Golda Meir

{{Audio|He-Golda_Meir.ogg|Golda Meir}} (Hebrew ?????????? ??????) (b. Golda Mabovitz; May 3, 1898 – December 8, 1978) was a founder of the State of Israel. She served as the Minister of Labor, Foreign Minister, and as the fourth Prime Minister of Israel from March 17, 1969 to April 111974. Golda Meir was the "Iron Lady" of Israeli politics years before the epithet was coined for Margaret Thatcher. David Ben-Gurion once described her as "the only man in the Cabinet." She is the first (and to date only) female Prime Minister of Israel, the third female Prime Minister in the world (after Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Sri Lanka and Indira Gandhi of India) , as well as the only former American citizen to hold the post (Benjamin Netanyahu is a native-born Israeli whose family moved to Philadelphia when he was a teenager; he moved back to Israel after graduate school and was never a U.S. citizen).

Born in the Russian empire

She was born Golda Mabovitz in Kiev, Ukraine, then part of Imperial Russia. Her earliest memories were of her father boarding up the front door in response to rumors of a pogrom. Her life there was tough; she and her two sisters (Shayna and Zipke) were often hungry and cold. Golda especially looked up to Shayna. Her father left for the United States in 1903, and the rest of the family followed in 1906. They settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Related Topics:
Kiev - Ukraine - Imperial Russia - Pogrom - United States - 1903 - 1906 - Milwaukee - Wisconsin

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