Golda Meir

Golda Meir, who lived from 1898 to 1978, was Israel's fourth prime minister, serving from 1969 to 1974, and remains to date the only woman to have held that office. Born into a Ukrainian Jewish family in Kiev, she immigrated as a child to the United States before settling in Mandatory Palestine in 1921, and she rose through the labor movement to serve as Israel's minister of labor and later foreign minister before becoming prime minister following the death of Levi Eshkol. She is regarded as a founding figure of the Israeli state, having been among the signatories of Israel's 1948 Declaration of Independence and having played a critical fundraising role during Israel's War of Independence, reportedly raising roughly ninety million dollars abroad, about a third of the war's total cost. Her premiership is remembered above all for the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which caught Israel unprepared despite prior intelligence warnings and inflicted heavy losses in its opening days, provoking public anger that damaged her standing even after an official inquiry found she had acted reasonably given the information available. Meir resigned in 1974 after her coalition failed to secure a governing majority in the following elections, stating that the will of the people called for new leadership.