Dame Helen Mirren speaks about the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir ahead of the Jerusalem Film Festival. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/AP
Dame Helen Mirren says she supports Israeli protesters angered by Benjamin Netanyahu's controversial plans to reform the judiciary and dislikes his “male” leadership style.
Dame Helen, who plays Golda Meir, Israel's first female prime minister, in her latest film , called the months-long protests “a turning point in Israel's history.”
“I am personally very touched and excited when you see these huge demonstrations,” she said at a press conference before the opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival.
Helen Mirren as Golda Meir Credit & Copyright: Jasper Wolf 3 Credit: BOB DAUGHERTY/AP
Over the past six months, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the country to protest Mr. Netanyahu's proposed judicial reform systems.
Allies of the prime minister say the plan is needed to limit the powers of the unelected judiciary. But his opponents say it is a thinly veiled power grab that will destroy the country's fragile system of checks and balances.
Dame Helen opposed Meir's leadership, who often served coffee to his military advisers when they gathered in her kitchen to discuss strategy with the kitchen of Mr. Netanyahu, who has a reputation for being aloof and out of touch with ordinary Israelis.
“She had tremendous strength, but she was perfectly happy to hobble around in the kitchen, making coffee for everyone and being a grandmother,” Dame Helen said. “It's a very different attitude to power – from the male power of the Netanyahu type to the kitchen power of Golda Meir.”
The visit of Dame Helen, who portrays the late Meir during the 1973 war between Israel and the coalition of Arab states in Golda also appeared when the Netanyahu government tries to increase its power in the West Bank.
His government, which came to power in December and is the most hardline ultra-nationalist and ultra-Orthodox in Israel's 75-year history, has approved plans to build thousands of homes in settlements in the West Bank, sparking tensions among Palestinians.
< img src=" /wp-content/uploads/2023/07/0232e95a134eb11d4c91b1e0424a7cdd.jpg" /> Helen Mirren at the Jerusalem Film Festival on Thursday. Photo: Ohad Zwiberg/AP
More than 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank this year, and Palestinian attacks on Israelis have left at least 25 dead.
Some of Mr. Netanyahu's allies are West Bank settler leaders who sought to deny the national aspirations of the Palestinians, a view that Meir famously expressed in 1969.
“There was no such thing as the Palestinians,” she told The Sunday Times.
Extremely Right-wing Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich recently backed Meir, saying “there is no such thing as the Palestinian people.”
Lior Ashkenazi, the Israeli actor who played the head of the Israeli army in Gold, said that, in his opinion, Meir would support efforts to annex the West Bank.
“Even though she was a socialist,” Ashkenazi said, “I think she would definitely support the settlers.”
The film, directed by Guy Nattiv and written by Nicholas Martin, focuses on Meir's leadership during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
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