Historical Highlights: Golda Meir

I've been wanting to do a woman for Historical Highlights for a while now, and I've finally found someone who's perfect for it: Golda Meir.

She was born Golda Mabovitch in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) on May 3, 1898 to a Jewish family. She would later write that her earliest memories were of her father barricading the door in case of a pogrom.

Her family moved to America in 1906. While there, Golda was exposed to ideas like women's suffrage, trade unionism, and (most importantly for her) Zionism, which was a movement that supported a Jewish return to the Holy Land, then under the rule of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1917 she married Morris Meyerson, and in 1921 they moved to the Holy Land, which was now under the control of the British, who supported Zionism.

In the Holy Land the Meyersons joined a kibbutz, or Jewish collective farm. During the 1930s she served as a representative of the Zionist movement in America, where she lobbied largely unsuccessfully for Jews fleeing Nazi Germany to be allowed into the country. By 1948 she was buying weapons in the US to prepare for the war she believed would soon break out between the Jews and the Arabs in the Holy Land. Just before the war broke out she met with King Abdullah of Jordan, who urged the Jews not to hurry in establishing an independent state. She replied by saying "We've been waiting for 2,000 years. Is that hurrying?"

On May 14, 1948 she was one of the people who signed the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which led to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon invading the new country. Despite being thoroughly outnumbered the Israelis managed to defend themselves and even capture some territory from the enemy, largely thanks to the weapons Golda had obtained in America.

After briefly serving as the Israeli ambassador to the Soviet Union from late 1948- 1949, the Israeli Government appointed her as it's labor minister, a position she served in until 1956, during which time she began a number of housing and road building projects. After this she served as foreign minister, during which time she changed her last name to the more Hebrew sounding "Meir". In 1969 she was elected Prime Minister of Israel. After the 1972 Olympic Games attacks in Munich, Germany, in which Arab terrorists killed several Israeli athletes, she ordered the Mossad to hunt down the killers, which they succeeded in doing.

In October of 1973, Meir received reports that Syria and Egypt were preparing for another invasion of Israel. Some Israeli generals suggested they she mobilize the entire military and launch a preemptive attack against the Arab states, but she decided that doing so would lead to Israel being perceived as the aggressor abroad, making it harder to get foreign aid, so she decided on a compromise solution: Israel would not attack the Arabs first, but would put the military on high alert just in case. When the Yom Kippur War broke out a few days later, Israel was prepared largely thanks to her. After the war she resigned in 1974, and died on December 8, 1978.

I really admire Mrs. Meir, and I definitely think she earned the nickname "Israel's Iron Lady".