Golda meir childrens biography

Prime Minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974

Golda Meir (née Mabovitch; 3 May 1898 – 8 December 1978) was an Israeli politician who served as the fourth prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. She was Israel's first and only female head of government and the first in the Middle East.

Born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family in Kiev in what was then the Russian Empire, Meir immigrated with her family to the United States in 1906. She graduated from the Milwaukee State Normal School and found work as a teacher. While in Milwaukee, she embraced the Labor Zionist movement. In 1921, Meir and her husband immigrated to Mandatory Palestine, settling in Merhavia, later becoming the kibbutz's representative to the Histadrut. In 1934, she was elevated to the executive committee of the trade union. Meir held several key roles in the Jewish Agency during and after World War II. She was a signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. Meir was elected to the Knesset in 1949 and served as Labor Minister until 1956, when she was appointed Foreign Minister by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. She retired from the ministry in 1966 due to ill health.

In 1969, Meir assumed the role of prime minister following the death of Levi Eshkol. Early in her tenure, she made multiple diplomatic visits to western leaders to promote her vision of peace in the region. The outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 caught Israel off guard and inflicted severe early losses on the army. The resulting public anger damaged Meir's reputation and led to an inquiry into the failings. Her Alignment coalition was denied a majority in the subsequent legislative election; she resigned the following year and was succeeded as prime minister by Yitzhak Rabin. Meir died in 1978 of lymphoma and was buried on Mount Herzl.

A controversial figure in Israel, Meir has been lionized as a founder of the state and described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli pol

Golda Meir was one of the founding members and the fourth Prime Minister of Israel. She was the first female to serve the highest position of the country from 1969-1974.

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Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION

• Golda Meir (Goldie Myerson) was born on May 3, 1898 in Kiev, Ukraine and died December 8, 1978, in Jerusalem, Israel.
• Her father, Moshe Mabovitch, was a skilled carpenter, and her mother, Blume Naidtich, was a housewife who instilled to the young Golda of the bitterness of the Jewish Diaspora.
• When her family immigrated to the United States in 1906, she attended Fourth Street Elementary School and graduated as valedictorian. She then attended the Milwaukee Normal School and later became a leader in the Jewish’ Milwaukee Labor Zionist Party as her political views were molded by the society’s activities.
• She continued her education and finished her teaching degree.
• She taught children at a Yiddish school at the Jewish Center of Milwaukee three times a week and on most days, took her training into lecturing on Labor Zionism on the streets.
• Her political vision was shared by her husband, Morris Myerson. The couple migrated to Palestine and lived on a kibbutz (a voluntary collective, agricultural community).
• They later left for Jerusalem where she raised their two children: a son, Menachem, born in 1924, and a daughter, Sarah,

For all her grief and remorse over the Yom Kippur War, for all the humiliation and pain of her people’s rejection of her, she was nonetheless able in her final years to evolve into an elder statesman and beloved public citizen, a woman whom bus drivers insisted on taking to her front door and whom organizations clamored to honor. In time, her image regained its luster, and her reputation as a philosopher-comedian entered the realm of legend.

As a politician and Jewish nationalist, Meir was consistent, strong in her resolve, and undisturbed by nuance or self-doubts. The Zionist cause to her was a moral, historical, and political imperative. Though she was eager to make peace with “the Arabs,” and often begged for Arab recognition and Arab partners, her refusal to acknowledge the existence of “Palestinians” or, consequently, Palestinian suffering, was for many years a stumbling block to progress.

As a woman, on the other hand, Meir was a study in contradictions. Though her public persona was almost neuter, she was reputed to have had many lovers for many years. Foremost among them were David Remez, Israel’s Minister of Transport and then of Education, and by some accounts the true passion of her life; and Zalman Shazar, one of the preeminent architects of the Jewish state and eventually its president. Though she exhibited stereotypically feminine attributes—the cooking, the warmth and emotionality, the matronly appearance—those who knew her never fail to mention her toughness.

“To survive Israeli politics she had to become tough, she had no choice; she must have gone through hell to get where she did,” says M.K. Colette Avital, who began her career in Israel’s foreign ministry under Meir’s tenure and became one of her nation’s top-ranking foreign service officers. Avital remembers her old boss as someone who could be rigid and hot-tempered, someone who “disliked women, never really helped women.”

Jew, Zionist, Israeli—these were the identities t