Munich Quotes

Avner: We can't afford to be that decent anymore.

Robert: I don't know if we were ever that decent.

Daphna: We should stay at home.

Avner: You are the only home I ever had.

Daphna: [laughs] This is so corny.

Avner: What? That took a lot for me to say!

Daphna: I bet. Why did I have to marry a sentimentalist? You're ruining my life.

Avner: [to their newborn baby] Your mother's teasing me.

[last lines]

Avner: Break bread with me. Come on, you're a Jew in a foreign land. It's written somewhere I should invite you to break bread with me. Break bread with me, Ephraim.

Ephraim: No.

Avner: [about their newborn baby] She's frightfully ugly.

Daphna: She takes after her father.

Papa: Let me see your hands.

[he grabs Avner's hands and compares them to his own]

Papa: Too big for a good cook. That was my problem too! I had been a master, but I have thick, stupid butcher's hands just like yours. Oh, we are tragic men. Butcher's hands, gentle souls.

Avner: [after sex] How long into pregnancy are you supposed to stop having sex?

Daphna: Labor.

Carl: It's strange, isn't it, to think of oneself as an assassin?

Avner: Think of yourself as something else then.

Ephraim: We have 11 Palestinian names. Each had a hand in planning Munich. You're going to kill them, 11 men, one by one. They're all in Europe now. You'll stay there as long as it takes. Europe only, not the Arab countries. That's for us, not you. And not Eastern Bloc. Don't upset the Russians. Who needs it? You'll have no contact with us.

Avner: You're not going to give me any information?

Ephraim: We deposit money from a fund that doesn't exist into a box we don't know about, in a bank we never set foot in. We can't help you because we never heard of you before. You'll do what the terrorists do. You think they report back to home base? They don't. We want them dead.

General Zamir: [after giving orders to assassinate those responsible for Munich] Do you have any questions?

Avner: So this isn't about guarding tourists on El Al jets?

General Zamir: No questions? Did we mention how dangerous this is?

Golda Meir: Your wife is pregnant?

Avner: Yes, seven months.

Golda Meir: Mazel tov. You were one of my favorite bodyguards. You know, I like neat, durable men.

Avner: You like having the son of a hero around?

Golda Meir: Truth be told, you don't look much like your father.

Avner: No?

Golda Meir: Your mother is who you resemble.

Steve: You know how to shoot, to assassinate people, right? I mean, you make dolls in a toyshop, and you... you shop for sofas? And you- I don't know what you do.

Carl: Me? I worry.

Steve: [to Avner] So why did they make you team leader?

Hans: Because he really knows how to cook a brisket.

Avner: [starts laughing]

Mossad Accountant: In the operational funds box we will deposit 250,000 American dollars. You take it out - we put more in. I want receipts!

[he slams his hand on his desk for emphasis]

Mossad Accountant: You are not working for the Baron Rothschild! You're working for Israel, a small country! I'm an old Galicianer from a mud hut in the Ukraine, and I don't trust Yekke putzes let loose in Europe with unlimited operational expenses!

[first lines]

American Athlete: Hey! Oh! Shame, shame! Closing down the beer garden. 100 meter dash powered by knackwurst and lager.

American Athlete: Where are you guys from?

American Athlete: What is your event?

[Avner has become an unofficial agent for Mossad]

Ephraim: You want the last of the baklava?

Avner: No.

Ephraim: Smart decision. You should avoid sweets. After all, you just signed away your dental insurance.

Ephraim: First you resign from Mossad,

[handing him a document]

Ephraim: Your new contract. It says we do not employ you, offer you benefits or pensions or legal aid or medical assistance. It's a contract that there is no contract.

Avner: Do I get a copy?

Ephraim: You don't!

[handing him a check]

Ephraim: Your pension contribution refund! You're now officially unofficial, unemployed and uninsured.

Jeanette: I have to go to bed soon. I work in the morning.

Avner: What kind of work do you do?

Jeanette: [taking a long drag on her cigarette] The kind that drives you to drink.

Avner: We must have the same job then.

Papa: In my despair I have fathered madmen who dress like factory workers but never do manual labor, who read nonsense and spout pompous bullshit about Algerians and, and who love nothing, not Algerians or French or flesh and blood or anything living.

[to Louis, pointedly]

Papa: So I have sympathy for a man who can say "I have a papa." Who does what he must for his family.

Ephraim: You think we'd hurt your family?

Avner: I think anyone is capable of anything.

Ephraim: I think you're losing your mind.

Avner: Did I commit murder? I want you to give me proof that everyone we killed had a hand in Munich.

Ephraim: I don't discuss such things with people who don't exist. You want to discuss, come back into existence. You want your daughter to grow up in exile?

Avner: I want evidence!

Avner: If these people committed crimes we should have arrested them. Like Eichmann.

Ephraim: If these guys live, Israelis die. Whatever doubts you have Avner, you know this is true.

[Avner walks away]

Ephraim: You did well but you're unhappy.

Avner: I killed seven men.

Ephraim: Not Salameh. We'll get him of course.

[Avner continues to walk away]

Ephraim: You think you were the only team? It's a big operation, you were only a part. Does that assuage your guilt?

Avner: Did we accomplish anything at all? Every man we killed has been replaced by worse.

Ephraim: Why cut my finger nails? They'll grow back.

Avner: Did we kill to replace the terrorist leadership or the Palestinian leadership? You tell me what we've done!

Ephraim: You killed them for the sake of a country you now choose to abandon. The country your mother and father built, that you were born into. You killed them for Munich, for the future, for peace.

Avner: There's no peace at the end of this no matter what you believe. You know this is true.

Ali: Eventually the Arab states will rise against Israel. They don't like Palestinians, but they hate the Jews more. It won't be like 1967. The rest of the world will see by then what the Israelis do to us. They won't help when Egypt and Syria attack. Even Jordan. Israel will cease to exist. What?

Avner: This is a dream. You can't take back a country you never had.

Ali: You sound like a Jew.

Avner: Fuck you. I'm the voice inside your head telling you what you already know. You people have nothing to bargain with. You'll never get the land back. You'll die old men in refugee camps waiting for Palestine.

Ali: We have a lot of children. They'll have children. So we can wait forever. And if we need to, we can make the whole planet unsafe for Jews.

Avner: You kill Jews and the world feels bad for them... and thinks you animals.

Ali: Yes. But then the world will see how they've made us into animals. They'll start to ask questions about the conditions in our cages.

Avner: You are Arabs. There are lots of places for Arabs.

Ali: You're a Jew sympathizer. All you Germans, you're too soft on Israel. Well, you give us money, but you feel guilty about Hitler. And the Jews exploit that guilt. My father didn't gas any Jews.

Avner: Tell me something, Ali.

Ali: What?

Avner: Do you really miss your father's olive trees? Do you honestly think you have to get back all that... that nothing? that chalky soil and stone huts? Is that what you really want for your children?

Ali: It absolutely is. It will take a hundred years, but we'll win. How long did it take the Jews to get their own country? How long did it take the Germans to make Germany?

Avner: And look how well that worked out.

Ali: You don't know what it is not to have a home. That's why you European Reds don't get it. you say, "It's nothing," but you have a home to come back to. ETA, ANC, IRA... we all pretend we care about your international revolution... but we don't care. We want to be nations. Home is everything.