Last night, I went to the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge to see Golda starring Helen Mirren as the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
This film has been greatly maligned for two reasons. First there's the objection to Mirren's casting because she isn't Jewish. To me, this is utterly silly. She's an actress for G-d's sake. Actors and actresses pretend to be all sorts of people. If Cate Blanchett, a non-Jewish woman, can play Bob Dylan, a Jewish man, then why can't Helen Mirren play Golda Meir?
The other reason that Golda has been maligned is because it is fashionable to hate Israel and all things Israeli, past or present, whether it is falsely accusing Israel of committing ethnic cleansing complaining about so-called Whiteness and a myriad of other attacks made in malice and in bad faith. In other words, these people aren't critiquing Golda on its own merits.
With that said, I have mixed thoughts on Golda. Let me begin with the positive. Mirren turns in a splendid performance as Golda Meir while Liev Schrieber plays former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger with restraint.
What troubles me about Golda was how the movie focuses narrowly on the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Of course, it is a significant event in Israeli history and would ultimately bring her political career to an end. However, except for a brief exchange with Kissinger discussing how her father protected her and her siblings from Russian pogroms against Jews while she was a child, the viewer doesn't get to know much about Meir herself.
After all, let's keep in mind, that when Meir became Israel's Prime Minister in 1969, she was only the fourth woman in human history to be elected a head of state or government. The three women who preceded her (Khertek Amyrbitovna Anchimaa-Toka of the Tuvan's People's Republic, Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon/Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India) were parts of political dynasties connected to husbands or fathers who were previously heads of state or government.
This was not the case with Meir who spent her formative years in the United States in Milwaukee and in Denver where she became exposed to socialism and Zionism. Meir and her husband would move to British Mandated Palestine in the early 1920's where she would become a trade union activist with Histadrut and later became a key figure within the Jewish Agency raising money to encourage Jews to emigrate to British Mandated Palestine. Meir was also one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence in 1948 and would be a key cabinet minister under David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharrett and Levi Eshkol as Minister of Labour and later Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Although Meir stepped down as Foreign Affairs Minister in 1966 due to poor health, she was chosen to succeed Eshkol as Prime Minister when died suddenly in 1969. Meir would lead the left-wing Alignment movement to win 56 seats that year, the closest Israel has ever come to having an outright majority government in the Knesset.
The point here is that Meir did things from the 1920's through the 1960's which were not done by women anywhere else in the world. If Golda was a grand biopic which encompassed these events rather than focus exclusively on the Yom Kippur War, then I believe it would have made for a far more compelling movie. Perhaps such an epic will see the light of day.
But for better or for worse, Golda is about the Yom Kippur War. What also troubles me was in the film's introduction made a point of stating that Meir and Israel's leadership were in a state of hubris. I don't see it that way. Meir was given a conflicting set of facts where it concerned Egypt and Syria's intentions to go to war. An Egyptian asset had told Israel that Egypt and Syria would launch a surprise attack in May 1973 and when this did not come to pass, Israel was less inclined to take the possibility of an attack seriously. Meir made what she thought was the best choice. Of course, it didn't turn about to be the best choice, yet it might very well have been Meir's only choice as the Nixon Administration explicitly warned Israel not to launch a preemptive attack. Kissinger would later tell Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan that had Israel struck first, it would not have received so much as a nail. Presidents and Prime Ministers often don't have the luxury of choosing between good and bad options but rather a series of bad options and which one will cause the least amount of harm.
Whatever one thinks of Golda Meir's handling of the Yom Kippur War, she was truly a feminist pioneer. But because Meir was Israeli, the Left treats her as a pariah and discards her socialist credentials. And if the Left doesn't have an open mind when it comes to Golda Meir, it certainly does not have an open mind when it comes to Golda.
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