The Heart of Golda Meir

...But remarkable changes took place once Golda bowed "to the command of the party" and started presiding over government meetings...

...Yaakov Herzog and Sim-cha Dinitz, who has just completed a tour as Israel's Ambassador to the U.S., refused to even raise the issue with her...

...Her assistants, the late Dr...

...Unlike many of her colleagues, who before they embraced Zionism and Socialism had received a traditional Jewish education in a Che-der (afternoon religious school), or yeshiva (where they studied the Bible, Talmud and Jewish philosophy), Golda had a mostly secular education in Milwaukee and Denver—resulting in a gap she never was able to fill properly...

...And she added: "Really, tell me, you know me by now: Am I such a terrible person to talk to...

...Not that Israelis doubted her sincerity in such cases...

...She herself tried this approach once early in 1948...

...It was February, 1969...

...Nevertheless, Sapir was responsible for making Golda Meir prime minister...

...The following story is an illustration...

...they would never be able to convince her, they said, that Playboy carried serious interviews...

...Besides, she said, at the age of 70 she deserved a rest, and her health was not at its best...

...She failed, of course, but she might have succeeded, had the King's British advisors not been convinced they could prevent the creation of Israel...

...Yet there was, perhaps, another factor she was weighing: her extreme unpopularity...

...He had just come from Cairo, where he had been told by President Nasser that Israel's insistence on direct negotiations was the biggest stumbling block to peace...

...in the Jewish Agency, where she headed the Political Division in the critical days of Moshe Sharett's detainment by the British...

...and as minister of labor and foreign minister in the Ben Gurion and Eshkol governments...

...He tried the argument on Golda: "Don't you realize that Nasser cannot recognize IsLEVI ESHKOl rael...

...She accomplished this despite some strong handicaps...

...Once we sit together, I am sure we shall find a way to solve our differences...

...In the days preceding the Six-Day War, for example, when Eshkol was accused of being too "hesitant" and demonstrations demanded the inclusion of Dayan in an emergency cabinet, Golda urged Eshkol not to budge and deplored "mob rule"—to the annoyance of a great many people...

...SEEING THE HUMAN ASPECT The Heart of Golda Meir byuvaeizur GOLDA MEIR Pinchas Saplr, Israel's late Minister of Finance—renowned for his bulky figure, raspy voice, iron will, and "wheeler-dealer" methods—was one of his country's most feared "strongmen...

...So it is not altogether surprising that her reluctance to accept the prime ministership inspired more than a few sneers...

...Alfred Friendly, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Six-Day War for the Washington Post, was the first foreign correspondent to interview her after it became known that she would assume the post of prime minister...

...Then, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Sapir produced Golda to save the situation...

...Golda was allowed to see the peace she so desired but did not live to see the signing of a treaty with Egypt...

...She had a limited vocabulary both in English—spoken with a slight Yiddish inflection and a Midwestern accent— and in Hebrew...

...The years about which she liked to talk to every foreign visitor—when she tended the chickens and tried to "Americanize" the poor diet of Kibbutz Merhavia in the Valley of Jez-reel—were actually very few...

...Golda's belief that direct diplomacy was the one path to peace has been at least partially vindicated by the events of the past year...

...But inacir-cle of intimate friends, Sapir once admitted: "When Golda speaks to me everything inside of me just melts...

...Yet Sapir and some of the "old guard" were not merely concerned that picking one man over the other would cause a split in the recently united party, but also they thought neither candidate was fit for the job...

...Her health seemed to improve dramatically...

...She spoke in short sentences, employing the most direct approach possible...

...By the time another opportunity for face-to-face talks arrived—with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 1977 visit to Jerusalem—Golda was no longer in office, and the two former adversaries had little time together...

...Incidentally, several years later, Friendly suffered an amusing setback because of Mrs...

...Indeed, it could be said that the secret of Golda's success—as a public speaker, as a diplomat, as a national leader—was her talent for reducing the most complicated issues to the simplest human terms...

...He went to Israel especially to conduct an in-depth interview with her for Playboy magazine...

...It is the other way round," insisted Golda...

...In fact, when she met him, it was only as part of the Labor contingent, during Sadat's discussions with members of the Knesset...

...If you could somehow reach an agreement on the peace terms through intermediaries, recognition would follow later...

...What she knew about the magazine would be enough to turn her off...

...For once, the famous journalist was left speechless...

...He did not get far...

...It was less than a year since she had resigned from the job as secretary general, announcing her "final" retirement...

...More than most others, she shaped the national character...

...And Sapir —at that time Secretary General of the ruling Labor Party—was, analysts felt, in a bind: It seemed that to replace Eshkol he would have to choose between Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon—two leaders of the "younger" generation who headed rival Labor factions...

...Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, popular and powerful after leading the country to a spectacular victory in the 1967 War, had just died of heart failure...

...In their eulogies, Dinitz and the Labor Party chairman, Shimon Peres, compared her to Moses, who was allowed to see the Promised Land from the distance but was not allowed to enter it...

...Disguised in the robes of a man, she went to Amman to try to convince Jordan's sly King Abdallah (the grandfather of King Hussein) not to send his Arab Legion into battle after the establishment of the Jewish State...

...This stemmed largely from her tendency to moralize self-right-eously...

...I'm sure," Dinitz said, "that Golda would have brought us peace, if she had only had the chance...

...1 cannot even argue with her...

...Meir was reluctant...

...As the countless thousands of Israelis—many of them weeping unabashedly—showed when they braved the cold Jerusalem rain to pass her coffin: Golda Meir was not simply a leader who fought for her people in time of crisis...

...Yi'val Elizir, a new contributor to The New Leader, is a correspondent/or the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv...

...She became a national heroine, whose recognition soon surpassed that of Ben Gurion and Eshkol at the zenith of their careers...

...Initially, though, Mrs...

...The major part of her career was devoted, before and during Statehood, to coping with the harsh realities of politics: in the Histradut, the all-powerful labor federation...

...She was 80...

...Even the tragic "sins of omission" of the Yom Kippur War, for which she blamed herself, had little effect on the widespread affection for her...

...Rather, they felt that her frequently expressed outrage at the negative aspects of the nation's public life was naive, if not cynical, considering her long and deep involvement with the intricacies of power...

...Nonetheless, she did manage to steal the show...

...When as foreign minister and as prime minister she had to deliver formal addresses written by her assistants, she often stumbled, not raising her voice in the right places...

...Golda Meir died on December 8, 1978...

...in her own Labor Party...

...On the other hand, the vocabulary she did have she used magnificently— in all languages...

...But when she talked extemporaneously, it was quite a different story: Knowing her audience, tailoring her speeches to meet their taste, she had that rare ability to find the way to their hearts...

...The unwritten ban on smoking at those meetings, established by Ben Gurion and Sharret, was lifted...

...And most remarkable of all, her popularity skyrocketed...

...The now famous scene of Golda talking to Sadat "as a grandmother to a grandfather"— handing him a present for his newly born grandchild, and Sadat's embarrassed laugh when she scolded him: "You always called me an old lady, Mr...

...President"—is testimony to Gol-da's greatest strength: maintaining the human element in the most intricate affairs of state...