PRIME MINISTER ISRAELThere is only one thing I hope to see before I die, and that is that my people should not need expressions of sympathy anymore.
—GOLDA MEIR
No daughter of mine is going to stand on a box in the street and make a spectacle of herself. It is a shandeh (disgrace)!” shouted Golda’s father, his face red with fury. Seventeen-year-old Golda tried to explain that she had already promised herself and her friends that she would give the speech in front of the synagogue. She tried to explain that her past speeches had been very successful at getting the neighborhood Jews excited about helping their comrades in far-off Palestine. But her angry father didn’t hear a word she said as he yelled, “If you go, I will follow you and pull you home by your braid!” Golda went anyway, but she could feel her body shaking as she climbed atop her box to speak to the large crowd.
Because she worked mornings in the shop, Golda was often late for school. A policeman lectured Golda’s mother about truancy, but since she spoke little English, she didn’t understand him. Golda continued being late.
She spoke passionately about the brave Jews in Palestine, men and women, who were struggling to create a nation where all Jews around the world would be welcome and safe from persecution. Thankfully, she couldn’t see her father in the crowd, but she could see the eyes of her audience lighting up with pride and determination. At the end of her speech, the crowd responded with a long roar of applause, and even more people volunteered to help the cause. Golda wondered if maybe her father hadn’t come after all. When she returned home to face her father’s punishment, her mother met her at the door. “Your father is asleep now,” she said, “but he did hear you speak. He was amazed. He said to me, ‘I don’t know where she gets it from.’” Golda’s father was so moved by her words that he forgot his threat entirely. Golda considered it the most successful speech she ever made.
Golda Mabovitch, born in 1898, spent the first five years of her life in Kiev, Russia. Even at such a young age, Golda experienced the struggles of the Jewish people of Europe. Mobs of angry Russians often destroyed the homes and shops of their Jewish neighbors, sometimes even beating and killing them. But Russian police did nothing to help the Jews. When the Jewish community protested the brutality by holding a one-day fast, five-year-old Golda insisted on fasting too, against her family’s wishes.
It didn’t take long for Golda’s father to realize that it was getting too dangerous to be Jewish and live in Russia. He decided to move his family to the United States. After a long and dangerous journey, eight-year-old Golda and her family arrived in America and settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At first Golda was overwhelmed by all the extravagances of America—running water, electric lights, trolleys, flushing toilets—but soon she happily settled into the large community of Russian Jews in her neighborhood. Her mother set up a general store below their apartment, and Golda opened it in the mornings while her mother bought supplies at the market.
Golda loved school and was a good student. At age eleven, she began the public speaking and fund-raising that would make her so famous later in life. When she realized that many of her classmates couldn’t afford to buy their own schoolbooks, Golda recruited a group of girls to raise money. They called themselves the American Young Sisters Society and organized a ball, which attracted dozens of people. They served food and read poetry, and Golda gave a speech. The event was so successful that they raised enough money to buy books for all the poor children of the school.
During Golda’s childhood, most people didn’t go to high school, especially not girls—most went to work or got married as teens. When Golda told her parents that she planned to go to high school and then to college, they began secret negotiations to marry her off to a man twice her age! Golda found out and ran away to live with her older sister in Denver, Colorado.
At 71, Golda returned to her Milwaukee grade school, which by then was mostly populated by African American students instead of Jewish. The students greeted her with the Israeli anthem, “Hatikvah,” and a white rose made of tissue. She carried the rose back to Israel with her.
In Denver she not only went to high school but also got involved in the growing Zionist movement. The Zionists believed that the Jewish people should create a new nation in their ancient homeland. Thousands of years ago, the Jewish religion was founded in the deserts of the Middle East (which they called Zion), where they lived peacefully until the Romans drove them out and renamed the area Palestine. The Jews spread out around the world, mostly in countries that didn’t want them, and many longed to return. Golda was inspired by what she heard of the Jewish pioneers in Palestine who were working to reclaim the desert and create a Jewish nation. To support their efforts, Golda spent hours on the streets of Denver raising money for Jewish pioneers to buy Palestinian land from the Turkish and Arab landowners.
During Hitler’s reign, successful Jewish doctors, teachers, lawyers, and businessmen fled to Palestine to start over as farmers and laborers.
Golda returned home, entered a teacher’s college, and became even more active in the Zionist movement. Although she was too young, members of the Labor Zionist Party were so impressed with Golda’s work, they accepted her into the party at age seventeen. In 1917 nineteen-year-old Golda decided it was time to go to Palestine herself to help build the Jewish nation she’d been dreaming of all her life. Before she left, she married Morris Meyerson, a man she’d fallen in love with back in Denver. They left for Palestine together in 1921.
Golda and Morris moved onto a kibbutz (a community of people living and working together toward common goals). The group raised and grew all their own food, built communal housing, and shared everything—money, clothes, even children! Kibbutzes across Palestine were working to transform desert into productive farms so that Jews could have a place to live that would sustain them. Golda loved the work and was good at making improvements. She was soon elected to make decisions for her kibbutz and to help decide the future of other Jewish settlements in Palestine. Golda had never been happier.
She and her husband took a break from the kibbutz to start a family, and Golda gave birth to a son and then a daughter. Although she loved her children, Golda missed her work. After four years of domestic life, Golda decided to return to creating a nation for the Jews. She was a passionate, hard worker, and she soon became a leader of the growing nation.
In the 1930s, just as Golda’s political life began taking off, life for Jews in Europe was deteriorating rapidly. All over Europe, they were being persecuted more strongly than before, and in Germany, Hitler and his Nazis began attacking the Jews. Seventy thousand refugees fled to Palestine, their only safe haven. The Arabs of Palestine, however, strongly opposed increased Jewish immigration. They attacked Jewish settlements and demanded the British government (the colonial power in the area) stop letting refugees in. In 1939, just as Hitler was forcing European Jews into his deadly concentration camps, the British put the brakes on immigration and outlawed the purchase of Arab land. The Zionists were enraged. They knew their European family and friends would die if they couldn’t get to Palestine. They felt they had no choice but to fight.
From 1945 to 1950, half a million Jewish refugees flooded Palestine!
Golda joined Haganah, the Jewish secret underground army, which began smuggling as many Jewish refugees as possible into Palestine. Boats were built in secret and sent to rescue European Jews. Upon returning, the boats had to sneak past the British blockade of ships and unload the refugees in the dark of night. Back on shore, also under a cloak of darkness, members of the Haganah would carry pre-built housing to a new village site. When the sun came up, there would be a new town full of rescued immigrants! Golda’s increased workload and worry over saving European Jews put a strain on her marriage, and in 1941 she and her husband separated.
Golda endangered her own life by trying to build peace with the opposition. She disguised herself as an Arab woman and traveled through enemy territory to meet with the leader of a neighboring Arab country. Sadly, her courageous bid for peace was unsuccessful.
In 1946, after World War II ended, England decided to let the Jews create their nation, but Golda and her government knew that when the British pulled out, surrounding Arab countries would move in and attack. Golda went to the United States to raise money for weapons to protect the future nation. In a fund-raising speech in Chicago, Golda proudly said to the Jewish crowd, “You cannot decide whether we will fight or not. We will. . . . Whether we live or not, this is a decision you have to make.” Her speeches were so effective that she returned with fifty million dollars for the army. Her fellow politicians were astounded at the fortune Golda raised and credited her with saving the country from certain doom.
In Moscow, Golda was greeted by over 50,000 Russian Jews, who came to meet her and celebrate the founding of Israel. They were defying their oppressive government, and their courage affected Golda deeply.
In 1948 the United Nations took a vote, and the Jewish nation of Israel was born. Israel’s leaders were elated and signed a proclamation of independence, outlining the goals of their new nation. As Golda signed her name, she wept uncontrollably. When someone asked why she was crying, Golda replied, “Because it breaks my heart to think of all those who should have been here today and are not.”
Fights between the Jews and the Arabs began almost immediately. Thanks to Golda’s fund-raising, Israel was able to defend itself from all attacks. In a rush of national pride, Golda changed her name from Meyerson to the Hebrew Meir and began work in the new government, first as Israel’s ambassador to Russia, then as minister of labor. When she became foreign minister, Israel responded to threats from Egypt by capturing their territory—the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Explaining Israel’s attack to the United Nations, Golda said, “We desire nothing more than peace, but we cannot equate peace merely with an apathetic readiness to be destroyed.” And again in 1967, when the countries around Israel joined together in a plan to “push the Jews into the sea,” the Jews launched a surprise attack and won a complete victory.
After forty years of hard work establishing a country for the Jews, Golda was ready to retire. Israel, however, wasn’t ready to let her go. When the prime minister died in 1969, Golda was asked to replace him. At age seventy-one, Golda became the leader of the Jewish nation she had dreamed of as a teen. During her five years as prime minister, Golda exhausted herself building the country up and defending it from enemy countries and terrorists. Even after resigning from her post, she continued to work for peace, meeting with Egypt’s president Anwar Sadat in 1977.
In 1978 Golda’s strength finally gave out, and she died of the cancer she had been secretly battling for fifteen years. To the people of Israel, Golda will always be a symbol of their nation’s birth, and she will be remembered for guiding the country through its most challenging and exciting period in history. The rest of us will remain in awe of her progression from a young girl fund-raising for her poorer classmates to the prime minister of Israel.
HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?
If I could rock the world, I would stop the terrorists and make them see sense. They would then see that all of their fighting is irrational, and they would destroy all of their weapons. They would not enforce hate and violence, but enforce love and peace all over the Middle East in places like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
AGE 14