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The just-released movie “Golda,” starring Helen Mirren, has led to an upsurge in anti-Israel and antisemitic comments about both the former Prime Minister and the state of Israel. More on this dismaying phenomenon can be found here: “How The ‘Golda’ Movie Became a Vehicle to Spread Hate,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, HonestReporting, August 30, 2023:
Even before “Golda” — the big-budget biopic of Israel’s first and only female prime minister Golda Meir — had hit movie screens around the world, it was causing controversy.
For some, there was an issue with the casting of Academy Award-winning British actress Helen Mirren, who is not Jewish, to depict the iconic Israeli leader during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
And now that the film has been released, some are using it as a vehicle to attack the Israeli state in general.
Among the professional critics to lambaste the film was freelance journalist Noah Berlatsky, who claimed it promotes “whiteness” in a blistering review for CNN:
In ‘Golda,’ casting Mirren — a White, internationally renowned, British actress — is a metaphor for the way the film blurs Israeli identity with a generalized White, Western identity. By doing so, it attaches Israel’s moment of crisis to a tradition of triumphalist American military films that validates the virtue of the US, of Israel, and of whiteness.”
Of course, Berlatsky’s view that the film “blurs Israeli identity with a generalized White, Western identity” is absurd and reflects an insidious trend in which Israel is viewed through the lens of US identity politics.
Even more disturbingly, Berlatsky went on to compare the film to other “stories of White military underdogs struggling to overcome non-White foes,” including, he contends, movies like “Birth of a Nation.” For those who are unfamiliar with this 1915 epic, it has been dubbed the “most racist film ever made” that “depicts lynching [black people] as a positive thing.”
Movie website AwardsWatch used its review of the film to bizarrely blast Meir as a “settler” and criticize it for including “no mention of Palestinians or anything of the like in the film,” which is technically not true because it does include a montage that shows Arabs fleeing during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
At the time of the Yom Kippur War, half the Jewish population of Israel consisted of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews who were just as “dark” as the Arabs from whose countries they had been expelled. By now, that percentage of “dark” Jews in Israel has risen to 60%. AwardsWatch makes no mention of this in its eagerness to describe, and condemn, Meir, and all Israelis, as “white.” The AwardsWatch website also called Meir a “settler” because that is the noun of choice employed nowadays to condemn Israelis as Bible-thumping maniacs seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank. But Meir was not a “settler.” She lived inside Israel’s Green Line — that is, within the 1949 armistice lines. Apparently, the writer for AwardsWatch was unaware, or more likely, didn’t care to be accurate; for that writer, all Israelis are illegitimate “settlers,” from which It follows that they must be expelled “from the river to the sea.”
Jewish Voice For Peace, the radical anti-Israel group that backs the BDS campaign, took to Instagram to issue its verdict on the film, branding Golda Meir a “racist who oversaw war crimes” and claiming the biopic celebrates a leader whose “legacy is one of violent ethnic cleansing.”
What “war crimes” did the state of Israel commit during the Yom Kippur War, when Meir was Prime Minister? I suppose in Arab eyes, the mere fact that Israel survived a surprise attack and managed to eke out a victory is a “war crime.” How dare the Jews defend themselves, and defeat us yet again? But there were no real “war crimes.” For had there been, we would certainly have heard about them in the fifty years since that war ended.
And in what way was Golda Meir a “racist”? Was it her refusal to be conned into accepting the invented “Palestinian people”? Does the refusal to play along with the enemy’s propaganda ploy, designed to make it seem that the Arab gang-up on the tiny Jewish state was in fact a war of “national liberation” by the newly-minted “Palestinian people,” wanting only to win back the land that “the Jews had stolen from them”? No Arabs, at any level, from the street to the UN General Assembly, mentioned the “Palestinian people” until the mid-1960s; it was a construct that the KGB first came up with, and advised Arafat to start using. After the Six-Day War, by dint of constant repetition, the phrase, and the notion behind it, has gained near-universal acceptance. But Golda Meir knew better, and never accepted the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people.” She knew that there was no separate Palestinian religion, language, culture, cuisine, or folk tales; the “Palestinians” could not be considered a unique people, to be distinguished from the Jordanians, or the Syrians, or the Muslims in Lebanon. Her famous, and historically-accurate dismissal — “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” — we are apparently to believe makes her into a “racist.”
Naturally, JVP conveniently ignores the fact that Meir attempted to forge peace with neighboring Arab nations, including by offering Egypt most of Sinai just months before President Anwar Sadat joined Syria in launching a surprise invasion of Israel on Judaism’s holiest day.
Critics of Meir, including the far-left Jewish Voices for Peace, depict Meir as a warmonger. But Meir’s only fault was not to have been a warmonger, but to have been insufficiently prepared for the war thrust on the Jewish state by Arab enemies — the surprise attack launched on Yom Kippur 1973 by Egypt and Syria. Once Israel had repelled the attacks from the Sinai and the Golan, and decisively won the Yom Kippur War, Meir — that “warmonger” — began to discuss making peace with Israel’s Arab enemies, and started the process that led, ultimately, to Sadat’s trip to Israel in November 1977, and then to the Camp David Accords in 1978.
The movie ends with Meir speaking to Sadat about the peace treaty reached with Egypt after she left office and credits her for starting the path toward peace even in the midst of war.
What’s more, documents that were declassified earlier this year show that Meir was open to the possibility of a Palestinian state..
Meanwhile, Craving Palestine, a self-described “online marketplace and movement that showcases and celebrates the rich heritage, vibrant culture, and immense talent of Palestine,” posted a lengthy diatribe condemning the film.
The site ludicrously described the movie as “virulently racist” and “intended to propagandize the Israeli project and its war criminal founders, and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the expansion of illegal settlements and entrenchment of apartheid and occupation.”
“Throw enough mud,” is Craving Palestine’s motto, “and something will stick.”
The post also claimed that Meir had been “granted Palestinian citizenship and a passport pre 1948 as Palestine welcomed Jewish refugees escaping persecution in Europe and the US.”
Craving Palestine neglected to mention that Meir had a Palestinian passport under the British Mandate — not one that was issued by a sovereign Palestinian state. Furthermore, in the very interview in which Meir revealed she held a Palestinian passport, Meir pointed out that this fact demonstrated that the Palestinian identity is a modern development….
Craving Palestine would have its audience believe that they, “the Palestinians,” had granted Meir “Palestinian citizenship,” and that “Palestine” had welcomed Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. But Meir’s passport was issued by the British authorities governing Mandatory Palestine, not by Palestinian Arabs. Furthermore, far from welcoming Jewish refugees to “Palestine,” the local Arabs did everything they could to keep them out. They put pressure on the British to ignore the express terms of the Mandate for Palestine, which required the Mandatary to “facilitate Jewish immigration” and to encourage “close settlement by Jews on the land,” and instead to prevent Jews from finding safe haven in Mandatory Palestine. It was the British government’s desire to win favor with the Arabs that led to the adoption by the U.K. of the White Paper of 1939, that limited the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine to 15,000 a year for five years, after which the Arabs would exercise their veto, which would mean an end to all Jewish immigration. That White Paper condemned to persecution and death perhaps a million Jews in Europe, who might have escaped to Mandatory Palestine had the British allowed it. But the British did what they knew the Arabs of Palestine, and elsewhere in the region, wanted, even though it meant violating the terms of the Mandate for Palestine, and they prevented ships with desperate Jews aboard from arriving, and after the war ended, the British continued to keep Jews who had survived the Nazis from landing in Palestine for the same reason as before — to curry favor with the Arabs.
Here’s one way to madden Israel’s enemies: go see “Golda” and decide for yourself what you think. Don’t be put off by the army of Israel-haters busy denouncing the movie. And then, if you are impressed with it, give it a five-star review on movie websites everywhere.
I really want to see Golda, I don’t care about battle scenes. Tom Cruise’s Valkyre was also a movie about decision makers.
My last comment was a mistake, I thought I was commenting on the other FrontPage article on Golda. That’s a real knee slapper, the Arabs ran the Palestinian Mandatory government, I hadn’t heard that one.
No battle scenes are shown — wisely, I think. This was probably as much about saving money, as keeping the focus on the leadership. Instead, you hear troops’ radio communications from the front, broadcast in the war room where the generals and leaders are assembled, which I think is dramatically as effective and as emotionally powerful.
President Nixon had many faults and screwed America in many ways: taking the U.S. dollar off of the gold standard, thus making today’s yearly $2 trillion U.S. budget deficits possible; opening the trading door with China, thus leading to moving U.S factories to China; and lastly, signing off on the creation of the federal EPA, which lead to severe restrictions on private property rights and needless, costly regulations to U.S. businesses.
BUT, when it came to Israel, Nixon acted like God’s right-hand man. During the ’73 Yom Kippur war. Golda Meir called Nixon and said: “if Israel doesn’t receive more military equipment in the next week, the Arabs will wipe us off of the map.” Nixon immediately ordered U.S. military planes to be loaded with the requested equipment, and the equipment was delivered in time to secure Israel’s victory in this war. The State Department screamed at Nixon and demanded that no aid be sent to Israel, but Nixon did it anyway. BECAUSE:
When Nixon was a small boy, his Christian mother read the Bible to him daily. Nixon remembered some of the verses about God’s opinion on Israel, such as “I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curse you” – Genesis 12:3.
The chief rabbi of Israel said to President Truman in 1948: “the reason God created you was because you helped Israel to once again become a sovereign State.” (Truman officially recognized Israel as a new State in 1948 in just 10 minutes after the officials in Israel signed their documents). Tears ran down Truman’s face upon hearing the rabbi’s words.
The point here is, I think the same thing could be said about President Nixon – the reason God created him was because God knew He could trust Nixon to save Israel in her 1973 war.
Glad you wrote this, because the movie left the wrong impression that Nixon did not help in a timely manner; and that the USA did not support recognition of Israel, implying that Russia had stepped up to recognize Israel 1948.
This looks like a must see given the antipathy of the woke left
I guess the anti-Israel reviewers don’t realize that under the Mandate, “Palestinians” referred to Jews and no one else. The “Palestinian Brigade” of the British Army consisted entirely of Jews. Not a Mohammad or Anwar in the bunch. Why would anyone pay any attention to what these dishonest mumsers write?
They’re going to listen to them because they’ve been taught to be stupid conformists, never questioning, without the desire or ability to research anything more taxing than a tiktok video.
I thank G-d that I had parents who encouraged me to read everything, taught me history, told me to question everything (that did not go down well at school) and most definitely weren’t leftards.
These days it is taking less and less to trigger fanatic Jew hatred and we seem to be returning to the Middle Ages when Jew hatred was so widespread. Why has Jew hatred survived among so many and for so long? My theory is that it has little to do with actual Jews and mostly to do with “Judaism”. To Jews our religion teaches peace and kindness. But to some people that idea enrages them. One authority on Jew hatred, Adolf Hitler, cited “conscience” as something he held against the Jews. Perhaps he was on to something.
Its not just the Jewish people who have been under attack by Satan, its Jerusalem and God’s land.
Satan’s never ending battle to destroy the Jewish Nation where the Messiah was born.
Psalm 83 A Psalm of Asaph
O God, do not remain silent; do not turn a deaf ear, do not stand aloof, O God.
See how your enemies growl, how your foes rear their heads.
With Cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish.
“Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name be remembered no more.”
With One mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you…the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites, Byblos, Ammon, and Amalek, Philistia, with the people of Tyre. Even Assyria has joined them to reinforce Lot;s descendants. (Ancient cities that are now modern.)
Do to them as you did to Midian, as you did to Sisera and Jabin at the river Kishon, who perished at Endor and became dung on the ground. Make their nobles like Oreb and Zee, all their princes like Zebah and Zalmunna, who said, “Let us take possession of the pasturelands of God.”
Make them like tumbleweed my God, like chaff in the wind.
The jist of God’s message and the Pslamist is that God’s vengenace is coming to those who have tried to destroyed Israel. The Timing is not for certain, but God’s word is Truth and he never lies! I hope many read this, its the truth of the never ending persecution of the Jewish people.
By responding to Berlatsky’s fatuousness, treating it as though there is even a hint of credibility in his complaints, the author plays into his hands. There is nothing wrong with being white, nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of, certainly nothing for any white person to be defensive about. Neither is there anything wrong with being Jewish, a Zionist, an Israeli. Ashkenazi or mizrachi.These are categories in which any sane person will take enormous pride in being identified with. It’s way past time to ignore attacks from the likes of Berlatsky, who, to judge by his name, is another terrified Jew selling out his people for the favor of the left that wants him DEAD.
Agreed. Sadly, many Jews do not wear their identity with pride. Most of them don’t live or never lived in Israel. I am proud to state that I am not one of them. I never have hidden my Jewish identity and I never will. And I don’t care who calls me racist for being proud of my heritage.
This remake was preceded by the 1982 movie “A woman called Golda” starring Ingrid Bergman. Far from being rejected by the criItics of the time, it won 3 emmys and a Golden Globe award for the star (her last one). One can only conclude that 40 years later, the antisemitism wave is on the rise, fed by the voluntary blindness of the West.
Nevertheless, I still think that if I could have chosen my destiny, I would have chosen to be Golda Meyer.
Maybe it has something to do with the rise of the Left, its metastasis throughout all of our institutions and its politicization of everything. And a good portion of our population is oblivious to it.
Oblivious, or even brainwashed. But not for ever.
Meir was certainly a formidable force, but she was at the helm when the Yom Kippur war broke out. She failed us.
I’ve had two encounters with “Jewish Voices for Peace”. The first was in Union Square in Manhattan in 2008. This vile woman kept croaking, “Palestine! PALESTINE!”. Behend her was a poster that showed Jewish owned land in 1942- mostly smal tracts of land along the Mediterranean Coast. The implication was that everything else (including public land and the Negev had been Arab “since time inmemorial”. The propaganda display explicitly called for Israel’s destruction and replacement with an Arab state in all of “Palestine”. BTW, this all took place on Yom Kippur.
The second was several months later at the Louisville Jewish Film Festival. There were two pickets from “Jewish Voices for Peace” who were protesting the inclusion of an Israeli film. Louisville has a small (maybe 8 or 9 thousand) Jewish community and a local pasttime is “Jewish geography” establish the identity of people through family ties- “That’s Rose Cohen’s nephew” etc. None of the people I spoke to had ever seen this duo from “Jewish Voices for Peace” before- the consensus was they were probably the non Jewish children or grandchildren of leftist Jews who were completely estranged from the community, or that were faux Jews from the Presbyterian Church USA, which is headquartered in Louisville and which is virulently anti Israel.
Much as the film may indeed be worth watching, if for no other reason than to see the magnificent Dame Helen Mirren, I will pass. I have an impression that the film is an attempt to minimize the terrible impact that shock war had on those of us who lived there.. I have some fairly traumatic memories of that period if Israel’s history.
Having seen the film, I can tell you flat-out that your presumption/assumption — made without any factual basis, I’ll note — is both incorrect and unfair. The film is a magnificent tribute to Golda Meir, the IDF’s soldiers and leadership, and, in fact, is explicitly dedicated to those who fought and died in the Yom Kippur War.
I saw “Golda” a couple of weeks ago. It’s excellent. Helen Mirren brings her usual excellence to the role, and, an unrecognizable Liev Schrieber is great as Henry Kissinger in a couple of pivotal scenes.
The movie makes you experience what it’s like to be the leader of a country facing a genocide-aspiring enemy bent on your country’s and people’s annihilation, when advice about how to respond is coming from all quarters. Mistakes are made, of course.
Highly recommended for any person who supports Israel and who rejects Arab Muslim supremacism, terrorism and dhimmi subservience to a supremacist and totalitarian ideology. The film is a welcome change of pace from the negative depictions of Israel and Israeli Jews which we’ve come to expect in media, these days.
By the way, as the film fairly points out, Israel refrained from launching a pre-emptive strike against the Arab Muslim troop build-ups that represented an obvious prelude to an attack, because it was acquiescing to a Nixon Administration request to show restraint and to refrain from making the first move. That decision, even if putting Israel on the moral high ground, was tactically costly and resulted in many Israeli troop casualties that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred.
So, in re-supplying the IDF, the Nixon Administration was not only doing what was morally just and proper, it was atoning for its previous mistake in pressuring Israel to not launch a pre-emptive strike of self-defense against Arab Muslim belligerence.
The vile, dishonest and evil American Dhimmi-crats and European, dhimmi Leftists can’t concede the inconvenient (for them) factual reality that Israeli Jews “settled” in the middle east millennia before the supremacist, totalitarian and belligerent ideology of “Submission” was founded; millennia before such a thing as a “Muslim” ever existed.