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A Golda Meir biopic starring Helen Mirren avoids politics. It premiered as Israel’s government faces widespread scrutiny.
(JTA) — When a film about a group of Israeli youths who visit former concentration camps in Poland premiered on Sunday at the Berlin Film Festival, its Israeli producer took the microphone after the screening to decry the state of his nation.
“The new far-right government that is in power is pushing fascist and racist laws,” said Yoav Roeh, a producer of “Ha’Mishlahat” (“Delegation”) on stage after the film’s premiere. He was referring to lawmakers in Israel’s government who have long histories of anti-Arab rhetoric and their new proposals to limit the power of the country’s Supreme Court, which critics at home and around the world deem a blow to Israel’s status as a democracy.
“Israel is committing suicide after 75 years of existence,” Roeh added.
The next day brought the premiere of “Golda,” a highly-anticipated Golda Meir biopic starring Oscar winner Helen Mirren about the former Israeli prime minister and her decisions during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Hours earlier, Israel’s government took another step closer to passing its controversial judicial reforms, and when asked about the political situation, Mirren didn’t mince words.
“I think [Meir] would have been utterly horrified,” she told AFP. “It’s the rise of dictatorship and dictatorship was what has always been the enemy of people all over the world and she would recognize it as that.”
That was the heated backdrop for the debut of “Golda,” which will not hit U.S. theaters until August. But an onlooker wouldn’t know that from the film’s own introductory press conference with Mirren, director Guy Nattiv and other stars from the film. The headlines that have emerged from it have been dominated by the film’s place in the “Jewface” debate, about who should play Jewish characters on screen. Mirren is not Israeli or Jewish.
“Let’s say that we’re making a movie about Jesus Christ. Who’s going to play him?” Mirren’s co-star Lior Ashkenazi stepped in to answer in response to a journalist, eliciting laughter from the press corps.
The film is framed by Meir’s testimony to the Agranat Commission, which investigated the lead-up to the war. As the film shows through flashbacks, Meir appears to have not acted quickly enough on Mossad intelligence about a possible attack from Egyptian and Syrian forces. Israeli forces were surprised on the holiday and initially lost ground; both sides lost thousands of troops, and the war is seen as a major trauma in Israeli history — the moment when the state’s conception of its military superiority over its Arab neighbors was shattered. The film is claustrophobic, shot mostly indoors — in bunkers, hospital rooms and government offices — and offers an apt visual encapsulation of the loss the war would bring.
Mirren walks the red carpet at the Berlin Film Festival, Feb. 20, 2023. She spent time on a kibbutz in 1967. (Courtesy of Berlinale)
Though Meir has historically been lionized as a tough female hero in the United States and in Jewish communities around the world (even non-Jewish soldiers in Ukraine took inspiration from her in the early days of the Russian invasion last year), her legacy is more complicated in Israel and the Palestinian territories. In addition to being associated with the trauma of the war for many Jewish Israelis, she is remembered as an inveterate enemy by Palestinians.
In recent years, the representation of Meir has shifted more favorably in Israel, said Meron Medzini, Meir’s former press secretary and one of her biographers. He said that historians have begun to view her favorably in comparison to some of the political leaders who followed her.
“I consider the film [‘Golda’] part of this effort to rehabilitate her name,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I think she is now gaining her rightful place in the history.”
“Golda” fits into Medzini’s narrative by emphasizing the intractability and pride of her Cabinet ministers as the prime reasons for Israel’s surprise. It affirms Meir’s honor by portraying her as attempting to protect the ministers from criticism — all men — and to promote national unity.
At the press conference, Nattiv gave the briefest of nods to Meir’s complex legacy but like Medzini compared her to Israel’s current slate of leaders, who he reserved brief criticism for.
“Golda is not a super clean character in this movie,” said Nattiv, who is best known for directing “Skin,” a 2018 film about a neo-Nazi. “She had her faults. She made mistakes. And she took responsibility, which leaders are not doing today.”
Meir has long enjoyed a kind of star status in the United States. She was interviewed by Barbra Streisand in 1978, close to the Israeli leader’s death from cancer, for a TV special on Israel’s 30th anniversary.
“She clearly is the great-grandmother of the Jewish people [in the special] and Streisand is very reverential toward her,” Tony Shaw, a history professor at the University of Hertfordshire and the author of “Hollywood and Israel: A History,” said about the Streisand interview. “She just comes across as very humble, slightly out-of-date, out-of-time.”
“Of course, it’s very different from what we now know Golda Meir was really like,” he added, referring to her strong character and political pragmatism, which the film seeks to convey.
Since William Gibson’s critically-panned 1977 play also titled “Golda,” there have been a number of representations of Meir. Most famous among them is Ingrid Bergman’s final performance in “Golda Meir,” a four-hour-long television biopic from 1982. That production “was very much in keeping with Hollywood’s treatment of Israel in that period,” said Shaw, “which was very sympathetic towards Golda Meir, towards Israel and the troubles it was having in the first 30 years of its life.” More recently, Meir appears in Steven Spielberg’s more ambivalent 2005 film “Munich,” in which she helps to recruit the film’s protagonist to track down the figures behind the 1972 Munich Olympics attacks.
Golda Meir meets with Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and troops on the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War, Oct. 21, 1973. (Ron Frenkel/GPO/Getty Images)
Nattiv’s work, which has received mixed early reviews, focuses on the war as reflected in Meir’s character, forgoing engagement with broader politics or history.
“My inspiration was ‘Das Boot,’ in the way that she is in the trenches,” said Nattiv, referencing the revered World War II movie from 1981 set in a German U-boat. “She is very alone in the mayhem of war around these men.”
“This is the Vietnam of Israel,” he explained. “It is a very tough and hard look at the war and every soldier that died…Golda takes it to her heart.”
Despite the “Jewface” questioning, Nattiv compared Mirren to an “aunt” figure who, for him, had the “Jewish chops to portray Golda.” Mirren explained to the AFP that she has long felt a connection to Israel and to Meir, especially after a stay on a kibbutz in 1967, not long after the Six-Day War, with a Jewish boyfriend.
“She was at her happiest on the kibbutz actually,” Mirren said. “Their idealism, their dream of the perfect world. And I did experience that which was great.”
Sanders Isaac Bernstein contributed reporting from Berlin.
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‘The world needs more Trumps’: US president receives a hero’s welcome in Israeli parliament
(JTA) — The Israeli government will wage a campaign to promote President Donald Trump as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, the a top lawmaker announced Monday as Trump visited the Knesset to mark the ceasefire deal he brokered between Israel and Hamas.
Trump received a lengthy standing ovation — over two minutes — when he first arrived in the parliament after landing in Israel on Monday, just after the 20 living hostages who remained in Gaza returned to their country.
A series of speakers then lavished him with praise, emphasizing his devotion to the hostages and the peace that may follow in the region. Trump was scheduled to leave Israel Monday afternoon for a peace summit in Egypt.
“The world needs more Trumps,” said Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who said he would work with U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to rally world leaders to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Nominations for the prize, which was awarded for this year on Friday, in January.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would nominate Trump to become the first-ever non-Israeli to win the Israel Prize. Listing Trump’s pro-Israel bona fides, he repeated a sentiment that he has shared before: “Donald Trump is the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
And opposition leader Yair Lapid, too, praised Trump. “The fact that you were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is a grave mistake by the committee, but they will have no choice, Mr. President, they will have to award it to you next year,” he said. “Peace will not come by waiting. It will come by building, by reaching out and by daring, once again, to believe. You, Mr. President, have done the unimaginable. We will be eternally grateful.”
Israelis have celebrated Trump for pressing for the ceasefire deal that resulted in the release of the hostages. Signs praising him have popped up at rallies around the country.
The post ‘The world needs more Trumps’: US president receives a hero’s welcome in Israeli parliament appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump heralds ‘the historic dawn of a new Middle East’ in speech to Israeli parliament after hostages returned
In Jerusalem on Monday, President Donald Trump celebrated the implementation of a viable ceasefire in Gaza with the return of the last living hostages after two years in captivity.
“This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East,” Trump told the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. “After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today, the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace, a land and a region that will live, God willing, in peace for all eternity.”
Ahead of his address, Trump met with several freed hostages and the families of Israelis who were held by Hamas in Gaza.
On the anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Trump recognized its impact. “The United States of America grieved alongside you, and we mourned for our own citizens who were so viciously taken that day,” he said in his speech. “And to all the families whose lives were forever changed by the atrocities of that day, and to all the people of Israel, please know that America joins you in those two everlasting vows: Never forget, and never again.”
Hamas killed almost 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7 and kidnapped about 250. Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip, where the hostages were taken, have since killed at least 66,000 Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry says, and left much of the enclave in ruins.
Trump noted that Israel’s military had accomplished what it could. “Israel, with our help, has won all that can be won by force of arms,” he said. “Now, it is time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East.”
Trump has received multiple standing ovations and sustained applause during his speech. He was briefly heckled by two members of the Knesset who held up a sign that said “Recognize Palestine.” They were quickly removed.
Acknowledged at the Knesset before Trump’s speech were special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, credited with helping to shape the deal, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others. As Ivanka Trump made her way into the chamber, the Knesset broke into applause. She also received a standing ovation when Trump mentioned, during his speech, that she had converted.
Trump’s popularity in Israel
In his introduction of the president, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House.”
Trump was the fourth U.S. president to address the Knesset — and only the second Republican, following George W. Bush’s 2008 speech on Israel’s 60th anniversary. He was also the third president to do so after brokering a peace agreement between Israel and its neighbors: Bill Clinton spoke in 1994, a year after the signing of the Oslo Accords, and Jimmy Carter in 1979, after brokering the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt. The late Richard Nixon also visited the Knesset during the first-ever U.S. presidential trip to Israel in 1974, though he only spoke at a reception held in his honor.
Netanyahu has addressed a joint session of Congress four times – the most of any international leader.
But Trump made history in Israel by being the first American leader to address representatives of a nation that credits him more than its own leadership with ending the trauma of its longest war. The speech also comes five years after Trump brokered four normalization deals between Israel and Arab states, known as the Abraham Accords. “There’s never been an event like it,” Netanyahu told Israeli reporters as he walked into the chamber Monday.
Leading up to Trump’s speech, the speaker of the Knesset, Amir Ohana, said, “Mr. President, you stand before the people of Israel not as another American president, but as a giant of Jewish history, one for whom we must look back two and a half millennia into the mists of time to find a parallel, Cyrus the Great. You, President Donald J. Trump, are a colossus who will be enshrined in the pantone of history.”
That sentiment was also evident at the weekly Saturday night rally for the hostages in Tel Aviv, where boos erupted at the mention of Netanyahu’s name by Witkoff — in sharp contrast to the enthusiastic applause and cheers for Trump.
Many Israelis credit Trump alone for securing the release of the remaining hostages and ending the two-year conflict with Hamas in Gaza, while blaming their longtime leader for the failures surrounding the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and prolonging the conflict. Some have also accused Netanyahu of showing little empathy toward the families of the hostages and of undermining negotiations for their release.
Trump repeatedly pointed to the massive crowds in Tel Aviv as proof that Israelis were eager to end the war and bring the hostages home.
Nonetheless, Trump struck a positive tone toward Netanyahu, praising his leadership and crediting him for his cooperation in reaching this moment. “He’s not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great,” Trump said about him in the Knesset. That endorsement could boost Netanyahu’s standing with the Israeli public ahead of an election year. Netanyahu was invited by Trump to join him on his ride from Ben Gurion Airport to Jerusalem Monday, giving the prime minister rare one-on-one time and an opportunity to shape the tone and content of the remarks.
Three members of Netanyahu’s coalition boycotted Trump’s speech, criticizing the terms of the deal and saying there’s no reason for celebration.
‘My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker’
When Trump first campaigned for president in 2016, he vowed to broker the “ultimate deal” to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His first term, however, was marked by a series of pro-Israel moves, including relocating the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. His ambitious peace plan, rolled out in January 2020, stalled amid Israeli political deadlock and rejection by Palestinian leaders. He then pivoted toward securing normalization agreements with Gulf states.
During the 2024 presidential election, Trump renewed his pledge to deliver peace in the Middle East, vowing to end the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon while further isolating Iran.
“My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier,” Trump said at his inauguration.
Ten years after he launched his first White House bid and nine months after returning to power for a second term, Trump managed to eliminate an immediate nuclear threat from Iran, backed Israel in crushing Hezbollah as an Iranian proxy in the north, and last week oversaw the adoption of the first phase of a permanent ceasefire-for-hostages deal that could end the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and potentially bring regional peace.
Trump insists that his 20-point post-war plan would enhance Israel’s standing in America and globally and expand the Abraham Accords, though uncertainty remains about the next phases – disarming Hamas and establishing a coordinated Gaza reconstruction effort.
At the Knesset, Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to the deal, saying, “Mr. President, you are committed to this peace. I am committed to this peace. And together, Mr. President, we will achieve this peace.”
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‘The world needs more Trumps’: US president receives a hero’s welcome in Israeli parliament
The Israeli government will wage a campaign to promote President Donald Trump as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, the a top lawmaker announced Monday as Trump visited the Knesset to mark the ceasefire deal he brokered between Israel and Hamas.
Trump received a lengthy standing ovation — over two minutes — when he first arrived in the parliament after landing in Israel on Monday, just after the 20 living hostages who remained in Gaza returned to their country.
A series of speakers then lavished him with praise, emphasizing his devotion to the hostages and the peace that may follow in the region. Trump was scheduled to leave Israel Monday afternoon for a peace summit in Egypt.
“The world needs more Trumps,” said Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who said he would work with U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to rally world leaders to nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. (Nominations for the prize, which was awarded for this year on Friday, in January.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would nominate Trump to become the first-ever non-Israeli to win the Israel Prize. Listing Trump’s pro-Israel bona fides, he repeated a sentiment that he has shared before: “Donald Trump is the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
And opposition leader Yair Lapid, too, praised Trump. “The fact that you were not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is a grave mistake by the committee, but they will have no choice, Mr. President, they will have to award it to you next year,” he said. “Peace will not come by waiting. It will come by building, by reaching out and by daring, once again, to believe. You, Mr. President, have done the unimaginable. We will be eternally grateful.”
Israelis have celebrated Trump for pressing for the ceasefire deal that resulted in the release of the hostages. Signs praising him have popped up at rallies around the country.
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The post ‘The world needs more Trumps’: US president receives a hero’s welcome in Israeli parliament appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.