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Golda Meir (1898-1978) is not quite Israel’s forgotten premier, but inside the borders of the Jewish state she is perhaps the least spoken of. This is arguably the last outcome anyone might have envisaged in her heyday. A little over three decades ago, she was one of the most celebrated figures in the world. Although initially a stop-gap Labor prime minister after Levi Eshkol died in 1969, she was, at the age of seventy-one, no Millard Fillmore or Chester Arthur. Charles de Gaulle, who normally stood stock-still in a room until others came up to him, would cross the floor to greet her; Anne Bancroft and Ingrid Bergman rushed to portray her on stage and screen; and her autobiography, My Life (1975), was a runaway bestseller. “Our Golda,” as Israelis called her, played the role of the Jewish grandmother to the hilt—loving, fiercely protective, iron-willed, and manipulative all at once. She had loads of charm and an unfailing ability to strike the right populist note for Jewish audiences without alienating Gentiles. “I understand the Arabs want to wipe us out,” she would say in her best folksy manner, “but do they really expect us to cooperate?”

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© 2008 Commentary Inc.

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