Israel’s Iron Lady: the real story of Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur War

Her tenure as prime minister, from 1969 until 1974, was not without controversy – within three months she had claimed there was “no such thing as Palestinians”, later prompting a claim she was misquoted.

But her time in office was most famously marked by the Yom Kippur War, the fallout of which would bring an end to her political career.

Director Guy Nattiv’s film Golda, starring Helen Mirren as the chain-smoking prime minister, is a character biopic that homes in on those three weeks of the Yom Kippur War, the defining period of her premiership.

Who was the real Golda Meir?

Born Goldie Mabovitch in Kiev on 3 May 1898, Golda Meir was born into a Ukrainian-Jewish family, the second surviving child of Moshe Mabovitch and Blume Neiditch.

In 1906, Moshe moved his family to Milwaukee, having spent the previous three years in the United States himself, working various jobs to raise enough money for the family to settle in the Midwest.

The young Golda fitted in well into her new community and, in junior school, quickly developed a reputation for activism, co-founding the American Young Sisters Society to help her fellow students afford textbooks. She was just ten years old at the time.

After her high school years in both Milwaukee and Denver, Meir attended a teaching college back in Wisconsin and was working in a Yiddish-speaking school by 1917, the same year that she became a naturalised US citizen and got married.

When did Golda Meir return to Palestine?

In 1921, Meir and her husband Morris Myerson migrated to Palestine, with her connection to Labour Zionism – the socialist variant of Zionism – very strong by this point. After time spent living and working on a kibbutz, a form of collective community, the couple moved to Jerusalem, where they raised two children.

Beyond her family, politics was Meir’s main preoccupation, and she was on a clear upward trajectory. After serving as secretary of a working women’s council, she worked extensively for the Jewish Agency for Israel during the Second World War, an organisation promoting the immigration of Jews to Israel.

Even a heart attack couldn’t slow Meir’s activities and, in May 1948, she was one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence.

How did Golda Meir become Israel’s first female prime minster?

The following year, Meir was appointed as labour minister in the new government, a post she held for seven years before becoming foreign minister for the next decade. She resigned from the Israeli government in 1966, having been diagnosed with lymphoma.

However, the sudden death of prime minister Levi Eshkol in February 1969 prompted an election for his successor as leader of the Israeli Labor Party.

Nine days later, an internal ballot pushed Meir into the role, thrusting her back into the frontline of political life. She was 70 years old.

Meir was Israel’s first – and, still, only – female prime minister. Seven months later, she won the general election in emphatic fashion.

Popular with the Israeli people, her premiership wasn’t without controversy, most infamously when she declared that “there was no such thing as Palestinians”, one of the most public denials of the existence of Palestinian identity.

What was the Yom Kippur War?

The Yom Kippur War was a short-lived conflict between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, led by Egypt and Syria, which took place over a period of 19 days in October 1973.

Israel had been occupying both Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and a significant proportion of Syria’s Golan Heights for the previous six years since the Six Day War of 1967. Attempts to broker a settlement, which would have included a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from both regions, never found sufficient common ground.

With Meir’s government steadfastly refusing the proposals offered by the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, the Arab coalition chose the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur on which to launch a counter-offensive, taking Meir and her ministers by surprise.

After Israeli successes in the Six Day War, complacency had crept in, and the sudden attack caught its military commanders off guard.

In the Sinai, the Egypt military successfully pushed Israeli forces back, although Syria’s recovery of the Golan Heights was soon reversed by a counterattack from Israel.

What role did Golda Meir play in the Yom Kippur War?

The end of the Yom Kippur War signalled the descent of Golda Meir’s political career, with the prime minister regularly blamed for Israel’s lack of preparedness when hostilities broke out.

With their overtures for peace negotiations being consistently rebuffed by Meir, many believed that the Arab countries had little option other than to engage militarily.

The feeling – as ill-judged as it proved to be – was that Israel’s success in the Six Day War would have warned off its neighbours from taking up arms against them

Even on the eve of the war, the Israeli intelligence corps didn’t wholeheartedly recognise the threat and, as de facto head of the military, Meir failed to have her troops fully prepared and put on standby.

In fact, just a few hours before Egyptian forces moved into the Sinai, the Israeli minister of defence, Moshe Dayan, was still advising his prime minister that the threat of invasion remained comparatively low.

The feeling – as ill-judged as it proved to be – was that Israel’s success in the Six Day War would have warned off its neighbours from taking up arms against them. But the Arab coalition did exactly that, and the inertia of Meir’s government ceded an advantage to Egypt in the Sinai which Israel couldn’t retrieve.

The peace treaty that followed, the Camp David Accords of 1978, saw the entirety of the region returned to Egypt.

Why did Golda Meir step down as prime minster?

Once the guns of the Yom Kippur War had fallen silent, the recriminations within Israel gained pace, with Meir widely criticised for her country’s lack of preparation.

Although the Israeli Labor Party won the elections held in December 1973, Meir couldn’t form a coalition to give her a workable majority.

Four months later, she resigned as prime minister, replaced by Yitzhak Rabin.

What happened to Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War?

Having resigned as prime minister (“five years are sufficient,” Meir noted on her departure), a career devoted to public office was over.

Her reputation was partially repaired by the findings of the Agranat Commission, which was set up to investigate Israel’s preparation for possible invasion.

Meir was cleared of “direct responsibility”, as was – more remarkably – Moshe Dayan, the defence minister.

Meir then embarked on writing her memoirs, entitled My Life, which rose sharply up the New York Times bestseller lists on its publication in 1975.

How did Golda Meir die?

One of Meir’s last public acts was addressing the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, when the Egyptian premier, Anwar Sadat, paid an historic visit there in November 1977.

Her speech paid great tribute to the president, for his vision of stability in the Middle East and his recognition of Israel’s existence.

“We must all realise that the path leading to peace may be a difficult one,” she told Sadat, “but not as difficult as that path that leads to war.”

Little more than a year later, Golda Meir succumbed to lymphatic cancer. She was 80 years of age. The Iron Lady of Israeli politics was gone.

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