Golda Meir

Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitch in Kyiv on May 3, 1898.[3] Her early childhood included time in Pinsk, her mother's hometown, before the family settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, following her father's earlier emigration to find work.[6] Economic hardship drove the family's move to the United States in 1906, and Milwaukee shaped Meir's formative years as a student, educator, and emerging political thinker.[3]

As a young teenager, Meir encountered resistance from her parents, who pressed her to marry rather than continue her education.[1] At age fourteen, she left home and moved to Denver, Colorado, to live with her sister.[1] There she attended high school by day and spent her evenings among intellectuals debating Zionism, women's suffrage, unionism, and other social causes. The American Jewish Archives account says that this environment shaped her social and political philosophy.[1]

In Denver she met Morris Meyerson, whom she married in 1917.[1] Both were committed Labor Zionists. Back in Milwaukee, Meir had joined the socialist-Zionist Poalei Zion party in 1915.[3] The couple immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1921 and joined Kibbutz Merhavia in the Jezreel Valley.[1]

After leaving Kibbutz Merhavia, Meir moved to Tel Aviv in 1924 and later to Jerusalem.[3][7] She became secretary of the Histadrut's Council of Women Workers in 1928 and was elected to the Histadrut executive committee in 1930.[7] From 1932 to 1934 she served in the United States as a Histadrut emissary and secretary of Pioneer Women. In 1937 she became chair of the supervisory committee of Kupat Holim, the workers' health fund, while holding additional Histadrut positions.[7]

By 1936 she headed the Histadrut's Political Department.[3] In June 1946, after British Mandatory authorities arrested much of the Yishuv's senior leadership, Meir replaced Moshe Sharett as head of the Jewish Agency's Political Department, which functioned as the state-in-waiting's quasi-foreign ministry.[3][2] She remained in that role through the establishment of Israel in 1948.[4]

During this critical pre-state period, Meir testified in Jerusalem before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine in 1946. A later biographical account connects her testimony to memories of pogroms and to her refusal to accept Jewish helplessness or dependence on others for security.[6] She also pursued fundraising trips to the United States for the Jewish community's war effort and became one of its most effective spokespeople.[2] One account credits her with raising $100 million in total—$50 million at the outset of the War of Independence and another $50 million afterward—through appeals to small groups of women in towns across the country, on a mission assigned by David Ben-Gurion.[8]

As independence approached, Meir undertook a secret diplomatic mission that became one of the most storied episodes of her career. On May 10, 1948—four days before David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the State of Israel—she traveled to Amman disguised as an Arab woman, changing cars several times to conceal the meeting's existence.[3] She sought to persuade King Abdullah of Transjordan not to join the impending attack on the Jewish state. Abdullah opposed an immediate declaration of Jewish statehood and offered the Jews protected-minority status within an enlarged Jordanian kingdom; Meir rejected the offer.[3] When Abdullah asked her not to hurry the proclamation, she replied: "We have been waiting for two thousand years. Is that hurrying?"[6] The meeting failed to produce an agreement or prevent Abdullah's army from joining the war.[2]

On May 14, 1948, Meir was one of only two women among the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence.[6] The act completed a trajectory from Milwaukee schoolgirl to founding signatory of a Jewish state.

Shortly after independence, Meir was appointed Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union. Sources date the appointment to June or September 1948, and she returned to Israel in 1949.[7][2] On Rosh Hashanah 1948, thousands of Soviet Jews gave her a rapturous reception at Moscow's Choral Synagogue, a spontaneous demonstration of Jewish solidarity that moved her deeply.[6]

Returning to Israel in 1949, she was elected to the first Knesset as a Mapai member, beginning a parliamentary career that continued until 1974.[2] Her arrival in the legislature marked the beginning of an ascending series of national responsibilities.

From 1949 to 1956, Meir served as minister of labor and national insurance during years of mass immigration.[2] She initiated large public-works programs that employed hundreds of thousands of newly arrived immigrants, pursued social and labor legislation, built subsidized housing, and worked to integrate newcomers into the workforce.[3][7]

The statistics attributed to her tenure convey its scale: 130,000 housing units were built, 400,000 people were employed, and 80,000 acquired a trade.[6] She also helped establish a social-security system that included health and disability insurance and maternity leave. Meir called this period her "seven good years," and its housing and social-welfare programs were among the most concrete achievements of her career.[6]

Meir served as Israel's foreign minister from 1956 to 1966, a decade in which she expanded the geographic reach of Israeli diplomacy.[2][6] Her first months in office coincided with the Sinai Campaign, in which Israel, Britain, and France fought Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. Following pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Nations, the forces withdrew; UN troops were subsequently deployed in Sinai, the Strait of Tiran was reopened to Israeli shipping, and 177 Israeli soldiers were reported killed, with hundreds wounded.[9]

At the United Nations General Assembly on March 1, 1957, Meir stated that armed interference with Israeli-flagged ships exercising free passage in the Gulf of Aqaba and the Straits of Tiran would be regarded as an attack, entitling Israel to exercise self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter.[10] The declaration framed interference with Israeli shipping as a basis for invoking the right of self-defense.

As foreign minister, Meir developed cooperation with newly independent African states, drawing partly on Israel's development experience to offer technical assistance.[2] She also worked to strengthen relations with the United States, cultivated relations with France, and established bilateral ties with Latin American countries and emerging states in Asia and Africa.[2][4] One biographical account describes her as working eighteen-hour days.[6]

Between 1966 and 1968, Meir served as secretary-general of Mapai and then of the newly formed Labor Party, playing a significant role in the party's establishment.[2][4]

When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died in February 1969, Meir was selected as his successor—a consensus candidate amid rivalry between Yigal Allon and Moshe Dayan.[3] On March 17, 1969, she became Israel's fourth prime minister, the first woman to lead Israel, and the third woman to head a national government in the twentieth century, after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India.[2]

She led her party to victory in the October 1969 elections, in which the Alignment won 56 of the Knesset's 120 seats—identified by one source as the largest percentage of the vote ever won by a single Israeli party.[11] She appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1969.[11] During the early years of her premiership, a survey in Esquire listed her among the "100 Most Important People in the World," and her approval rating in Israel reached 80 percent.[6]

Meir's leadership combined an iron will with an accessible public image that was often described as warm and maternal.[6] She relied on diplomacy and personal contacts with foreign leaders and sought extensive financial and military assistance from the United States.[12]

Her premiership encompassed major events before the Yom Kippur War. The War of Attrition along the Suez Canal ended in August 1970 after her government accepted U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers's proposal for a cease-fire.[7]

In a secret meeting with Jordan's King Hussein on March 21, 1972, Meir rejected a return to the 1967 boundaries, opposed minor border rectifications, and insisted that Jerusalem remain unified, while allowing Jordan control of Arab holy places.[13] She also told Hussein that negotiations through UN mediator Gunnar Jarring would not produce a settlement and that peace could be achieved only through direct talks.[13]

During her premiership, the Israeli Black Panthers emerged in 1971 as a protest movement associated with Israelis of North African and Middle Eastern origin who challenged the Labor establishment over economic inequality and marginalization.[3] After meeting its leaders, Meir characterized them as "not nice boys." Their grievances and the ruling party's response contributed to a longer-term political shift in which many Sephardim moved away from Labor and toward Likud.[3]

The defining and most devastating chapter of Meir's premiership began on October 6, 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.[3] The strategic assumption that Arab states would not initiate a major offensive had shaped Israeli military and political thinking; that assumption collapsed when the attack began.[3]

Meir had received warnings. King Hussein had alerted her in May and again in late September 1973, while other signals pointed toward the possibility of attack.[6] On the morning of October 6, she told U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Keating that Israel had reliable information indicating that a coordinated assault was imminent, but she committed that Israel would not strike first.[14] She rejected a preemptive strike despite military advice that it would offer a major operational advantage, weighing the need to preserve American support and ensure that Israel was understood to be the attacked party.[14]

Within the first twenty-four hours, Israeli border defenses were overrun, hundreds of soldiers were killed, 162 were taken prisoner by Egypt, and nearly 50 more by Syria.[6] Meir chaired the political-security discussions of the war cabinet, composed of herself, Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon, Minister without Portfolio Yisrael Galili, and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.[15]

On October 10, she authorized Chief of Staff David Elazar's recommendation for an offensive beyond the cease-fire line on the Syrian front, intended to destroy Syrian army divisions, improve Israel's strategic position, and strengthen its negotiating position.[15] At a war-cabinet meeting on October 12, an intelligence report indicated that Egypt planned a major offensive toward the Sinai passes on October 13 or 14. The decision was to await and defeat that advance before crossing the Suez Canal. Israel subsequently repelled the Egyptian advance, crossed the canal, and achieved a clear military victory on the southern front.[15]

During the war, Meir resisted pressure to use Israel's secret nuclear arsenal.[3] She negotiated with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for an American airlift of military supplies and coordinated cease-fire discussions.[3] A declassified record from an October 9 meeting shows her proposing to fly secretly to Washington with a military adviser to impress upon President Nixon the severity of Israel's situation and seek tanks and Phantom aircraft. She alternatively proposed that White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig visit Israel incognito.[16]

In a postwar Oval Office meeting with Nixon, Meir thanked the United States for its airlift and discussed prisoners, the cease-fire, the Egyptian Third Army, the blockade in the Red Sea and Gulf, direct negotiations, and the need for peace with secure borders. She said that Israel did not want to destroy the Egyptian Third Army and that "this must be the last war."[17]

The human cost was staggering: 2,656 Israeli soldiers were killed and 7,250 wounded.[3] The Agranat Commission, established to investigate the failures preceding the war and during its opening days, blamed the army and military intelligence and cleared the political echelon—including Meir—of direct responsibility.[7] Public grief and anger nevertheless persisted. When the commission's interim conclusions were published on April 1, 1974, stating that "Golda Meir acted correctly in the critical days that preceded the outbreak of the war," mass demonstrations and demands for her resignation followed.[6]

Chaim Herzog credited Meir with "enormous composure" during the war while accusing her of "stubborn blindness" toward prewar warnings.[6] When Moshe Dayan urged her to accept an early cease-fire with Egypt, she replied, "that is not a cease-fire, it is surrender."[6]

Despite the failures exposed by the October 1973 war, Meir and the Labor Party won the elections held that December.[7] She was reelected prime minister and formed a new government, but the political weight of the war proved insupportable. On April 10, 1974, she announced her resignation, saying: "I can no longer bear this burden."[6] She resigned from the Knesset two months later, when a replacement government under Yitzhak Rabin was formed, and withdrew from political life.[4]

Meir believed that her resignation reflected "the will of the people," even though the Agranat Commission had exonerated her and her party had won the election.[12] In retirement she wrote her memoirs and, in November 1977, attended the Knesset ceremony marking Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem.[4][12]

In an interview given soon after the war, she called on American Jews to provide Israel not only with support but also with honest criticism: "We want to hear nice things about ourselves, but we must also hear the truth." She used the Hebrew word "mishpacha"—family—to describe their relationship to Israel.[18]

Golda Meir died on December 8, 1978, at the age of 80, survived by her son Menachem and daughter Sarah.[7] She was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.[6] In accordance with her wishes, no eulogies were delivered at her funeral; instead, excerpts from her writings and speeches were read, including: "Peace is our most vital concern and our most ardent desire."[6]

Golda Meir's place in Israeli and Jewish history rests on a career that spanned more than half a century and touched many of the institutions and crises that defined the modern Jewish state. She was a leader of Israel's labor movement, a signatory of its Declaration of Independence, its first ambassador to the Soviet Union, foreign minister for a decade, and its first female prime minister.[2][6]

President Richard Nixon, at a state dinner during his June 1974 visit to Israel, said that no leader he had encountered had demonstrated greater "courage, greater intelligence, and greater stamina, greater determination, and greater dedication to her country" than Meir.[19] Gallup polls named her "Most Admired Woman" in 1971, 1973, and 1974; in 1973 she received twice as many votes as First Lady Pat Nixon.[5]

As labor minister, she oversaw the construction of 130,000 housing units, the employment of 400,000 people, and trade training for 80,000, while helping establish a social-security system that included maternity leave and disability insurance.[6] As foreign minister, she expanded Israeli diplomacy and technical cooperation among newly independent African and Asian states.[4] As prime minister, she navigated the War of Attrition, secret negotiations with Arab leaders, and the Yom Kippur War.[13][3]

One scholarly biography characterizes Meir as a major builder of modern Israel whose influence on Israel, Israel-American relations, and Jewish history was especially evident from 1969 to 1974. It describes her as a highly effective tactician but a less successful strategist and identifies national self-reliance as a central credo of her life.[20] Her own words illuminate that outlook: "A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader."[21]

Her bond with the Jewish Diaspora was a recurring theme of her public life. The rapturous reception she received from Soviet Jews at Moscow's Choral Synagogue on Rosh Hashanah 1948 moved her deeply.[6] That bond also appeared in her later description of American Jews as mishpacha—family—from whom Israel should expect both support and honest criticism.[18]

The most serious historical controversy attached to Meir's name concerns her government's failure to anticipate the Yom Kippur War. Although the Agranat Commission cleared her of direct responsibility and blamed the military and military intelligence, public and scholarly assessments have been less forgiving. She had received significant advance warnings—including alerts from King Hussein—and accepted advisers' assessments that war was unlikely, a judgment that proved catastrophically wrong.[6] She accepted the prevailing intelligence assessment alongside the rest of Israel's political and security leadership and was consequently regarded as bearing overall political responsibility for the surprise.[4]

Meir's relationship to feminism constitutes a separate contested dimension of her legacy. She rejected the feminist label and publicly criticized the women's liberation movement.[3] Yet as labor minister she supported a social-security system that included maternity leave.[6] Biographer Pnina Lahav presents her as a politically groundbreaking woman whose conduct combined traditional values with rejection of feminist identity. Critics note that she appointed no women to her cabinet and did not promote female successors.[22]

A historical analysis of Israeli foreign policy examines how domestic political constraints influenced decision-making between 1967 and 1973 and asks whether a coherent foreign policy was sometimes sacrificed to internal politics.[23] The analysis also cautions against placing primary responsibility for the failure to reach a settlement on Israeli policy, emphasizing the continued hostility of Arab governments and their refusal to recognize Israel's legitimacy.[23]

Sources also differ on minor chronological details. The American Jewish Archives biography gives Meir's birth date as May 13, 1898, while other official and biographical sources give May 3.[3][1] Sources likewise date her appointment to the Soviet Union to June or September 1948.[7][2] These are questions of chronological precision rather than substantive disputes over the broader course of her career.