George Jonas, a prominent Canadian newspaper columnist whose controversial book about Israeli counterterrorists was the basis of the 2005 film “Munich,” directed by Steven Spielberg, died on Jan. 10 in Toronto. He was 80.

His death was reported in The National Post, the newspaper Mr. Jonas had written for since 2001. No cause was given, but Mr. Jonas was known to have Parkinson’s disease.

Born in Budapest into a family of Jewish heritage and reared in a Hungary dominated first by the Nazis and later by the Communists, Mr. Jonas had lived in Canada since the mid-1950s.

Though without formal education beyond secondary school — “I attribute whatever I know to not having gone to school,” he once said — he became known for his stylish writing and witty erudition and for a wide-ranging body of work that included poems, plays, television dramas and documentaries, opera librettos, and 16 books, including a novel, a true crime tale, a collection of essays about Islam and a memoir, “Beethoven’s Mask.”