Who was Golda Meir?

At 70 years old, Golda Meir became the—and, to date, only—female prime minister of Israel on March 17, 1969.

Even before her tenure as prime minister, she spent years advocating for Jewish refugees during World War II, fighting to found the state of Israel, and navigating countless international conflicts. During her premiership, she urged for unity as political parties fractured, she ordered retaliation when 11 Israelis were murdered during the Olympics, and she walked a tightrope during the Yom Kippur War by fighting Syrian troops while securing U.S. support.

Meir was as popular as she was polarizing. Her decades of service attest to her longevity, fortitude, and dedication to her beliefs and her people.

Golda’s rise to prominence

Born Golda Mabovitch in Kyiv on May 3, 1898, the future leader of Israel emigrated to the United States in 1906. She later recalled her eight years in Eastern Europe as “poverty-stricken, wretched little communities in which Jews eked out a living [hoping] things would somehow be better one day." 

As a young girl, Mabovitch excelled at school while working long hours at the grocery store her mother managed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Once she graduated from high school, Mabovitch attended Milwaukee Normal School and trained to become a teacher. Mabovitch also became an active member of Poale Zion, a Labor Zionist youth movement she described as "young, full of hope and zeal, ready for anything." 

In 1917, Mabovitch married Morris Meyerson in Wisconsin, and the couple emigrated to Palestine a year later, at the end of World War I. There, the family joined the Merhavia kibbutz ,an agricultural settlement, where Golda Meyerson once again took on a leadership role in kibbutz politics. 

The couple relocated later to Tel Aviv and then to Jerusalem where she gave birth to the couple's two children, Menachem and Sarah. 

In 1938, Golda Meyerson attended the conference at Evian-les Bains, called by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss growing persecution of Jews in Germany. She was only an observer, helpless as she watched delegates from 32 nations "explain how much they would have liked to take in substantial numbers of refugees and how unfortunate it was that they were not able to do so."

During World War II, she worked on behalf of the Jewish people as a functionary in the British Mandate of Palestine. She continued to be a prominent voice against anti-Semitism and her position in the Jewish-run government propelled to the forefront of ongoing negotiations between Israel and Britain in 1946. 

The establishment of Israel

The United Nations announced its plan for the partition of Palestine on November 29, 1947, in an attempt to resolve the ongoing tensions between Jewish and Arab residents in the region. Still, it escalated to all out war. Seventy years later, the conflict is still ongoing.

In the U.S., Golda Meyerson raised $50 million to support the Israeli cause, a feat that led to David Ben-Gurion, who would become the first Prime Minister of Israel, calling her the "Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible." 

You May Also Like

HISTORY & CULTURE

The real spies who inspired ‘The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare’

HISTORY MAGAZINE

Pearl Harbor was the only WWII attack on the U.S., right? Wrong.

HISTORY & CULTURE

The lessons learned from 1918 flu fatigue, according to historians

On May 14, 1948, she signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence but her political role was tenuous. A suspected heart attack followed by injuries from a car accident affected Golda Meyerson who, by her own admission, sacrificed her health by leaving the hospital before she was well.

In September 1948, she traveled to Moscow and served as minister to the Soviet Union, albeit begrudgingly. She lamented "At last we have a state. I want to be there. I don't want to go thousands of miles away.”

In 1956, Golda Meyerson changed her surname to the Hebrew "Meir."

Meir called 1949 to 1956 her "seven beautiful years," in large part due to her success fostering Israel's domestic viability, including infrastructure and social support for residents. Between 1956 and 1966, Meir became Israel’s foreign minister, a position that put her at the center of the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956. Meir was also able to secure arms sales from the U.S. while serving as foreign minister. 

Heart trouble in 1955, an injury sustained in a bombing in 1957, and a diagnosis of lymphoma in 1965 contributed to Meir's retirement from the foreign minister role. She maintained her position in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, as well as in Mapai, the democratic socialist party. 

Her retirement did not last long. When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died unexpectedly in 1969, Meir was asked to run for the office. She knew "a 70-year-old grandmother was hardly the perfect candidate to head a 20-year-old state," but ultimately agreed. Meir was appointed prime minister in March, and ran for and won the office in October of the same year. 

A turbulent tenure

Meir emphasized continuity when she became prime minister, but the coalition of political parties in Israel fractured in 1970. Meir's premiership was also characterized by the events of the 1972 Olympics: members of Black September, a Palestinian militant group, killed two Israelis and took additional members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage. In the end, 11 Israelis died and Meir ordered a retaliatory massacre of the perpetrators. Mossad, Israel's national intelligence agency, killed many members of Black September but also mistakenly killed a Moroccan waiter. 

The Yom-Kippur War, in many ways, defined Meir's time as Prime Minister. In October 1973, on Yom Kippur, Syrian forces mobilized to remove Israel from Golan Heights. Simultaneously, a force of Egyptian troops attempted to force Israel out of the Sinai Peninsula. 

Meir matched Syrian efforts by mobilizing Israel troops, but resisted a preemptive strike due to concerns that such an action would result in the U.S. withdrawing its support. Henry Kissinger, the U.S. Secretary of State, later confirmed that the U.S. would have withdrawn aid had Israel moved first. 

Egypt and Syria had the backing of the Soviet Union in what amounted to a de facto Cold War conflict. On October 18, Kissinger contacted Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin and they agreed that the situation was essentially a stalemate. Kissinger told Dobrynin, "my nightmare is a victory for either side," and Dobrynin replied that he shared the same fear. In the end, Israel signed cease-fire agreements with Egypt and Syria in late 1973 and early 1974, respectively. 

Meir's perceived inability to navigate the Yom Kippur War ultimately factored into her decision to resign the premiership in 1974. She left politics but never completely walked away. In 1976, for example, Meir met with Kissinger while she was on a trip to the United States for what she described as "just a friendly conversation." Kissinger, for his part, said "We're old friends and we discussed the situation in the Mideast."

Meir passed away from lymphoma in 1978 at the age of 80.