Golda: A not-so-golden look back at the time in office of Israeli prime minister Golda Meir
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B
The central gimmick of Golda - the warts and all doc about the late Israeli prime-minister Golda Meir’s snake-bit term as leader – is an off-the-record on-camera chat in which the putative “mother of the country” chain-smokes and speaks her mind.
Recorded not long before her death in 1978, it’s a continuation of what was presumably a by-the-numbers interview for Israeli national TV. Assured that the rest of the session would not end up on air, she sat back and candidly kvetched about her experience as PM, the press, etc.
Israel’s fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, chain-smokes and reminisces in Golda.
There is nothing earth-shaking about this “gem” of previously unseen footage. It serves merely to show her ennui and fatigue after what she – and others interviewed here – viewed as a disappointing, if not disastrous term in what is arguably one of the world’s most thankless political jobs.
The film, co-directed by Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir and Shani Rozanes, actually works best as a standard documentary, with a theme of iconoclasm, mainly taking down the sainted legacy of Meir and the charismatic eye-patched military leader Moshe Dayan. Little of this may be news to Israelis and an engaged Jewish audience in general, but to someone who remembers the characters only dimly, it is a fascinating view of the evolution of the Israeli psyche.
Golda begins with an Israel feeling “like supermen,” having come away from the 1967 Six Day War with territories, including the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank of the Jordan river, and a million mostly-Muslim people newly under occupation. But no good mood goes unpunished, and Golda quotes former political opponents and experts about the weaknesses of the former Israeli Labour minister and Foreign minister – her refusal to accept the word “Palestinian,” her antipathy towards Arabs in general, and her apparent disdain of Jewish immigrants from North Africa and Middle Eastern countries, the Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews who organized themselves into a protest movement of self-styled “Black Panthers.”
The illusion of invulnerability was tested by the 1973 Yom Kippur War, essentially a surprise attack by Egypt, Syria and other coalition Arab States. After falling back, the Israelis pushed forward to pre-war lines. But the perceived unpreparedness haunted Meir.
And there was, of course, the Munich massacre, when we’re told by former Mossad director Zvi Zamir, who recalls the shaken PM telling him to do whatever needed doing, and not to tell her about it.
There are plenty of defenders of Meir in Golda, and her ability to do the job was hampered by cancer treatments and the death of her sister. But the overriding message of Bornstein et al, is that she was the wrong leader for the ’70s, a time when Israel had to wrap its psyche around a future that couldn’t sustain “forever wars.” As violent and fraught as the country’s history as an occupier has been, it’s hard to imagine its existence without the Camp David Accords and the removal of Egypt as the country’s chief antagonist. And Meir – a decided non-fan of then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat - is not portrayed as a leader who would have accepted accords of any kind.
Golda. Directed by Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir and Shani Rozanes. Opens Friday, January 3 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema.