the film between slain Olympians and the Palestinians assassinated by the Mossad spy service.

“Spielberg showed the movie to widows of the Israeli victims, but he neglected the families of Palestinian victims,” said Daoud. “How many Palestinian civilians were killed before and after Munich?”

The Munich attack was ‘one of the pivotal moments of modern terrorism’, he told Los Angeles Times in a rare interview last week.

Daoud used different terms.

“We did not target Israeli civilians,” he said.

“Some of them (the athletes) had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier.”

Spielberg’s producer, Kathleen Kennedy, told a preview audience at Princeton University that a Palestinian consultant was used for Munich. She did not say who it was.

—Reuters