Golda Meir

Abstract

Golda Meir (b. 1898–d. 1978), Israel’s fourth prime minister, was a major figure in Israeli politics and society from 1928 until her death fifty years later. Born in Kiev, then part of tsarist Russia, she was raised in a poor family that often moved from one house to another. At age five she experienced preparations for a pogrom, and that left its mark on her for life. The family immigrated to the United States in 1906 and settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where her father worked as a carpenter. From an early age she came under the influence of her elder sister, Sheyna, who introduced her to Zionism and socialism. When her family refused to let her attend high school, she rebelled and escaped to her sister, then living in Denver. There she met Morris Myerson, who would become her husband. Two years later, back in Milwaukee, she became active in Poale Zion, a Zionist-Socialist movement, and decided to immigrate to Palestine and become part of the effort to rebuild a Jewish state. She was married in December 1917 and left for Palestine in 1921, settling in Kibbutz Merhavia, and began to make her name in Labor Zionist circles. She soon caught the eyes of the movement’s leaders, David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson, David Remez, and Zalman Shazar. The latter two would become her mentors and later her lovers. She advanced slowly in the ranks of Mapai, since 1930 the leading socialist party in Palestine. In the 1930s and early 1940s she held various senior positions in the executive of the Histadrut trade union movement. During Israel’s War of Independence she raised huge sums of money from American Jews that helped pay for weapons. She was a signer of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and was appointed Israel’s first Minister Plenipotentiary to the Soviet Union, a position she held for less than a year. This was followed by a ministerial career that included minister of labor (1949–1956), foreign minister (1956–1966), party secretary (1966–1968) and finally prime minister (1969–1974). Her career came to an abrupt end shortly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which caught Israel by surprise. Although exonerated by a commission of inquiry that praised her actions on the eve of the war, popular demand led to her resignation in 1974. For many years she was seen as the incarnation of inflexibility in her foreign policy, while she was praised for her social legislation, including the establishment of Israel’s Social Security system in 1952. In recent years there has been a reevaluation of her foreign policy and she is now considered as one of Israel’s more noted national leaders.