By Pete Gregson

One Democratic Palestine are working with Palestine Online to encourage a boycott of the new film “Golda”, to be released at the end of September, which stars Helen Mirren as Golda Meir and celebrates her leadership as Israel’s prime minister during the October 1973 war. They are asking people to protest at cinemas where the film is being shown and hand out leaflets. (download them at www.onepalestine.land )

Apart from the war, Meir’s other claim to fame is that she played a vital role in advocating for funding from US Jews, for the would-be Zionist state of Israel, raising enormous amounts of cash in 1948. This funded the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 into the refugee camps that they languish in, up to the present day. 

Born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1898, Meir moved to the US as a child and then to Palestine in 1921, working in a new kibbutz; she held a Palestinian passport, explaining “I’m a Palestinian”. That did not stop her later declaring: “There is no such thing as the Palestinian people. It is not as though we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.” 

American Muslims for Palestine observed: 

Meir was intent on ethnically cleansing the indigenous population from Palestine to make room for Jewish immigrants. She had no problem with forcibly removing people from their homes and kicking them out of their country in order that Israel may exist.

During her tenure, Meir worked to violently colonise and ethnically cleanse Palestine. But while denying the very existence of Palestinians, she lived in a grand Palestinian house looted in 1948 from Hanna Bisharat, who had built the house 20 years earlier for his large family. 

The film focuses on the October 1973 war against Egypt and Syria, who were trying to reclaim the land Israel had stolen in 1967, in the June 1967 war, which Israel initiated when it invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria in order to take and occupy the Sinai, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem (where it has been ever since, except for Sinai), expelling 300,000 Palestinians in the process. 

The 1973 war was initiated by Egypt and Syria and aimed to recover the land stolen from the Palestinians and Syrians; Meir had ignored previous peace overtures from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. But Meir and the movie exaggerate the threat of the 1973 war, declaring to the USA that the Arabs were seeking to wipe it from the Earth. The Americans then, of course, supplied Israel with the tanks and planes it needed to secure the land it had stolen.

Meir absolutely believed that she, a Ukrainian, had a God-given right to take Palestine. Palestinian Rabbi Haim Sofer observes: “She rejected the teachings of the Torah and the Talmud, which declared that only when the Messiah came and brought peace to the world, might Jews return. Until that time, Jews must live peacefully in exile and must not steal or kill.” 

Furthermore, unlike the Palestinians, Meir had few genetic links to the ancient Hebrews; her sense of entitlement was based around evangelical readings of the Christian Bible. She was even hostile, as an Ashkenazi (or European) Jew, to the darker Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from the south and east.

Referred to as Israel’s “Iron Lady”, she is known for her attempts to project responsibility for Israeli violence onto Palestinians. She said: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.” 

Meir continued: “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” She completely ignored the fact that the Arabs – Muslims and Jews – had previously lived together in close harmony for 1,400 years, a peace that was broken only when Zionists arrived in 1917 to take Palestinian land, after Britain had given Palestine to the Zionist Federation.

Helen Mirren visited Israel in 1967, after the war of that year and had herself volunteered on a kibbutz. She shares Meir’s messianic views, declaring when the film was released: “I believe in Israel, in the existence of Israel, and I believe Israel has to go forward into the future, for the rest of eternity.”

In response, Pete Gregson, of One Democratic Palestine, says

Mirren has led the cast in a racist movie, intended to propagandise the Israeli project and its war-criminal founders, whitewashing their crimes against humanity. The film glamourises ethnic cleansing; it attempts to romanticise the occupation and to portray the perpetrators as the victims. People like Meir should be remembered as war criminals and illegal settlers, rather than being portrayed as heroes in silly Hollywood movies.

Jonathan Ofir, an Israeli musician based in Denmark, wrote of her: “In the end, her attitude towards Palestinians was basically a macho, chauvinist, denialist attitude which is intrinsically inherent in Zionism.”

Howie Movshovitz said in the KUNC film review: “When Golda Meir was prime minister, Israel had more friends in the world than it does now. It was still viewed as a tiny, somewhat romantic and courageous little country. But now, there’s more controversy and opposition around the world over the issue of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. So why a film about this Israeli heroine with no mention of the Palestinian question? Movies about the past are always also about their own present.” 

Taghrid Al-Mawed runs the Palestine Refugee Project; she had this to say:

Golda Meir had no problem killing Palestinians, saying, ‘How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to?’ Helen Mirren is more than happy to play this evil woman in her latest film. Well, Helen, we Palestinians do exist, and we will never forget your words and acts of support for the Zionists and your eagerness to play Meir, who has done us so much harm. She (and you) may have wanted to wipe us out, but she failed; we are still here, and we still have a very loud voice that more and more people are starting to hear and pick up. You have made a mistake Mirren; history will judge you.

Editor’s notes:

More from Pete Gregson on 0758 472 2191

Golda is being shown in various locations, starting with the Jewish Film Festival on 27September, that’s in London; then it’s on in more London cinemas from 28September; then from 6October in Ambleside, Barton Nedwood, Boreham Wood, Derby, Leeds, Brighton, Poole, Shrewsbury and Woodall Spa; then from 13 October in Coventry, Keswick, Nottingham, Ilkley and Wetherby; then from 20 October in Birmingham, Lerwick, Leicester, Melton Mowbray, Portsmouth, St Albans and Northampton; then from 27 October in Chichester, Tavistock and Berkhamstead; then from 3 November in Monmouth, Wellington and Malvern. More details of the actual cinemas at https://metfilmdistribution.co.uk/golda.

Read what Palestine Online says at Golda Meir: Mother of Israeli Apartheid, Children killer