Golda Meir (3 May 1898 – 8 December 1978) was Prime Minsiter of Israel from 17 March 1969 to 3 June 1974, succeeding Yigal Allon and preceding Yitzhak Rabin.
Biography[]
Golda Mabovitch was born in Kiev, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) on 3 May 1898 to a Jewish family, and she emigrated with her parents to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA in 1907. She married Morris Mayerson, and they changed their surname to "Meir" when they settled in Mandatory Palestine in 1921 to live and work on a kibbutz. A strong socialist, she quickly emerged as a prominent member of the Mapai party during the 1930s. She also became head of the political department of the trade union organization, Histadrut, in 1934. A leading figure in the political department of the Jewish Agency, she was involved in secret negotiations leading to the foundation of Israel, and was appointed Israel's first ambassador to the Soviet Union. Back in Israel, she was Minister of Labor from 1949 to 1956, helping in the integrration of hundreds of thousands of immigrants into Israeli society. She was Foreign Minister from 1956 to 1966, when she became secretary-general of Mapai, and she was instrumental in the merger to form the Israeli Labor Party in 1967. She succeeded Levi Eshkol as Prime Minister of a coalition government from 1969 to 1974, though she found it difficult to work with the forceful Moshe Dayan. She was heavily criticized for her policies at the time of the Yom Kippur War, for which Israel had been unprepared. She resigned in March 1974, and she died four years later.