On September 21 it premiered Goldathe film that tells the story of Golda Meir after 50 years of the war that ended the career of the Israeli prime minister.
More of a yawn than a success, the film captures a Chesterfield chain-smoking Golda, starring Helen Mirren, as she overlooks a timely lesson in diplomacy: to be effective, Leaders need to know the personalities of their counterparts, as well as each other’s political interests.
The United States, for its part, has made mistakes when some leaders have confused both things. President Barack Obama thought he understood his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad when he warned him that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line.” Assad dismissed the warning and used them anyway. Sniffing weakness, Russian President Vladimir Putin also marched towards Crimea.
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Donald Trump mixed his personal relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un with politics, boasting that a letter from the dictator had changed the dynamic of relations between the United States and that country.
And President Joe Biden thought he had control of the Taliban when he ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. It didn’t have it, and the hasty departure of the United States left Black Hawk and Apache helicopters – which are lethal – in the hands of a barbaric regime.
What about Meir? This Russian-born Jew migrated to the United States at a very young age with her family, settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was the valedictorian of her high school and is remembered back then for organizing a fundraiser to buy books for refugee and poor children like her. She could have enjoyed a quiet and comfortable life, but she decided to move to Tel Aviv in 1921 where she fought in Israel’s difficult early history.
Meir was in the country during the drought that led farmers to beg for drops of water; He held a civilian while he died from a gunshot wound, and He witnessed British soldiers rejecting Holocaust survivors who would end up in detention camps.
The one who would later be known by the nickname of the Iron Lady had deep bags under her eyes, as if she wanted to demonstrate what she had seen. When she took over as prime minister of Israel in 1969, she was physically associated with Lyndon Johnson, who had just left the US presidency.
Zionist men could be chauvinists and in this context and before becoming prime minister, Meir refused to be relegated to the women’s conversations at any meeting. That’s why she became a key advisor to Israel’s premier, David Ben-Gurion, who called her “the best man in my cabinet.”
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Following Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948, Ben-Gurion asked Meir to oversee the defense of Jerusalem and the distribution of food. He imposed daily rationing of just 85 grams of dried fish, lentils, macaroni and beans.
Sleep-deprived, she often walked through fire from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and one day, as bullets riddled her bus, she covered her eyes. When asked why, she replied: “Actually I’m not afraid of dying… But how will I live if I go blind? How will I work?” A few days later, their bus was ambushed while making a curve just outside Jerusalem. The man next to him died in his lap.
Meir’s relationships
Intelligent and strong men found his character attractive. The president of the United States, Richard Nixon, overcoming his psychological demons, showed him the warm side of him, which was rarely seen. He also defied Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to comply with Meir’s requests during the war.
Kissinger had hesitated to help Israel during the surprising Yom Kippur attack in 1973, when Egyptian forces assaulted the Israeli Air Force with new Soviet anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. Nixon finally said, “Look, Henry, we’re going to get the same amount of blame for sending three, 30, or 100, so send whatever flies.”
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Even more fascinating were Meir’s close ties to Jordan’s kings, Abdullah and his grandson Hussein, whom he met in secret, candid and friendly conversations. Just before Israel declared its independence, she sneaked to the Jordanian border, donned a black dress and veil, and rode with the king’s driver to a safe house in the hills. “Why are the Jews in such a hurry to have a state?” the king asked him. “We have waited two thousand years. “That’s not my definition of hustle,” she responded.
When Hussein became king, he developed a strong personal relationship with Meir. In 1970, he asked her to lead the Israeli Air Force to destroy the Syrian tanks massed on the Jordanian border. The Syrians withdrew under threats. He sometimes sneaked into Israel to see her, piloting his own Bell helicopter and landing at a rendezvous point near the Dead Sea. Just days before the Yom Kippur War in 1973, she flew to a Mossad (intelligence agency) safe house to warn it of a possible attack. She and Hussein lamented that they did not have enough influence to forge a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement. Severe losses in the 1973 war cost the prime minister her job.
Four years later, when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his brave trip to Israel and told the Knesset that “we truly welcome you to live among us in peace,” Meir waited in the receiving line. They kissed each other’s cheeks and joked about becoming grandparents. Years earlier, Meir had been convinced that Sadat could be a peacemaker. At that moment, a year before his death from cancer in 1978, she was finally right.
TODD G. BUCHHOLZ
© Project Syndicate – San Diego
Former White House economic policy director and managing director of the hedge fund Tiger Management.
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