Golda Meir and the Making of Israel

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Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel (Schocken), by Francine Klagsbrun

As a teenager in Milwaukee, Golda Meir was already an activist and a leader with her ideological parameters in place. Heated philosophical and political discussions around the kitchen tables of family and friends prepared her for becoming senior class vice president at North Division High School and chairman of a Zionist literary society. Steeped in Milwaukee’s early 20^th century democratic socialism, she emigrated to Palestine, then a British mandate with a predominantly Arab population. She was determined to build not only a Jewish state but also an equitable society—at least for Jews.

Francine Klagsbrun’s engaging biography, Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel, paints a familiar picture: Meir was a Jewish grandmother figure when she took the world stage as Israel’s prime minister, fussing over loved ones, proffering common sense and getting the job done. Alongside the largely male leadership of Israel’s founders, she framed a new country out of high ideals but with sleeves always rolled up in a dogged struggle against enemies on all sides. Like many statesmen at the time of the Six Day War (1967), she saw no need for a Palestinian state and banked on the absorption of Palestinians into neighboring Jordan. Her dream of reasonable accommodation between hostile peoples would not be fulfilled.

Meir spent her last years overtaken by bitter surprises such as the Munich massacre and the Yom Kippur War. Although her popularity sank in Israel, she remained active in retirement on behalf of the country she helped establish.

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