GoldaThe first female head of state in the Western world and one of the most influential women in modern history, Golda Meir was a member of the tiny coterie of founders of the State of Israel, the architect of its socialist infrastructure, and its most tenacious international defender. Her uncompromising devotion to shaping and defending a Jewish homeland against dogged enemies and skittish allies stunned political contemporaries skeptical about the stamina of an elderly leader, and transformed Middle Eastern politics for decades to follow. A blend of Emma Goldman and Martin Luther King Jr. in the guise of a cookie-serving grandmother, Meir was a tough-as-nails politician who issued the first prescient warnings about the rise of international terrorism, out-maneuvered Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger at their own game of realpolitik, and led Israel through a bloody war even as she eloquently pleaded for peace. A prodigious fundraiser and persuasive international voice, Golda carried the nation through its most perilous hours while she herself battled cancer. In this masterful biography, critically acclaimed author and Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Elinor Burkett looks beyond Meir's well-known accomplishments to the complex motivations and ideals, personal victories and disappointments, of her charismatic public persona. Beginning with Meir's childhood in virulently anti-Semitic Russia and her family's subsequent relocation to the United States, Burkett places Meir within the framework of the American immigrant experience, the Holocaust, and the single-mindedness of a generation that carved a nation out of its own nightmares and dreams. She paints a vivid portrait of a legendary woman defined by contradictions: an iron resolve coupled with magnetic charm, an utter ordinariness of appearance matched to extraordinary achievements, a kindly demeanor that disguised a stunning hard-heartedness, and a complete dedication to her country that often overwhelmed her personal relationships. To produce this definitive account of Meir's life, Burkett mined historical records never before examined by any researcher, and interviewed members of Meir's inner circle, many going on record for the first time. The result is an astounding portrait of one of the most commanding political presences of the twentieth century—a woman whose uncompromising commitment to the creation and preservation of a Jewish state fueled and framed the ideological conflicts that still define Middle Eastern relations today. |
From inside the book
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... tion. Even those embarrassed that David became a nuclear- armed Goliath patrolling the West Bank can't resist admiring her as a tough negotiator who also found time to fix tea and cake for Henry Kissinger. Especially for women who grew ...
... tion of sleeping volcanoes . For more than two decades , the fury had ig- nited almost regularly — in 30 Ukrainian towns in 1881 , on Christmas day that same year in Warsaw , in a total of 166 towns and villages from one end of the Pale ...
... tion against Sheyna's political guru , the long - haired young man Goldie had spied from her perch in the kitchen . The grandson of a prominent Torah scholar , Shamai Korngold was the author of the pamphlets Sheyna distributed , the ...
... tion she'd felt facing Cossacks, Golda imagined herself fighting off the fellahin, the Arab peasants, and striking a blow for Jewish indepen- dence. “The truth is that I didn't have exact information, but I knew very clearly what I ...
... tion of ramshackle frame barracks and a communal kitchen. The latrine, a quarter of a mile from the barracks, consisted of four holes in the ground with no partitions between them. No one ventured there alone because snipers from nearby ...
Contents
1 | |
23 | |
45 | |
Chapter Four | 61 |
Chapter Five | 75 |
Chapter Seven | 105 |
Chapter Eight | 125 |
Chapter Nine | 147 |
Chapter Thirteen | 229 |
Chapter Fourteen | 257 |
Chapter Fifteen | 283 |
Chapter Sixteen | 309 |
Chapter Seventeen | 337 |
Conclusion | 371 |
Acknowledgments | 387 |
Bibliography | 429 |