Robert: We are supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. And we're losing it. If I lose that, that's everything. That's my soul.
Golda Meir: Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.
[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.
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: 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 Every man we killed has been replaced by worse.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.