(1898-1978)
Israeli diplomat, politician, and prime minister. Born in Kiev, Russia, on May 3, 1898, Golda Mabovitz was one of eight children, five of whom died in childhood. Her father immigrated to the United States in 1903, and the rest of the family joined him in Milwaukee in 1906. Golda did well in school and studied to be a teacher. Inspired by her sister Sheyna, she joined the Zionist movement and became a delegate to the American Jewish Congress. She married Morris Myerson in 1917 and during World War I volunteered to join the Jewish Legion, an armed unit recruited among Jews to fight for Britain in the Middle East. The Legion had no use for women, but in 1921 the Myersons, nevertheless, moved to Palestine.
The Myersons worked on a kibbutz and Golda became active in the Histadrut, Israel’s labor movement. She joined its executive in 1934 and helped raise funds internationally for Jewish settlement. Before Israel’s War of Independence (1948), she twice met secretly with Jordan’s King Abdullah in an unsuccessful effort to prevent war. During the war, she traveled to the United States and raised $50 million for the new state. Because of this experience, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sent her to Moscow as Israel’s ambassador.
Elected to parliament in 1949 as a member of the labor party (Mapai), Ben-Gurion appointed Meir minister of labor. A strong and decisive leader, her greatest task was finding housing and jobs for the thousands of Jewish refugees arriving from Europe and the Arab nations each week. Ben-Gurion, who once called her "The only man in my cabinet," appointed her Israel’s foreign minister in 1956. At Ben-Gurion’s urging, she adopted the Hebrew last name Meir (to burn brightly). She held the post of foreign minister until 1965, gaining international fame as one of the few women to hold a prominent position in international affairs. She worked both to strengthen Israel’s ties to the United States and with the new nations of Africa to which she dispatched a series of aid missions.
The ruling labor party appointed Meir prime minister following the death of Levi Eshkol on February 26, 1969. Meir’s efforts to trade land gained in the 1967 war for peace proved futile. Instead, she presided over one of the most war-filled periods in Israeli history. Terrorist attacks and cross-border raids on Israel increased, and skirmishing with Egypt across the Suez Canal escalated into the War of Attrition, which lasted through August 1970. The following month Syria invaded Jordan to support a Palestinian rebellion but withdrew its forces after Meir threatened to attack Syria. Tensions with Egypt and Syria increased steadily and produced several invasion scares. The morning of October 6, 1973, Israel’s director of intelligence warned that an attack was imminent. Meir rejected an air force proposal to attack first as Israel had in 1967. That afternoon Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal in overwhelming force and drove back the surprised Israeli army. On the Golan Heights, desperate fighting narrowly averted a Syrian invasion of the Israeli heartland. Israeli counteroffensives defeated both Arab armies, and a U.S.-imposed cease-fire ended the war on October 24.
Despite winning the war, the early setbacks, heavy casualties, and rumors that she had considered using nuclear weapons tarnished Meir’s administration. She resigned on June 3, 1974, and returned to private life. She died December 8, 1978 in Jerusalem after a fifteen-year battle with leukemia.
