TO GOLDA MEIR, PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL FROM AJ

Calgary, Alberta

Canada

May 3, 1972

Dear Prime Minister Meir,

Before I go further, I would like to wish you many happy returns on the occasion of your birthday. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica in the library here at Agnes Macphail High, you were born in Kiev exactly 74 years ago today.

Wholly occupied and preoccupied as you must be with affairs of state, I am sure you have little time to dedicate to correspondence that is not from a high-level source. Here I am, a simple fifteen-year-old Canadian girl. Yet, I prevail upon you to read this letter in its entirety and, if you would do me the honour, answer it personally, rather than passing it on to an assistant. (If the first reader is indeed an aide to the Prime Minister, please pass this letter on to your boss, and stop reading now.)

You see, Prime Minister, although I do not have, at this point, any particular political affiliation, I do have a strong interest in history, including history-in-the-making, and in people who are high achievers. I have followed your career from afar for the past five years, through international stories in our local newspapers, radio and television news, and Time Magazine, to which my parents subscribe. And I am currently faced with a puzzle that, of all the world’s humans, you are the best equipped to help me solve.

Inspired in part by your own known excellence in debate, I approached my school principal, Miss Bochner, and asked if I might organize a debating club. She said that would be fine, as long as I could find a staff advisor and leave the classroom assigned to club activities in pristine condition after every use. I would also be responsible for making sure all chairs were placed upside down on their corresponding desks before my departure. Those conditions struck me as reasonable. I approached Mr. Peters, my Latin teacher, who occasionally reminisces in class about his days as a university debater. He enthusiastically consented to act as staff advisor.

My idea must have struck a chord because, with no more advertising than a mention in the morning announcements, we found ourselves with 27 members. In a democratically held election, they chose me as president. On the advice of Mr. Peters we set up an executive committee. And that is what I am so anxious for your advice about.

Our vice-president, whom I will call X, does not think I should be in charge because I do not, in his opinion, have enough education to do a sufficiently sophisticated job. Therefore, he feels it would be appropriate for me to voluntarily hand over the reins to him. True, he is in Grade 12 and I am in Grade 10. However (and I say this with as much objectivity as I can muster), he has an inflated sense of his own virtues and is driven solely by the prospect of being top dog. Meanwhile, our treasurer, whom I will call Y, does not want me in office because, he says in the vaguest of terms, I am “unqualified.” In reality, it kills him to see me as president because I am a girl. It would be different if the club were girls-only, he says. Why do I not go off and organize an all-female club, he suggests; I am in over my head, he says. Our secretary, Z, is another story altogether. Monday, he declares his loyalty to me; Tuesday, he mumbles support for X’s view that I am too ignorant to lead; Wednesday, he wonders out loud whether a female should be at the head of a mixed male-female group. Where his mind and heart will take him on Thursday is anybody’s guess.

Of course, X and Y and, in his own inept way, the chameleon Z, chat all the time among the general membership, so what do we wind up with? Factions.

Now, as I have said, I have followed your comings and goings in Israeli politics as well as I can from so far away. And I know that four years ago you reached out to the Rafi, Ahdut and Mapam parties, which had all broken away from your own party, Mapai. You dealt with such big egos—like Moshe Dayan, the sabre-rattling swaggerer of Rafi, concerned mainly with power and control. How did you convince him to be on the same team as, say, Yigal Allon, promoter of a just division of land and a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians? And then there was Shem-Tov from Mapam, a party some people thought was too cozy with the Soviets. What a ragtag bunch they were, all at odds with one another. Hard to accomplish anything in such an environment, I am sure. And yet you managed to bring those people together, back into the Mapai fold, to form Israel’s Labour Party. How on earth did you do that?

You see where I am going with this, Prime Minister. How do I bring my executive together? How do I reinstate esprit de corps in my club, now suffering grievously from disunity and unhealthy, ever-fluctuating sub-alliances? How do I act to make us strong, so we can put our energy into the work of becoming better debaters, not petty squabblers?

Please can you share with me how you got through to those stubborn people you had to deal with four years ago. Did you appeal to their higher natures? Cajole them? Reason with them? Make them feel guilty?

What I am looking for here is an effective approach. My domain is much smaller than yours (although Israel is not exactly big, as countries go). Still, like you, I wear the mantle of leadership and must take measures to restore my club to robust group health.

Yours in great admiration,

Ariadne Jensen