Meir, Golda

Meir, Golda 1898-1978

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitz on May 3, 1898, in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine). Due to terrible hardship, Golda’s family immigrated in 1906 to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Golda graduated from a teachers’ college and worked as a public-school teacher. She joined the Labor Zionist Party in 1915 and married Morris Meyerson in 1917. In 1921 they immigrated to Palestine, where they joined Kibbutz Merhavia. In 1956 she adopted the Hebrew name Meir (“to burn brightly”).

Believing that Jews should make their “Just Society” through their own physical labor, Meir was a prominent socialist Zionist figure in the Histadrut (the Israeli Trade Union Congress) and the Jewish Agency, a Zionist organization founded in 1929 to provide services for Jewish immigration and assimilation into Palestine. Being proficient in English, Meir was sent to the United States in the 1930s on a mission to raise funds for building the state of Israel.

After the establishment of Israel on May 14, 1948, Meir played a central role in domestic politics as well as on the diplomatic front. In the same year, she paid a secret, yet unsuccessful, visit to Jordan to persuade its king, Abdullah (1882–1951), not to attack Israel. David BenGurion (1886–1973), a leader in the struggle to establish the state of Israel and later the first prime minister of Israel, appointed Meir a member of the Provisional Government and then, in June 1948, ambassador to the Soviet Union. In 1949 she was elected to the first Knesset as a member of Mapai, the Israeli Workers Party. Meir served as minister of labor from 1949 to 1956, a period of high unemployment and social unrest that resulted from mass immigration. She served as foreign minister from 1956 to 1966. While in office, Meir sought to strengthen Israel’s relationship with the United States, create bilateral relationships with Latin American countries, and provide African countries with Israeli know-how in nation building.

Meir became secretary-general of Mapai in 1966, before taking the helm of the newly formed Labor Party. After the death of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol (1895–1969), Meir was appointed prime minister; thus becoming the third female prime minister in the world (after Sirimavo Bandaranaike [1916–2000] of Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi [1917–1984] of India). Reelected prime minister in October 1969, Meir proved highly successful in consolidating American political and financial support for Israel.

Meir took a rigid stance toward the Arabs. She also adopted the so-called open-door immigration policy, which encouraged thousands of people to leave the Soviet Union and other places to settle in Israel and the occupied territories. She believed that Israelis could not return the occupied territories because there was nobody to return them to. In a June 15, 1969, interview with the Sunday Times of London, she said, “There was no such thing as Palestinians … they did not exist,” a statement that Arabs often quote to refer to what they think to be bias. Moreover, she wrote in My Life, her 1975 autobiography, that she did not believe that “the Jews ‘stole’ land from Arabs in Palestine,” since “a lot of good money changed hands, and a lot of Arabs became very rich indeed” (p. 63).

The most critical event during her term was the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when Egypt and Syria attacked Israeli forces in Sinai and the Golan Heights. Although she won the elections once more in December 1973, and despite the fact that the Agranant Inquiry Commission did not hold her responsible for the war, Meir’s performance was widely criticized for overestimating Israel’s preparedness and underestimating Arab power. Meir resigned in mid-1974 and withdrew from public life. She died in Jerusalem in December 1978.

SEE ALSO Rabin, Yitzhak; Zionism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Agress, Eliyahu. 1969. Golda Meir: Portrait of a Prime Minister. Trans. Israel Taslitt. New York: Sabra.

Avallone, Michael. 1982. A Woman Called Golda. New York: Leisure Books.

Gelvin, James L. 2005. The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mann, Peggy. 1971. Golda: The Life of Israel’s Prime Minister. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan.

Meir, Golda. 1962. This Is Our Strength: Selected Papers of Golda Meir. Ed. Henry Cristman. New York: Macmillan.

Meir, Golda. 1969. Interviewed by the Sunday Times, London, June 15.

Meir, Golda. 1973. A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography of Golda Meir. Ed. Marie Syrkin. New York: Putnam.

Meir, Golda. 1975. My Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Meir, Menahem. 1983. My Mother Golda Meir: A Son’s Evocation of Life with Golda Meir. New York: Arbor House.

Opfell, Olga. 1993. Golda Meir. In Women Prime Ministers and Presidents, ed. Olga S. Opfell, 33–49. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. 1991. Deborah, Golda, and Me: Being Female and Jewish in America. New York: Crown.

Pogrebin, Letty Cottin. 1997. Golda Meir. In Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia, ed. Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore. New York: Routledge.

Segev, Tom. 1986. 1949, The First Israelis. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan.

Slater, Robert. 1981. Golda: The Uncrowned Queen of Israel. Middle Village, NY: Jonathan David.

Syrkin, Marie. 1969. Golda Meir: Israel’s Leader. New York: Putnam.

Syrkin, Marie, ed. 1973. Golda Meir Speaks Out. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

Thompson, Seth. 1993. Golda Meir: A Very Public Life. In Women as National Leaders, ed. Michael Genovese, 135–160. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Abdel-Fattah Mady