50 | SEPTEMBER 7 • 2023 

G

olda Meir is a fig-
ure as shrouded in 
mythology as she is 
veiled by plumes of cigarette 
smoke in Golda, a new polit-
ical drama starring Helen 
Mirren.
Meir has been called 
Israel’s “Iron Lady,
” alter-
nately lionized as a found-
er 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. The film is 
directed by Israeli filmmaker 
Guy Nattiv.
Generations of Israelis, includ-
ing many who fought in 1973, 
have blamed Meir for a trau-
matizing war. But Nattiv offers 
a different portrait, building on 
recently declassified wartime 
documents that reveal how she 
was disastrously misinformed by 
her complacent military com-
manders. He presents Meir as 
a steely, ruthless yet vulnerable 
woman, tortured by guilt and 
motivated by the belief she was 
defending her country from 
extinction.
“She was the scapegoat of 
the war,
” Nattiv told JTA. “The 
notion was that she was the 
only person responsible for this 
debacle, this failure, and it wasn’t 
true.
”
In a colossal intelligence fail-
ure, Israel was surprised by a 
two-front attack from Egypt and 
Syria, which sought to regain ter-
ritories they lost in 1967. 
 Many Israelis were overconfi-
dent 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 over-
whelmed 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, previous-
ly 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 expe-
riences 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 lym-
phoma for 15 years, Meir died at 
80 years old.

While Meir was tough with 
her allies and brutal to her 
adversaries, Golda portrays the 
prime minister as a victim of 
her own advisers 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 commu-
nications 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 declassi-
fied in 2008.
Golda does not address the 
widely leveled criticism that 
Meir could have avoided war 
altogether. For months pre-
ceding 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. 
As a result of the bitter war, 
Israel and Egypt signed a disen-
gagement 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 some critics have argued 
that peace might have been 
achieved sooner with negotia-
tions before the conflict. 
Meir will always be a contro-
versial 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 cur-
rent political crisis in Israel, in 
which Prime Minister 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 democ-
racy in Israel,
” said Nattiv. “The 
blindness again, the same debacle 
that happened in 1973 is return-
ing now.
” 

ARTS&LIFE
ANALYSIS

Behind the 
History

Golda
Golda aims to rehabilitate 
 aims to rehabilitate 

Golda Meir’s image.
Golda Meir’s image.

SHIRA LI BARTOV JTA

