Golda Meir Born: Israel's Iron Lady Enters the World

Golda Meir was born Golda Mabovitch in Kiev on May 3, 1898, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, worked as a teacher and labor organizer, and ended up as Prime Minister of Israel. She emigrated to Palestine in 1921, joined Kibbutz Merhavia, and quickly rose through the ranks of the Labor Zionist movement. She was one of 25 signatories of Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. She served as minister of labor and foreign minister before becoming prime minister in 1969, at age 70. She was the fourth prime minister of Israel and only the third woman in the world to lead a modern nation-state. Her premiership was defined by the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, when Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Israeli intelligence had failed to predict the attack, and the early hours of the war brought Israel closer to military defeat than at any point since 1948. Meir authorized the mobilization of nuclear weapons as a last resort, a decision that has never been officially confirmed but is widely accepted by historians. The war ended with an Israeli military recovery and ceasefire, but the intelligence failure and the heavy casualties shattered public confidence in the government. Meir resigned in April 1974, accepting responsibility for the failures that preceded the war. The Agranat Commission, established to investigate the intelligence breakdown, formally absolved her of direct responsibility, but she understood that political accountability demanded her departure. She spent her remaining years in relative quiet, writing her autobiography and receiving occasional foreign visitors. She died on December 8, 1978, in Jerusalem, of lymphoma.