The reception to Israeli director Guy Nattiv’s biopic on the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s role during the 1973 Yom Kippur War has been lukewarm at best.
The general consensus among professional critics is that it is a movie that “fails to deliver” with its “languid pacing,” and whose leading actress Helen Mirren “gets lost beneath layers of heavy prosthetics.”
And while the film appears to have gone down better with audiences — scoring 6.3 out of 10 on the ranking website IMDb — current box receipts of around $3.5 million suggest it may fall short of recouping its $30 million budget.
Yet, the generally negative reviews of ‘Golda’ appear to be part of a fairly recent trend in which films that pertain to Israel are not received well, including by some movie critics who use their write-ups as an excuse to fire subtle barbs at the Jewish state.
Movie critics and anti-Israel groups alike are taking cheap shots at ‘Golda.’ Others are desperately trying to smear her as a “Nazi.” It just doesn’t wash. https://t.co/MO8phbohF8
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) August 30, 2023
The Red Sea Diving Resort – 2019
Detailing the covert rescue operations between 1984-85 to evacuate thousands of Ethiopian Jews from Sudan to Israel, the movie centers around fictional Mossad agent Ari Levinson using a coastal tourist resort as a front to secretly smuggle refugees out with the backing of the United States.
The true story of Operation Moses and Operation Joshua is one of heroics.
In the years following 1974, thousands of Ethiopian Jews were suffering under the rule of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who rose to power during a military coup that saw Emporer Haile Selassie deposed.
When Israel became aware of their plight, a plan was put into motion to rescue thousands of Ethiopians who could make it across the border to Sudan, and the fake luxury hotel in the Sudanese village of Arous was set up.
Shortly after the operation was completed, then Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres declared its success in a speech to the Knesset:
“And we here have born within us the ongoing, never-ending hope of the unification of our people,” he said. “Neither economic difficulty nor internal distress, nor geographical distance, nor political obstacle shall halt or postpone the rescue and immigration effort, enwrapped in ancient splendor and enveloped in secret heroism.”
However, critics of the Red Sea Diving Resort failed to appreciate the film or even the real events it was portraying, instead mauling the Netflix-released thriller for apparently perpetuating a “white savior” narrative.
The Associated Press’s resident film reviewer Mark Kennedy gave the film just 0.5 stars out of 4 stars and branded it “terribly overcooked” with “cartoonish dialogue from hack superhero films and slathering the whole mess in white savior complex.”
Entertainment website Polygon took a similar line in its review, which complained that “all of the fellow [Israeli] spies who assist [Chris] Evans in his quest to help ferry refugees to safety are white,” which means “the focus turns the film into a quintessential white savior movie, making every person of color a prop to be saved, rather than a developed character.”
Like some reviews of ‘Golda,’ such criticism is part of a trend through which Israel is viewed through the lens of US identity politics, and Jews are classified as white and thus privileged.
Meanwhile, a handful of critics even used a film that revolves around events that took place nearly 40 years ago to criticize the 2019 Israeli government, including one review that bizarrely claimed it “summarily ignores that the Israeli government is prone to reactionary practices and exclusionary laws.”
Entebbe – 2018
The daring raid to rescue a planeload of hostages from Entebbe, Uganda, is one of the most well-known successes in Israeli military history.
An Air France plane was hijacked in June 1976 by two Palestinian terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and their German accomplices, Wilfried Böse and Brigitte Kuhlmann from the German Revolutionary Cells.
After first diverting the passenger jet to Benghazi, Libya, for refueling, the terrorists flew it to Entebbe Airport, where the PFLP informed Reuters that it had taken the aircraft. Their demands included a ransom of $5 million and for Israel to release dozens of convicted terrorists. In addition, the terrorists began segregating Israeli passengers, with non-Israeli and non-Jewish passengers later released.
Although Israel tried to develop a dialogue with Uganda’s president Idi Amin to secure the safe release of hostages, Amin actually collaborated with the terrorists. It later emerged that the Ugandan government supported the hijackers, and Amin, who had been informed of the hijacking from the beginning, personally welcomed them.
After a week of planning, Israel launched Operation Thunderbolt, which saw Israeli commandos storm the Entebbe Airport terminal and engage in a shootout with the terrorists.
Reviews of Entebbe were mostly negative, with critics complaining about its clunky dialogue, miscast actors and what they perceived as director José Padilha’s failure to portray the true terror of the hostage situation — all of which are valid points to make.
However, some reviewers went beyond merely critiquing the film’s dull pacing.
Internationally distributed movie magazine and website Little White Lies, for example, published a piece about the film that stated: “Owing to the highly sensitive and ongoing nature of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s perhaps understandable that Padilha reconstructs this controversial incident without comment. As a result, though, it feels like an opportunity missed.”
First, the characterization of terrorists abducting more than 200 innocent people is not merely a “controversial incident.” It was an international crisis that captured the attention of the world.
Second, what so-called “comment” relating to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian was director Padilha expected to make, and why was it a missed opportunity?
Several reviews actually failed to mention that Palestinian terrorists were involved in the hijacking and that more PFLP members joined the group at Entebbe.
In another piece that does mention the role of the PFLP, they are simply referred to as “Palestinian rebel groups.”
Operation Finale – 2018
Starring acclaimed actor Ben Kingsley as Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann, who was nabbed by Mossad agents in 1960 in Argentina, Operation Finale was mostly panned by critics who found it plodding and unmemorable.
The Forward’s Talya Zax was among those to criticize the film — but for entirely different reasons than other critics.
Within her list of problems with the movie was that it was supposedly about “powerful people being heroes, rather than one about profound, traumatic and unresolved moral struggles,” in addition to it allegedly using “the traumas of the Holocaust… to distract from the morally complicated nature of the task at hand.”
The New York Times also alluded to the “moral issue” of Eichmann’s capture
However, “morally complicated” is perhaps the last phrase most people would use to describe the mission to apprehend the Nazi mass murderer and transport him to the Jewish state to stand trial.
Munich – 2005
The Steven Spielberg-directed Munich bucks the trends of bad reviews having been met with critical acclaim when it was released almost 20 years ago.
The film notably stirred controversy among Israelis for its attempts to tell both sides of the story and prompted Israel’s consul-general in Los Angeles to blast the thriller as “superficial”, “pretentious” and “problematic,” claiming it attempts to draw an equivalence between the murdered Israelis and the Palestinian terrorists.
Amidst the positive reviews, one outlet’s coverage of the film went further than the rest.
Global wire agency Reuters followed up its review of the blockbuster by reaching out to the Palestinian mastermind of the massacre, Mohammed Daoud, to give him space to air his outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and [to accuse] Spielberg of pandering to the “Zionist side.”
It is profoundly disturbing that Reuters thought it was appropriate to invite the architect of the massacre to critique the film.
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