Golda Meir

Who was Golda Meir?

Golda Meir was an Israeli teacher, kibbutznik and politician who became the fourth Prime Minister of Israel.

Meir was elected Prime Minister of Israel on March 17, 1969, after serving as Minister of Labour and Foreign Minister. Israel's first and the world's third woman to hold such an office, she was described as the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before the epithet became associated with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion used to call Meir "the best man in the government"; she was often portrayed as the "strong-willed, straight-talking, grey-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people".

In 1974, after the end of the Yom Kippur War, Meir resigned as prime minister. She died in 1978 of lymphoma.

Famous Quotes:

• Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's the men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one's likely to do anything about that.
• Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.
• Being seventy is not a sin.
• To be successful, a woman has to be better at her job than a man.
• Whether women are better than men I cannot say, but I can say they are certainly no worse.
• Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!
• I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.
• A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.
• We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown and when strawberries bloom in Israel.
• Not being beautiful was the true blessing... Not being beautiful forced me to develop my inner resources. The pretty girl has a handicap to overcome.