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Did Golda Meir let the Yom Kippur War happen? ‘Golda’ biopic aims to rehabilitate her image.

(JTA) — Golda Meir, the first and so far only woman prime minister of Israel, is a figure as shrouded in mythology as she is veiled by plumes of cigarette smoke in “Golda,” a new political drama starring Helen Mirren.

Meir has been called Israel’s “Iron Lady,” alternately lionized as a founder of the state, scorned for her dismissive statements about Palestinians and, most notoriously, held responsible for Israel being caught by surprise at the outbreak of the bloody Yom Kippur War of 1973. The film recreates Meir’s experience during the 19 days of that war, which would indelibly mark both her legacy and the Israeli consciousness. Directed by Israeli filmmaker Guy Nattiv, who won an Oscar for his 2018 short film “Skin,” “Golda” opens in theaters across the United States on Friday.

Generations of Israelis, including many who fought in 1973, have blamed Meir for a traumatizing war. But Nattiv offers a different portrait, building on recently declassified wartime documents that reveal how she was disastrously misinformed by her complacent military commanders. He presents Meir as a steely, ruthless yet vulnerable woman, tortured by guilt and motivated by the belief that she was defending her country from extinction.

“She was the scapegoat of the war,” Nattiv told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The notion was that she was the only person responsible for this debacle, this failure, and it wasn’t true.”

Nattiv himself was 4 months old when war broke out on Oct. 6, 1973 — Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar — and his mother took him to a bomb shelter while his father headed to the front.

In a colossal intelligence failure, Israel was surprised by a two-front attack from Egypt and Syria, which sought to regain territories they lost in 1967. Many Israelis were overconfident after their young country’s swift victory over three Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day​​ War. But in the first 24 hours of the Yom Kippur War, thinly manned Israeli positions were overwhelmed along the Suez Canal in the southwest and the Golan Heights in the northeast.

Eventually, Israel won a costly victory: 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed and 12,000 injured, a heavy toll for a small state. The Arab forces saw 8,258 killed and nearly 20,000 wounded. The national trauma of 1973 turned the public against Meir, previously admired for her long political career that included being a founder of Israel’s Labor Party and raising $50 million from Jewish Americans for the establishment of an Israeli state.

“Golda” frames Meir’s experiences as flashbacks during her testimony to the Agranat Commission of Inquiry, which investigated Israel’s military failings leading up to the war. Although the commission cleared her of wrongdoing, she decided to resign. Four years later, after secretly battling lymphoma for 15 years, Meir died at 80 years old.

Nattiv sought to humanize her with a focus on the isolated, agonizing days of war taking place in the twilight of her life, spent in between war rooms and hospital beds.

“I wanted to show the most pivotal moment in her life and in this country’s life, this junction that shaped her whole image, while she was sick and had to make difficult decisions,” said Nattiv. “I wanted to tell her story through loneliness.”

Nattiv also shows Meir in the place where her political edge converged with a tender instinct: her intimate home kitchen. Like the real Meir, Mirren’s version cooks for the select group of advisors who enter her home. The prime minister was known for serving cheesecake and apple strudel to her powerful guests on Shabbat evenings, accompanied by consultations and debates around the table. The practice became known as “Golda’s Little Kitchen” or her “Kitchen Cabinet.”

Among Meir’s kitchen guests was then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, played in the film by Liev Schreiber. Nattiv recreates the tense conversations in which Meir pressured Kissinger to send aid for the Israeli army, whose reserve ammunition was rapidly exhausted in the early shock of the war. The United States, at first hesitant to lose its own access to oil from Arab countries, agreed to send weapons and aircraft to Israel when the Soviet Union began resupplying Egypt and Syria, drawing the Yom Kippur War into the Cold War.

Helen Mirren as Golda Meir and Liev Schreiber as Henry Kissinger in “Golda.” (Sean Gleason/Courtesy of Bleecker Street/Shiv Hans Pictures)

In the film, Kissinger tells Meir that he is an American first, secretary of state second, and only third a Jew. Meir replies, “You forget in Israel we read from right to left.”

This quote was taken directly from history: The 100-year-old former diplomat has long publicly recounted Meir delivering the line. (He has not publicly said whether the coercion came with a bowl of borscht and a dollop of Holocaust guilt, as shown in the film.)

While Meir was tough with her allies and brutal to her adversaries, “Golda” portrays the prime minister as a victim of her own advisors in the film. She is shown taking the fall for the egregious errors of her military leaders — in particular Chief of Military Intelligence Eli Zeira and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan — to protect the public’s faith in its army.

Documents declassified in 2020 showed that Zeira ignored intelligence warnings that Cairo and Damascus were poised to attack, withholding the communications from the government in his belief that the chance of imminent war was “lower than low.” Meanwhile, Dayan objected to fully mobilizing troops in the hours before the war, according to his testimony to the Agranat Commission, which was declassified in 2008.

“Golda” does not address the widely leveled criticism that Meir could have avoided war altogether. For months preceding the attacks, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made repeated overtures for a peace settlement if Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula, which it seized during the Six-Day War. He was rebuffed.

Documents released in 2013 showed that Meir did offer to discuss ceding “most of the Sinai,” but since she was not willing to return completely to the pre-1967 borders, Egypt rejected the talks. In back-channel communications with Kissinger, Meir vowed to prevent any peace initiative that required recognizing Egyptian sovereignty over the Sinai, according to Israeli historian Yigal Kipnis, author of the 2012 book “1973: The Road to War.”

As a result of the bitter war, Israel and Egypt signed a disengagement agreement in January 1974. In 1979, following U.S.-brokered negotiations at Camp David, Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed a peace treaty. Egypt became the first Arab state to officially recognize Israel, and Israel withdrew fully from the Sinai Peninsula.

Nattiv credits the ensuing peace to Meir, with a title card at the end of the film reading, “Her legacy of saving her country from annihilation leading to peace serves as her memorial.”

But critics such as  Kipnis have argued that peace might have been achieved sooner with negotiations before the conflict that, he has suggested, could be called the “unnecessary war.”

Meir will always be a controversial figure in Israel, said Nattiv. Whatever judgment the audience makes of her, he believes it is important for Israeli audiences to absorb how leadership blinded by hubris and power can poison a society. He referenced the current political crisis in Israel, in which Prime Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court have triggered mass protests that have been ongoing since January.

“It’s kind of crazy that today we see the Yom Kippur of democracy in Israel,” said Nattiv. “The blindness again, the same debacle that happened in 1973 is returning now.”


The post Did Golda Meir let the Yom Kippur War happen? ‘Golda’ biopic aims to rehabilitate her image. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Germany’s Halt to Arms Exports to Israel Is Response to Gaza Expansion Plans, Chancellor Says

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz attends a cabinet meeting at the Chancellery in Berlin, Germany, Aug. 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Liesa Johannssen

Germany’s decision to curb arms exports to Israel comes in response to Israel’s plan to expand its operations in the Gaza Strip, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday in an interview with public broadcaster ARD.

“We cannot deliver weapons into a conflict that is now being pursued exclusively by military means,” Merz said. “We want to help diplomatically, and we are doing so.”

The worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Israel’s plans to expand military control over the enclave have pushed Germany to take this historically fraught step.

The chancellor said in the interview that the expansion of Israel’s operations in Gaza could claim hundreds of thousands of civilian lives and would require the evacuation of the entire city of Gaza.

“Where are these people supposed to go?” Merz said. “We can’t do that, we won’t do that, and I will not do that.”

Nevertheless, the principles of Germany’s Israel policy remain unchanged, the chancellor said.

“Germany has stood firmly by Israel’s side for 80 years. That will not change,” Merz said.

Germany is Israel’s second-biggest weapons supplier after the US and has long been one of its staunchest supporters, principally because of its historical guilt for the Nazi Holocaust – a policy known as the “Staatsraison.”

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Newsom Calls Trump’s $1 Billion UCLA Settlement Offer Extortion, Says California Won’t Bow

California Governor Gavin Newsom speaks at a press conference, accompanied by members of the Texas Democratic legislators, at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento, California, U.S., August 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria

California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Saturday that a $1 billion settlement offer by President Donald Trump’s administration for UCLA amounted to political extortion to which the state will not bow.

The University of California says it is reviewing a $1 billion settlement offer by the Trump administration for UCLA after the government froze hundreds of millions of dollars in funding over pro-Palestinian protests.

UCLA, which is part of the University of California system, said this week the government froze $584 million in funding. Trump has threatened to cut federal funds for universities over anti-Israel student protests.

“Donald Trump has weaponized the DOJ (Department of Justice) to kneecap America’s #1 public university system — freezing medical & science funding until @UCLA pays his $1 billion ransom,” the office of Newsom, a Democrat, said in a post.

“California won’t bow to Trump’s disgusting political extortion,” it added.

“This isn’t about protecting Jewish students – it’s a billion-dollar political shakedown from the pay-to-play president.”

The government alleges universities, including UCLA, allowed antisemitism during the protests and in doing so violated Jewish and Israeli students’ civil rights. The White House had no immediate comment beyond the offer.

Experts have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the Republican president’s threats. The University of California says paying such a large settlement would “completely devastate” the institution.

Large demonstrations took place at UCLA last year. Last week, UCLA agreed to pay over $6 million to settle a lawsuit by some students and a professor who alleged antisemitism. It was also sued this year over a 2024 violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters.

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Trump Nominates State Dept Spokeswoman Bruce as US Deputy Representative to UN

FILE PHOTO: U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce speaks during her first press briefing at the State Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

President Donald Trump said on Saturday he was nominating State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce as the next US deputy representative to the United Nations.

Bruce has been the State Department spokesperson since Trump took office in January.

In a post on social media in which Trump announced her nomination, the president said she did a “fantastic job” as State Department spokesperson. Bruce will need to be confirmed for the role by the US Senate, where Trump’s Republican Party holds a majority.

During press briefings, she has defended the Trump administration’s foreign policy decisions ranging from an immigration crackdown and visa revocations to US responses to Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s war in Gaza, including a widely condemned armed private aid operation in the Palestinian territory.

Bruce was previously a political contributor and commentator on Fox News for over 20 years.

She has also authored books like “Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda” that criticized liberals and left-leaning viewpoints.

In a post after Trump’s announcement, Bruce thanked him and suggested that the role was a “few weeks” away. Neither Trump nor Bruce mentioned an exact timeline in their online posts.

“Now I’m blessed that in the next few weeks my commitment to advancing America First leadership and values continues on the global stage in this new post,” Bruce wrote on X.

Trump has picked former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz to be his U.N. envoy. Waltz’s Senate confirmation for that role, wherein he will be Bruce’s boss, is still due.

Waltz was Trump’s national security adviser until he was ousted on May 1 after he was caught up in a March scandal involving a Signal chat among top Trump national security aides on military strikes in Yemen. Trump then nominated Waltz as his U.N. ambassador.

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