Golda Meir

BORN: May 3, 1898 • Kiev, Russia

DIED: December 8, 1978 • Jerusalem, Israel

Russian-born prime minister of Israel, feminist

Golda Meir was the fourth prime minister of the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948. At the age of seventy-one, Meir became the third female prime minister of government in modern history. With the establishment of Israel in 1948, Meir was appointed the first ambassador to the Soviet Union. The following year, she was elected to the first parliament (government) of the State of Israel. She was eager to help form the developing nation. In 1956, Meir became Israel's foreign minister, one of the first female foreign ministers in the world. Meir served as Israel's prime minister from 1969 until 1974. Throughout her term of office, Meir focused on the rights of Jewish people to settle in Israel. The major event of her administration was the 1973 Yom Kippur War fought between Israel and an Arab coalition (alliance) led by Egypt and Syria.

"Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

The kibbutz of Merhavia

Golda Mabovitch was born in Russia in 1896 to Blume Naiditch and Moshe Yitzhak Mabovitch. Like most Jews living in Eastern Europe, Meir's family celebrated all the Jewish holidays and festivals, although the Mabovitchs were not particularly religious people. Moshe was a skilled carpenter who had moved his family from their hometown in Pinsk to Kiev, the largest city in the Russian Ukraine region, before Golda was born. He won a government contract to make furniture for school libraries. However, the job was canceled soon after they arrived. As a result, the family faced grueling poverty.

The population of Kiev was infamous (had a horrible reputation) for its hostility toward the Jewish people who lived in the city. The Mabovitch family spoke Yiddish in the home and the synagogue (Jewish place of worship), but they spoke Russian when they ventured outside of these safe places. Even as a child, Meir was aware that the fear and hardships her family suffered were because they were Jewish. Meir's parents moved her and her two sisters back to Pinsk in 1903, when rumors began to circulate that a pogrom (organized massacre of a minority group) would soon be coming to Kiev.

Pogroms

When the territories of Poland were divided among several neighboring countries in the eighteenth century, Russia became home for the largest body of Jewish people in the world. The government's response to an anticipated problem of controlling the Jews was to establish a program known as the Pale of Settlement. The Pale mapped out provinces where Jews were allowed to settle. Their movement outside those areas required government approval.

In the early twentieth century, civil war in Russia was dividing the nation. Jews became scapegoats (people blamed unfairly for others' difficulties). The government blamed Jews as the source of many problems afflicting Russia, including its severe economic difficulties. Revolutionists hoping to overthrow the government sought to incite a general uprising among the people. Relying on the anti-Jewish sentiment that existed in the country, they made false accusations against the Jews in order to increase religious prejudice.

Prejudice directed at Jews in Russia resulted in violent pogroms against them. Angry mobs of people attacked the homes, shops, and synagogues of Jewish people with the intent to destroy them. Windows were smashed, doors broken down, and buildings looted of their contents. What was not stolen was destroyed. Civil and military authorities often showed little concern or had insufficient forces to offer protection from the mobs. By the mid-twentieth century, tens of thousands of Jews had been murdered during the pogroms and many thousands more had been wounded.

Leaving prejudice behind

Seeking to escape their extreme poverty, the family immigrated (left their country of origin to reside permanently in another) to the United States in 1906, when Golda was eight years old. They settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and began the process of fitting in to a new country and learning a new language. Golda began school for the first time and also worked behind the counter of her mother's small grocery store. Along with her family, Golda embraced Zionism (see box). In 1915, she joined the Poale Zion (Labor Zionist Organization).

Zionism

Zionism is the name given to a movement that calls for the reuniting of Jewish people and the resumption of Jewish reign in the Land of Israel. The term Zionism was coined late in the nineteenth century. The idea gathered greater momentum early in the twentieth century. Zionism was especially important in Eastern Europe because of widespread persecution of Jewish people who made their homes there. Inspired by the writings of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904), small groups of Zionists began arriving in the Arab province of Palestine, the spiritual center of Jewry throughout the centuries. Herzl, a Jewish journalist from Austria, was founder of the World Zionist Organization. He is commonly called the father of the State of Israel.

Jews across the globe joined the Zionist movement to work together for the creation of a Jewish state. The social climate in many European countries became increasingly anti-Jewish following World War I (1914–18). Zionist youth movements formed around the world, motivated by the desire for a Jewish homeland. By World War II, they had played an important role in keeping the dream alive through education and political awareness. Following the war and the Holocaust, many survivors settled in Palestine and were instrumental in building the kibbutz movement (a collective farm or settlement in modern Israel).

The large number of Jewish immigrants arriving in Palestine created a great deal of tension. The majority of Palestinian citizens were Arab Muslims. The stage was set for the long-term Arab-Israeli conflict into the twenty-first century. Following the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews became a religious majority of the nation's population. The new state included a Minister of Religions in its cabinet to address the need for Jews, Christians, and Muslims to coexist in Israel. Citizens of the first generation born in Israel were called Sabras. Although intensely proud of their Jewish heritage, many considered themselves to be more Israeli than Jewish.

Following graduation from high school, Golda enrolled at the Teachers' Training College that was part of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Golda married Morris Myerson in 1917 and they immigrated to Palestine in 1921. After nearly two months aboard the SS Pocahontas, the couple arrived in Palestine and settled in the kibbutz of Merhavia. A kibbutz is a large commune based mainly on agriculture, but which relies somewhat on industry.

A declaration of independence

Golda Myerson soon became involved in political and social activities. She joined those that favored the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine-Eretz Israel (Land of Israel). Being a gifted orator (public speaker) in both English and Yiddish, Golda rose rapidly in leadership positions. She and Morris had two children after they left the kibbutz and moved to Jerusalem. In 1934, Golda was invited to join the Executive Committee of the Histadrut (Jewish Labor Federation), becoming the Secretary of its Council for Women Workers.

The German Nazi Holocaust (1933–45) dominated European Jewish lives from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s and thereafter. Approximately six million Jews and millions in other targeted groups, such as Gypsies and homosexuals, were murdered in mass killings that often involved gas chambers in specially constructed concentration camps. The camps were designed to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. The escalation of anti-Jewish sentiment was fostered to some degree by the earlier pogroms. During the Holocaust, Meir lost all but one of her extended family members. They had remained in Pinsk after she and her family fled.

Immediately following the war, Golda was chosen president of the political bureau of Jewish Agency in 1946. The British held a mandate over the territory of Palestine, meaning they had been assigned the responsibility by the League of Nations, an international organization formed after World War I, to administer the government of territories formerly ruled by the defeated Turkish Ottoman Empire. British authorities had arrested most of the Jewish community's senior male leadership for seeking independence from Britain. These important posts placed Meir at the negotiating table with the British. This experience gave her invaluable training as a statesman (a person with experience in administering governmental affairs).

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the resolution to partition (divide) Palestine. The UN is an international organization formed in 1946 following the end of World War II (1939–45) to help resolve disputes between nations when necessary and maintain peacekeeping efforts at all times.

On May 14, 1948, Jewish leaders in Palestine signed a declaration of independence and the new State of Israel was proclaimed. Just days before the state was formally recognized, Meir was sent in disguise as an Arab woman on a dangerous mission to meet with King Abdullah I (1882–1951) of Jordan. Her goal was to persuade him not to join in the anticipated Arab attack on Israel following the British withdrawal. Arab Palestinians, with the help of other Arabs, planned to drive the Jews out of the region before the land could be subdivided. Meir was unsuccessful in her mission because the King had already decided his army would join other Arab nations and invade the Jewish state. In the months following the UN decision to partition Palestine, the country was plunged into war. Israel prevailed in defending its new state. The war of 1948–1949 is often called the Israeli War of Independence.

With the establishment of Israel, Meir was appointed as its first ambassador to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union and the United States were left as the two world superpowers following World War II. She was elected to the first Knesset (parliament of the State of Israel) in the elections of 1949 on behalf of the Israeli Labor Party known as the Mapai. Morris Myerson died in 1951. Several years later Golda took the Hebrew version of her name, Meir, in 1956. That same year, she became Israel's Foreign Minister. Meir was well known on the international political scene and spoke frequently at the United Nations, especially following the Sinai Campaign. The Sinai Campaign occurred when the Israeli army occupied the Sinai Peninsula in eastern Egypt in October and November 1956, in response to Egyptian terrorist attacks and blockades. Meir retired from the Foreign Ministry in 1965 after serving almost a decade in that position. She became a leader of Mapai.

The Six-Day War

Between June 5 and June 10, 1967, Israel participated in another war. This time, the fighting was against the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The Israelis quickly defeated the Arab forces.

At this time, Meir was able to use her growing political popularity to unite several labor political parties in Israel. In 1968, the Mapai, Rafi, and Ahdut ha-Avodah parties joined together as the new unified Israel Labor Party. Meir was their secretary general. Following the death of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol (1895–1969) in March 1969, Meir was chosen to become the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. Throughout her tenure as Prime Minister, Meir continued to focus on the rights of Jewish people to settle in Israel.

On October 6, 1973, Israel was once again found itself at war with its Arab neighbors. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Libya forces combined in a massive coordinated assault against Israeli forces along the Suez Canal in the south and at the Golan Heights in the north. Israel was unprepared for the attack, and the Arab forces won a number of initial victories. The United States intervened in the war by supplying military weapons that allowed Israel to resist its enemies and maintain its borders. Because the war began on the Jewish holy day called Yom Kippur, it is often referred to as the Yom Kippur War. A postwar inquiry led to heated debates over who was to blame for Israel being caught off-guard by the attack. Demands for new leadership in the country escalated. Nonetheless, Meir and the Labor Party were reelected at the end of 1973. However, due to the decline in political support, she was unable to get her cabinet members (key governmental advisors) to agree on policies. Meir resigned in April 1974. She died on December 8, 1978, and was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

For More Information

BOOKS

Claybourne, Anna. Golda Meir. Chicago, IL: Heinemann Library, 2003.

Hertzberg, Arthur. Judaism. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1962.

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

Meir, Golda. A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America., 1973.

Meir, Golda. My Life. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975.

WEB SITES

"Golda Meir." Jewish Virtual Library: A Division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/meir.html (accessed on December 11, 2006).

"Golda Meir (1898–1978). Israel's Third Prime Minister." 2006 Orthodox Union. http://www.ou.org/chagim/yomhaatzmauth/golda.html (accessed on December 11, 2006).