Journalist Yossi Melman of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has said that the book is "strewn with mistakes" adding that, after a lawsuit identified Aviv as Avner, "investigative reports about him revealed that he represented himself as a Mossad agent even though he had never worked in the Mossad and certainly had not participated in operations to kill those involved in the athletes' murder. Aviv, as he emerged from these investigative reports, had a special fondness for conspiracy theories, and it turned out that he was willing to hire out his services to anyone who was willing to pay, even to both sides of the same dispute."
Multiple reviewers have criticized Spielberg for what they call his equating the Israeli assassins with the Palestinian terrorists. Leon Wieseltier wrote in The New Republic, "...Worse, ‘Munich’ prefers a discussion of counter-terrorism to a discussion of terrorism; or it thinks that they are the same discussion.” [4],[5],[6], [7].
Melman and other critics of the book and the film have said that the story's premise — that Israeli agents had second thoughts about their work — is not supported by interviews or public statements.
A retired head of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence service, Avi Dichter, likened Munich to a children's adventure story. "There is no comparison between what you see in the movie and how it works in reality," he said in an interview with Reuters [8].
In a Time Magazine cover story about the film on December 4, 2005, Spielberg said that the source of the film had had second thoughts about his actions. "There is something about killing people at close range that is excruciating," Spielberg said. "It's bound to try a man's soul." Of the real Avner, Spielberg says, "I don’t think he will ever find peace."
