Golda Meir, the ‘iron lady of the Middle East’ whose legacy in Israel was ruined by the Yom Kippur War

Golda Meir almost always lived her life as the only woman in a room full of men.

Born to a Jewish family in the Russian Empire, she was a politician and diplomat who promoted the creation of the State of Israel and became the only woman to date to have been Prime Minister of that country.

While in that position, in 1973 he had to deal with the Yom Kippur War, against an Arab coalition led by Egypt and Syria; a conflict that has transformed the map of the Middle East to this day.

It was a war that took Israel by surprise and cost it its position and prestige.

That is the story of ‘Golda’, the war drama from the Oscar-winning Israeli director. Guy Nativ starring the legendary British actress Helen Mirren -also an Oscar winner- and which will be shown in cinemas in Latin America in September.

Meir devoted his entire life to the dream of a Jewish state. After her death, Shimon Peres, then leader of the Labor Party, described her as a “loyal lioness.” And writer Francine Klagsbrun gave the same name to one of the many biographies written about Meir.

She is also called the ‘iron lady of the Middle East’.

Without a doubt, she was a woman who left an indelible legacy in Israel, but certainly not without controversy.

A dream called Israel

The year 1898, when Meir was born in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), was not exactly an auspicious time or place for a Jewish family like his.

Meir herself said that her first childhood memories were of her father trying to secure his home when the pogroms, the anti-Semitic lynchings then common in Russia, broke out.

Beset by poverty and exclusion, when Meir was 8 years old, she and her family migrated to the United States, where she lived for 15 years.

It was in the kitchen of his sister’s home in Denver where Meir first heard about what would become his obsession ever since: the project for the Jewish people to return to the ancient land of Israel and establish a state there.

A few years later, convinced of that dream, Meir moved to a kibbutz (a small Jewish agricultural community) in Palestine in 1921.

“I believed that as a Jew I belonged to Palestine,” she wrote in her 1975 autobiography “My Life,” referring to the area then governed by Britain and dominated by the Ottoman Empire for four centuries.

Already in Palestine she started a family and started her political career in women’s unions.

His signature on independence

After the Second World War, Meir gained special relevance because he became so the chief negotiator between the Jews of Palestine and the British authorities, who then governed the region.

As a result of those negotiations, and with the world’s sensitivity focused on the Jewish people after the tragedy of the Holocaust, British rule over that territory ended in 1948 and Israel’s independence was declared, of which she was a signatory.

That was also the beginning of the long Arab-Israeli conflict that continues to this day.

In this context, Meir raised $50 million in the United States to finance the emerging state, money that was used to arm Israel against its Arab enemies.

For the Arabs living in Palestine, Israel’s independence marked the beginning of the Nakba, the exodus to which they were subjected and for which many families remain refugees to this day in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank. , the Gaza Strip and elsewhere.

A stateswoman

After the creation of Israel, Meir led the complicated diplomatic relations with Russia, serving as Minister of Labor for seven years and Minister of Foreign Affairs for another ten years.

These were years in which she accomplished gigantic missions amid turbulent waters. In his autobiography he described them as the happiest of his life.

He presided over the construction of some 200,000 homes to integrate the hundreds of thousands of Jewish migrants who arrived in those years into the Israeli workforce.

And despite the country’s economic fragility, the country managed to build a system of social security and maternity leave.

Later, as the diplomatic leader of her country, she became a crucial figure in world geopolitics.

He was Israel’s voice at the United Nations when his country launched an attack on Egypt in 1956 to gain control of the Suez Canal and convinced the United States to sell him weapons.

“People forget that the alliance between the United States and Israel, which emerged from the top levels of the American government, was not so clear before Golda was secretary of state. But Golda made that possible“Elinor Burkett, Meir’s biographer, told Al Jazeera.

He also managed to gain support and recognition for the State of Israel from many newly independent African states.

The war that destroyed his reputation

Meir was elected Prime Minister when she was already 71 years old.

By then he had already stepped back from state affairs to deal with health problems, but with the sudden death of the incumbent prime minister in 1969, his party called for his name to lead the country.

These were difficult times for Israel.

Meir was exposed to the Munich massacre, which took place during the 1972 Olympics, in which eleven Israeli athletes were kidnapped and murdered by a Palestinian armed group.

At the time, she called on the world to “save our citizens and condemn the heinous criminal acts.”

Outraged by the lack of action and under pressure from public opinion, Meir ordered the assassination of those responsible through one of the Israeli intelligence services. The operation was known as Wrath of God.

But what really overshadowed his rule and legacy was his handling of the Yom Kippur War.so called because it exploded in October 1973 during the Jewish holiday that bears that name and is the holiest day in that religion.

Despite his experience and knowledge of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the offensive took her by surprise.

After the King of Jordan warned her of the possibility of war, her intelligence agents determined the risk was low and she decided not to call in the reserves.

When the simultaneous attacks from Syria and Egypt were unleashed, it was too late.

The Arabs’ goal was to regain territory they had lost years earlier during the 1967 Six-Day War.

Although Israel achieved great military successes after the offensive, The more than 2,700 victims were seen as a failure by Meir, who resigned in 1974.

The war gave way to the Camp David Accords of 1978, which sealed peace between Israel and Egypt and allowed Egypt to reclaim Sinai.

A disputed inheritance

Meir said he regretted for the rest of his life that he had not followed his instincts to prepare the troops.

Wrapped in the tragedy of war, the population turned seriously against him. Meir and his cabinet took the blame for the thousands of fatalities. It was his political death and he had to resign.

For this reason, many eventually called her “the worst prime minister in Israel’s history.”

50 years after the outbreak of war, the figure of Golda Meir is still being revised.

Recently, one of Meir’s grandchildren told Ynetnews that the contempt for the former prime minister, especially from her own supporters, after the war was “a terrible injustice with elements of misogyny and slander.”

Also, two veterans of the Yom Kippur War recently published a book in which they argue that “the widely held perception that Golda is solely responsible for the war It is not complete, balanced or fair.”

Beyond Israel

War is not the only reason why the figure of Golda Meir is controversial.

A sentence of his in a 1969 interview went down in history as an example of his open inability to think about the other side of the creation of the State of Israel, that of the Palestinians who had to flee..

“When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was not that there was a Palestinian people in Palestine who considered themselves Palestinian people and we came and expelled them and took their land. “They didn’t exist,” he added.

For critics of Israel’s creation, Meir’s statements are merely a sign of Zionism He denied Palestinian identity and dispossessed the local population of their land.

Her leadership has also been critically evaluated from other perspectives, such as feminist, despite the fact that during her lifetime Meir opened paths and reached positions never before occupied by women.

When she was Minister of Foreign Affairs, she was the only woman in the world to hold this position. And she was the third woman to lead a country in the entire twentieth century, after Sirimavo Bandaranaike in Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi in India.

However, some authors, such as Letty Cottin, have argued that Meir “did not use the prerogatives of power to meet women’s special needs, promote other women, or advance the status of women in the public sphere.”

“The fact is that her Israeli sisters were no better off at the end of her term than before she took office,” Cottin added.

‘American feminists were happy to adopt Golda, but she wasn’t interestedhe told Al Jazeera Elinor Burkettauthor of Golda Meir: The Iron Lady of the Middle East (Golda Meir: the iron lady of the Middle East).

Meir died in Jerusalem in 1978 at the age of 80, but his memory and fascination with the controversial figure that he was They are more alive than ever.