History Term Papers - Meir Golda (1898-1978)

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When the expression magnanimity (greatness) comes to mind, Golda Meir comes instantaneously to the effrontery. Her pledge to her land and to her people was the paradigm of human sanctification. Her undivided commitment, tempered with love, fired by passionate dedication, originated the very cause of the establishment of the Jewish land Israel.

Short history
Golda Mier was born as Golda Mabovitz in Kiev, Russia, and moved with her family to Milwaukee, Wis., in 1906. There, she graduated from Milwaukee Teachers College and taught in the public schools. In 1915, she joined the Labor Zionist Party. In 1917, she married Morris Meyerson whom she had met while attending high school in Denver, Colorado, in 1913. The couple and moved to Tel Aviv, then Palestine in 1921. They had two children, and became the proud parents of Sarah and Menachem. Golda joined Poalei Zion, Labor Zionist Organization in 1915. She embraced the Hebrew name Meir in 1956.

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During her teens she became a Zionist, devoted to building a sovereign state for Jews. Meir served all through the 1930s and '40s in various Zionist organizations in Palestine, Europe, and the United States. Separated from her husband in 1945, she Hebraized her surname to Meir in 1956 and became minister of foreign affairs in the same year and held that post until 1966, when she resigned from the cabinet. She served, consecutively, as secretary-general of the Mapai party and of the united Israel Labor party from 1966 to 1968. From 1969 to 1974 she was the Prime Minister of Israel, when she resigned midst dissension over Israel's lack of readiness in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Meir died in Jerusalem on December 8, 1978.

Events as Zionist
In 1946, Golda became the head of the political department of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, that helped to institute the migration of Jews to Palestine, and retained the post until the formal endowment of Israel in 1948. Later on she was elected to Israel's first parliament, and served as Israeli Foreign Minister, Minister of Labor and Ambassador to Moscow. In March 7, 1969 Golda Meir was appointed by the Labor Party to be the fourth Prime Minister of Israel, receiving the deep disagreements in notions regarding the best plan to deal with the occupied Arab territories that Israel had snared during the Six-Day War of 1967.

Meir took a hard line toward the Arab world as a Prime Minister, refusing to stop expansion of settlements in the occupied territories. Her administration had an open-door immigration policy, that encouraged thousands of Soviet Jews to immigrate to Israel, and sought to emend intimacy with the United States.

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October 6, 1973, the beginning of the Yom Kippur War was a great tragedy for Golda Meir. The consequences brought an end to Meir's life of public service. Copiously blamed for overvaluing Israel's security, therefore making the country even more unprotected to the surprise attacks by Egypt and Syria, her management was deformed and she resigned the office in 1974.
Golda Meir remained Foreign Minister for Israel from 1956 to 1965 before becoming the Prime Minister of Israel. During her tenure, she had the opportunity to work with the cooperative agricultural and urban planning programs between Israel and Africa. After this time she became the Secretary General of the Mapai Party. She was Minister of Labor from 1949 to 1956.
All the time concerned with her people, Golda Meir, working with the Labor Movement, attended the Zionist Congress in Geneva in 1939, to help ensure protection of European Jews. She was immensely unhappy to learn that many Europeans were not as caring as she thought they might be. She was part of the People's Council signing the vital proclamation establishing the State of Israel in 1948.

Her accomplishments
All over her life she was a principal socialist Zionist. She was chosen to the woman's labor Council of Histadrut in 1928 and was elected as secretary of Histadrut's executive committee in 1934. In the 1930's she was an international Zionist delegate, and spent a year in the United States in 1932. In 1946 she became president of the political bureau of the Jewish Agency.
 

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Her problems
Golda Meir's main riddles as Prime Minister concerned the Arab territories occupied in the “Six-Day War” of 1967. Led by Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, the right wing of her party wanted Israel to colonize and then merge them. Moderates, led by deputy prime minister Yigal Allon, were inclined, as part of a peace resolution, to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria and to allow the west bank of the Jordan to become an independent element of the kingdom of Jordan. Although Meir faction with Dayan, she retained the support of moderates. However, in 1973 and 1974 disputes over the blame for Israel's vulnerability for the Yom Kippur War led to demands for neoteric leadership and extended the divisions in the Labor Party. Although Meir was formed a government following elections in December 1973, she could not get her cabinet to agree on policies and resigned in April 1974.

Personality
Golda Meir was the “Iron Lady of Israeli politics”. David Ben Grunion described her as "the only man in the Cabinet." She was an overwhelming woman. She was tall and austere, with the stresses of a hard life reflected in her face. She was honest, straightforward and single-minded. She embodied the Israeli spirit in the eyes of the world. Following the demise of Levi Eshkol in 1969, at the age of 70 Golda Meir was called out of retirement, to become the new Prime Minister of Israel. Though she was born in Russia and educated in the United States, she arrived in Palestine when she was in her twenties and immediately joined the newly formed Histadrut trade union movement, but broke off for four years to stay at home and raise her two children. But there was nothing of the housewife in Golda Meir.

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She returned to the Histadrut in 1928 to become Secretary of Council for Women Workers. By the mid-1930s Golda Meir was leading the Histadrut’s political division. Her colossal workload broke her marriage in 1945. With her children of age, Golda Meir dedicated even more of her time and verve to the cause. In 1946, with war between the Jews and the Arabs appearing, she assumed a defiant assignment. Disguised as an Arab woman she crossed the border into Tran Jordan and had covert talks with King Abdullah. When Golda Meir became Prime Minister, Israel was awash with confidence. She saw no reason to settlement with the Palestinians as long as Israel was safe. Her unyielding nationalism and view of the Arabs led her to say once: "There are no Palestinians."

Meir never seeks power. Instead, she only responded to the call to take it and, became a political symbol of unique significance. When Meir was sent to the United States, in the late 1940s, to raise funds to support Israeli independence and the state's, she had doubts, but she went saying "I'm only a soldier called upon to do my duty." The fund-raising trips in America (where the Ukrainian/Russian-born Meir arrived at age eight in 1906 and remained until her departure for Palestine in 1921 to pursue her vision of Socialist/Labor Zionism) were amazingly successful, leading Ben-Gurion to comment that when the history of Israel is written it will say "there was a Jewish woman who got the money to make the state possible."

Meir was not a saint, rather she was the “global Jewish mother”, contrite and controlling, effeminate and nagging. She “was” an Iron Lady, but, in the words of Meir biographer Ralph Martin, "beneath the steel was poetry, music, romance." Meir paid justified her place in history, not out of a recognition of her own self-importance or a hunt for fame and enormous ardor, but rather through her commitment to a cause. In Shakespearean terms, “if you will”, duty moved her to perform in a manner that no mundane rewards could have ever drawn out of her.

 

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