Word: israell
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Gurion used to buy weapons for his underground army, the Haganah. History, he said later, would record that "there was a Jewish woman who got the money that made [Israel] possible...
Golda was no sooner back from that trip than Ben-Gurion sent her on a secret mission in 1947 to Trans-Jordan's King Abdullah. She went to the desert meeting disguised as a peasant woman. On an earlier visit, Abdullah had agreed not to attack Israel. At this second meeting, he turned elusive. Why be in such a hurry to proclaim your state? "We have been waiting for 2,000 years," retorted Golda. "Is that hurrying...
...After Israel proclaimed its independence, Ben-Gurion named her as the new nation's first ambassador to Moscow. He later made her Minister of Labor, then Foreign Minister, a post in which she stoutly supported his policy of tough retaliation for every act of Arab sabotage or raid. Said Ben-Gurion: "She is the only man in my Cabinet." Overall, she had a love-hate relationship with Israel's blustery, impulsive first Premier. At his behest, she Hebraized her last name from Meyerson to Meir (meaning illumination). Privately she referred to Ben-Gurion as "that...
...mood of weariness, she decided to retire from foreign affairs, and became secretary general of Israel's Labor Party. When Premier Levi Eshkol died suddenly of a heart attack in 1969, the Labor Party asked her to succeed him, not only out of love but to avoid a split between factions loyal to the flamboyant Moshe Dayan and his archrival Yigal Allon. She duly burst into tears, expounded her devotion to her children and grandchildren, professed inadequacy-and accepted...
Golda took over as Israel's fourth Premier, more the autocrat than the mother comforter. But even in this dominating role, she injected a maternal element into the cold science of international relations. She assembled her senior cabinet members at supper in her kitchen to discuss affairs of state amid aromatic fumes of the chicken soup she loved to cook. She met Prime Ministers and Presidents at the grandest of diplomatic dinners wearing her severely cut suits and orthopedic shoes. She tolerated bodyguards with reluctance but would often brew tea for them in the morning's small hours...