Tovah Feldshuh is not just playing Golda Meir—she is taking the former Israeli prime minister’s moral outrage and channeling it straight into 2025. In her wide-ranging interview with Felice Friedson [1] for The Media Line, the Broadway and screen veteran uses the international release of Golda’s Balcony, The Film to launch a blistering critique of antisemitism, celebrity politics, and what she calls a war over Western values.
Speaking just before the film’s premiere, Feldshuh reflects on five decades of work and calls the Golda project “one of the great moments of my career,” timed to both Meir’s yahrzeit and her own bat mitzvah date. From there, she pivots sharply to the present: denouncing rising hostility on US campuses, warning that some entertainers are “misinformed,” and blasting petitions and slogans she believes whitewash jihadist violence. “If you want to kill me, I object,” she says, tying her instincts as a “practical woman” to Golda’s hard-edged realism.
Give the gift of hope
We practice what we preach:
accurate, fearless journalism. But we can't do it alone.
- On the ground in Gaza, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and more
- Our program trained more than 100 journalists
- Calling out fake news and reporting real facts
- On the ground in Gaza, Syria, Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, and more
- Our program trained more than 100 journalists
- Calling out fake news and reporting real facts
Join us.
Support The Media Line. Save democracy.
Feldshuh describes Jews as “the indigenous minority” in their historic homeland and argues that calls to erase Israel ignore basic history and the bloody origins of the current conflict. Yet she insists her anger is directed at radicals, not ordinary Muslims, pointing to Azerbaijan as proof that a Muslim-majority country can protect Jews and Christians in peace.
She worries about children raised on hatred instead of hope, contrasts Jewish teachings on the value of one life with what she describes as extremist doctrines, and returns again and again to a single principle: “I choose life and self-preservation for those of us who advocate for and support Western values.” To catch the full force of her performance—and her politics—read Felice Friedson’s piece [1] and watch the full interview [5].