Hate in Hollywood: How the ‘Golda’ Movie Became a Vehicle to Attack Israel
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by Rachel O'Donoghue
Helen Mirren, Rami Heuberger, Lior Ashkenazi and Dvir Benedek in Bleecker Street’s “GOLDA.” Photo: Sean Gleason, courtesy of Bleecker Street
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 the movie 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.
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.”
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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.
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.”
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.
Users on the social media network X (formerly Twitter), have used the film to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories about Israel.
In what is perhaps a good indication of how well the social media platform enforces its own rules against hateful conduct, hundreds of accounts posted comments describing Meir as a “Nazi” and spread the patently false claim that Israel is perpetrating a “genocide” on Palestinians.
Hey Rep @almaforarizona Golda Meir is the wrong woman to have as your beacon for women. She was leader of IsraHELL a TERRORIST, Apartheid Regime, a Colonizer, Occupier of Palestine. ZIOs slaughtered made refugees 3/4 of million ppl just in 1948, Nabka. ZIOs continue to kill ppl. https://t.co/pynqaSXNhl
— Dad_of_Marine (@Dad_of_Marine) August 28, 2023
It is unsurprising that anti-Israel activists and antisemites have used the film to attack Israel. We can only hope that viewers have a more open mind about what is essentially a tale about Israel’s fight for survival against enemies that were hellbent on its destruction.
