It was October 6, 1973. Sirens were echoing throughout Tel Aviv. Israel received a surprise attack from the Syrians and Egyptians, in the middle of the biggest Jewish holiday – Yom Kippur – the day of the “Great Atonement”.
Labor Prime Minister Golda Meir assembles her cabinet. Israel found itself unprepared and suffered many casualties before finally winning the war.
Golda Meir, then 76, was criticized for hesitating to immediately respond to the attack. But if it was recognized that the Prime Minister had no responsibility, she resigned as Prime Minister and permanently withdrew from political life until her death in 1978. However, Golda Meir used to say that “a leader who does not hesitates before deciding to send the nation to war, he is not fit to be a leader.”
Golda Meir – the first and only female prime minister in its history IsraelHe even faced, as the country’s leader, the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 by Palestinian commandos. Golda Meir responded with Operation Wrath of God: “Kill Israel’s enemies, the ‘brains’ and the perpetrators of terror, wherever they are,” was her motto.
Golda’s “recipe”.
The scene could have taken place 50 years later – on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and killed 1,200 innocent people.
Israel was caught off guard by Hamas, but immediately followed Golda Meir’s “recipe”: “Kill Israel’s enemies wherever they are,” as demonstrated by the assassination of the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, and many senior officials of both organizations. .
Nicknamed the “Iron Lady”, Golda Meir was the one who gave the most uncompromising tone to the Palestinian issue: “How could we return the occupied territories? There is no one to give them back,” she declared during her “explosive” five-year term as prime minister.
I recently read a controversial quote by Golda Meir that could have been said today: “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,” she said. “But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
Relations with the Arabs
Despite the cynicism this quote may convey, Meir’s ties from the beginning of his political career with Arab leaders, before and after the creation of the State of Israel, were fascinating. He used to secretly meet with the then king of Jordan, Abdullah, and his grandson, Hussein. Shortly before Israel declared independence, Meir sneaked to the Jordanian border, wearing a black dress and veil, and was taken by the Hashemite king to a safe house in the hills.
“Why are Jews in such a hurry to get statehood?” Hussain asked her, “We’ve waited two thousand years. That’s not my definition of haste,” she replied. When Hussein later became king of Jordan, he developed a strong personal relationship with Meir. In 1970, he asked him to order the Israeli air force to destroy Syrian tanks massed on the Jordanian border, and the Syrians retreated in the face of the threat. Sometimes Hussein would sneak into Israel to see her, flying his own helicopter and landing at a meeting point near the Dead Sea. Just days before the Yom Kippur War in 1973, Hussein flew to a Mossad safe house to warn it of the possible attack. Meir and Hussein lamented that he did not have enough power to conclude a comprehensive Israeli-Arab peace treaty.
An inconvenient truth
The current Jordanian Foreign Minister, Ayman Safadi, even told the Israelis an “inconvenient truth”, writes Haaretz. “Ask any Israeli official what their plan for peace is – you won’t get an answer,” Safadi said at a news conference in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“We are here – members of the Arab-Muslim commission, mandated by 57 Arab and Muslim countries – and I can tell you very categorically that we are all willing to guarantee Israel’s security, as long as Israel ends the occupation and allows the creation of a Palestinian state,” Jordan’s foreign minister said and added: “Netanyahu creates this danger because he simply doesn’t want a two-state solution. If he doesn’t want a two-state solution, you can ask the Israeli authorities what that is. your ultimate plan – beyond wars, wars, wars?”