Israeli Actress Condemns 'Jewish Terrorism' Thinking She's on Commercial Break, Then Panics After Realising She's Live

Veteran Israeli actress Chelli Goldenberg condemned 'Jewish terrorism' and Israel's occupation on breakfast television, believing she was chatting with the hosts during a commercial break. The show had already returned to air. Realizing she was live, Goldenberg said she was 'really in shock' and announced she was leaving.

The 72-year-old former model, best known for the 1978 cult film Ha-Lahaka (The Troupe), was a guest on Channel 13's Opening the Day on Monday, 26 October, a day before Israel's general election.

Hosts Elad Zohar and Yarden Harel had invited her to discuss her career and her new film, Hastabrut LeAhava (Probability of Love).

How Chelli Goldenberg's Off-Air Chat Went Live

It began when Zohar raised her earlier comment about losing pride in being Israeli. 'I want to be, but I no longer feel proud to be Israeli,' she said. Warned that this was dangerous to say on television, she replied, 'I'm not saying it on air. I'm saying it quietly.'

'We are occupiers. Yes. Everything that is happening now is the result of the occupation,' she said. 'I was born in 1954, and even after 1967, it took ten years to understand the sin of the occupation. It didn't happen overnight.'

Pressed for examples, she listed rising religious influence, the settlers, 'Jewish terrorism', and arrogance.

'A Minority Has the Right to Fight'

Zohar raised Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza and the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed. Goldenberg said she had lived in South Africa under apartheid and that Yitzhak Shamir, a future prime minister, had planted a bomb at Jerusalem's King David Hotel. The 1946 bombing, which killed 91 people, was carried out by the Irgun under Menachem Begin, not Shamir's Lehi group.

'A minority has the right to fight for its freedom,' she said.

'Not if it massacres civilians, our brothers and sisters, and our soldiers,' Zohar replied. Harel said the line was hard to hear, and Zohar told her the country was still 'wounded, bleeding, and grieving' over what that minority had done.

'I am a great patriot. I love this country,' Goldenberg said. She described two years spent scrubbing homes in Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, and Be'eri, kibbutzim attacked on 7 October, where gunmen had left grenades, bullet casings, and blood-stained knives. She likened Israel to a child who had turned out differently from how it was raised.

'Were We on the Air?'

When the hosts tried to return to her films, Goldenberg suddenly asked, 'Were we on the air?'

Once they confirmed it, she was visibly shaken. 'We were on the air during that conversation? That's not okay,' she said. 'You didn't tell me we were back on the air. I thought this was an offline conversation.'

She said she had asked them beforehand not to raise her volunteer work, then announced she was leaving. 'I don't know what to do with this now. I'm really in shock,' she said, and the programme cut to an early commercial break.

Goldenberg Returns to Apologise

After the break, she apologised to viewers. 'I'm a very impulsive person, with tremendous passion when I speak. I'm all fire and flames. I didn't know we were on the air,' she said.

'I expressed my opinions with greater passion and extremity, things that I don't think I would even say to my mother and father,' she added, calling the drama and sharpness of her words excessive. She asked the hosts to flag the camera's red tally light next time, adding, 'I didn't see that it was red when we were talking.'

Election-Eve Clip Splits Opinion

By midday, the clip was on X. A right-wing broadcaster wrote that she had justified the 7 October massacre, and another user cited it to urge right-wing voters to turn out.

Channel 13's own write-up of the interview, published that evening, covered her film and made no mention of the exchange. The broadcaster had not publicly addressed the mix-up at the time of writing.

Three days later, Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, shared a subtitled version calling her a 'longtime patriot'. It passed 1.1 million views. One reply argued that her panic over being overheard 'tells you more about Israeli society than the actress.'