Nearly 1,000 people have signed an online petition calling on a cinema in Brooklyn to stop screening a film about the Munich massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
September 5, directed by Tim Fehlbaum, follows the terrorist attack carried out by the Palestinian militant organisation Black September, which saw two members of the Israeli Olympic team killed and nine taken hostage. Those kidnapped were later killed.
The film, which premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 29, 2024, is screening this January at the Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Brooklyn.
A petition organised by a group of New York cinema workers is calling on the cinema to stop platforming the film and has amassed more than 1,000 signatures.
The workers describe the film as “Zionist propaganda”, which misrepresents the militants who carried out the massacre as “antisemitic terrorists”.
The film is told from the perspective of an ABC Sports broadcasting team, whose coverage quickly adapted from the Olympic Games to the Israeli athletes being taken hostage.
“The film is an ahistorical and dehumanising dramatisation of Operation Iqrit and Biram, undertaken by the Black September Organisation at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich in the name of the liberation of 200+ Palestinian prisoners,” the petition said.
Avi Melamed (2nd L), surviving member of the 1972 Israeli Olympic team, at a moment of silence July 27, 2012 in New York honouring the 11 Israeli Olympic athletes killed (Getty)
“Echoing the well-worn pattern seen since 9/11, September 5 is yet another attempt by the Western media to push its imperialist and racist agenda, manufacturing consent for the continued genocide and cultural decimation of Palestine and its peoples.
“It is quintessential Orientalism: Depicting Arabs and brown people as evil, antisemitic terrorists, while lionising the very newsrooms that provide political cover and, in many cases, cheer for endless wars and genocide.”
After the Munich massacre, Israeli initiated an assassination campaign to avenge the kidnapping and murder of the Olympic athletes.
The cinema workers dubbed the operation as the “wanton assassination of Palestinian activists throughout Europe and the Levant, some of whom had nothing to do with the planning of the operation”.
They object to serving “food and drink while audiences relive the bloodletting of 1972, and as Palestinians face constant bombardment, starvation, and sexual violence at the hands of the Israeli army in 2025”.
It comes after hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists gathered outside Tisch Hospital in New York City last week after protestors called for the “globalisation of the intifada” against Israel.
The JC has contacted Alamo Draft House for comment.
