Trying To Understand How Global Terrorism Began :
What Golda Meir Would’ve Told Ariel Sharon
This is hard.. I can’t begin to make you understand this blog without giving you some kind of background. So bear with some history lessons, okay? Anyway, they make pretty good reading.
“…the last boy killed, with no more ammunition left, died with a stone in his hand.” These words could have been uttered by Yasser Arafat, the acknowledged leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel’s most hated enemy as he would describe the Intifada (literally, “awakening”) - a crusade embarked on by Palestinian Arabs since December , 1987 involving daily clashes of stone-throwing group of youngsters against the Israeli Defense Force. Yet, in January 2, 1948, the very same phrase came out of the lips of the woman who was to be known as the Iron Lady of Israeli politics, Golda Meir as she described how Israeli youths valiantly fought against superior number of Arabs in the land that was to be Israel.
She was then a mother of two grown children and at the same time appointed head of the Jewish Agency– the body organizing the migration of Jews to Israel . Her speech pleading for more material aid from the Jewish Community in the United States made possible then the survival of the newly established state of Israel. Israel’s struggle for recognition among its Arab neighbors, and the resulting backlash of Islamic Fundamentalism which even now has washed itself not only on American soil but as widespread as Europe and Asia, makes a closer look at this iconic figure not only timely, but relevant as well..
The focus reveals a formidable woman, tall and austere in appearance with the stresses of life reflected in her face and having an honest, straightforward and single-minded spirit. It is the face and spirit of Israel.
Born Golda Mabovitch ,the middle of three remaining daughters after the childhood deaths of six other siblings, she struggled with the travails of a Jewish family in Kiev, Ukraine. She is at best apologetic when talking about Kiev, stressing that it has “dimmed” or “fogged” in her memory ,but talks at length about the town of Pinsk, where Jewish cultural life in Russia played out as did her terror at her close encounter with the Cossacks. Sheyna, her elder sister, admittedly became her model, praising her sister’s stance for being a Zionist revolutionary, plotting at an early age the overthrow of the all-powerful czar and dreaming of a Jewish socialist state.
The young Zionist revolutionaries in Pinsk, whose membership would welcome the young Golda into its fold, were however, divided. There were members of the Bund (Union) who believed that the solution to the plight in the Jews in Russia and elsewhere lie in the establishment of a Socialist State where anti-Semitism would disappear. On the other side, there were Poalei-Zion (Labour-Unionists) who together with Sheyna, believed that the solution to the Jewish issue lie in the re-establishment of Jewish independence and subsequently ,a Jewish State.
The formulations of a young mind; who at age seven already impressed to herself that, “nothing in life just happens…it isn’t enough to believe in something; you have to have the stamina to meet the obstacles and to struggle to overcome them.” ;came about in this turbulent period when the revolutionaries, to include the Mabovitch sisters, became bolder and repercussions from the Czarist police made their family more fearful. It was at this point that Golda’s mother decided to follow her husband who had earlier migrated to the United States The picture of an eight–year old Zionist revolutionary being transported pale, exhausted and scared, to the Jewish section of Milwaukee depicts a comic yet honest picture of Golda Meir’s early life.
It was in Milwaukee that another of Golda’s philosophies appear, this time as an advice from a visiting Alumnus of the Fourth Street High School to the students fifity years after. “It isn’t really important to decide when you are very young just exactly what you want to become when you grow up.”,she told the students. “It is much more important to decide on the way you want to live . If you are going to be honest with yourself and honest with your friends, if you are going to get involved with causes which are good for others, not only for yourselves , then it seems to me, that that is sufficient…”. Her thirst for learning introduced her to Morris Meyerson, a person she admired for “his beautiful soul” and whom she eventually married .
The growth of the labor-Zionist movement in the U.S. and the subsequent “Balfour Declaration” – so-named after its author, Lord Alfred James Balfour , then Britain’s foreign secretary – which favored the establishment in Palestine of a ‘National Home for the Jewish people’’,paved the way for the couple’s eventual immigration to Palestine. These two factors and her deep political involvement tore strains at her marriage which inevitably broke up in 1945. “ There is a type of woman’”she said, “who does not let her husband narrow her horizons.” It was much later that Golda decided on dropping‘Meyerson’ and adopting the Hebrew ‘ Meir’ (meaning, illuminated) as her surname.
Although Palestine as a British Protectorate in 1917 served as a haven for Jews in Diaspora or exodus the world over, it did not serve as a nation for them. Tel-Aviv was just a “village” receiving waves of Polish, Lithuanian and Russian migrants, and Golda was in the midst of it all, distributing and organizing them in various kibbutzes or settlements. There were also the early Arab settlers in the region who were less organized., prompting Golda to give one of her most quoted yet provocative statement.”There are no Palestinians.” It was only when Hitler rose to power in the 1930’s which culminated to the Nazi’s Final Solution for the Jewish problem did the exodus of Jews displaced by World War II reach epic proportions and the Jews stood at the doorsteps of their struggle for Statehood.
The struggle against the British led to the rise of the Haganah, (now the Israeli Defense Force) under Ben-Gurion , a former acquaintance of Golda Meir who later remarked that Golda was “the only man in the cabinet”. The Haganah ship, Exodus, carrying Jews escaping the Holocaust caught the world’s attention when the British rounded up these immigrants, to include children and pregnant women among them and forcibly returned them to the ports of Hamburg. There were struggles not just against the British,but also against Jews who surprisingly did not want the further migration of Jews to Israel . There were diplomatic struggles as well, which was ably handled by Golda before the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) as she expounded on Zionism , its history and why the survivors of the Holocaust should be brought to Palestine .
In August of 1947 ,on the eve of the expiration of their deadline of reporting before the UN General Assembly, majority of the members of UNSCOP voted to partition Palestine into an Arab state and a Jewish State plus an international enclave that would take in Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity. Against the odds, these two rebels , Golda Meir and Ben-Gurion were to be part of a ceremony in May of 1948 when finally the proclamation of the State of Israel became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Despite United States recognition, followed by the Soviet Union, the proclamation inevitably led to Israel’s War of Independence, where Egyptians from the south, Syrians and Lebanese from the north and northeast as well as Jordanians from the east boasted that within ten days, Israel would be crushed. Golda admitted that the superiority of Arab firepower then was due largely to British help, and that despite the odds in numbers and weapons , the Israelis had reckoned that they had an even chance of winning simply because their will to survive was more.
At the eleventh hour before the War started , Golda, disguised as an Arab woman, smuggled herself into Jordan to meet King Abdullah, the assasinated great-grandfather of the present King Hussein in the hopes of getting his cooperation in withdrawing Jordan’s support for the Arab League’s war against Israel. Although this foolhardy task was to no avail, and the first Phase of the War drew major losses for Israel, the Fourth and final Phase of the war turned the tide and brought about armistice agreements signed by the Arab countries whereby Israel not only ejected the invading Arab forces but captured and held some 5,000 square kilometers over and above the areas allocated to it by the United Nations.
It was her narrow nationalism and blinkered view of the Arabs that made her ignore compromises with the Palestinians so long as Israel remained secure. This same rigid stance , as history shows, would be later criticized and corrected by future Israeli leaders in the brokered Land-for-Peace deal with its Arab neighbors .
Golda Meir was chosen as Israel’s first envoy to Moscow . There , was revealed to her the real view held by the Soviets about Israel. “Were it not for Stalin, “wrote Ilya Ehrenburg, a Soviet journalist in Pravda “ there would be no such thing as a Jewish state. The State of Israel has nothing to do with the Jews of the Soviet Union, where there is no Jewish problem and therefore no need for Israel.” These words fell in sharp contrast to the Jewish crowds that greeted and hailed her as their heroine in the Russian synagogues she visited.
Later, as her country’s Labour Minister, aside from employment, she tackled not only new immigrant housing problems, but housing for hundred of Arabs as well who remained in Israel . In 1953, she helped legislate for a Land Acquisition Law under which two-thirds of all the Arabs who put in claims were paid compensation, given back their property or given other property in its place . “…and none of them was asked to take a loyalty oath before the claim was honored. “,she narrates. Despite such assurances, Golda and other Israeli leaders were hard put in convincing Arabs to stay, mostly since the Arabs were terrified at being considered traitors to the Arab cause . Posed to answer the question ‘ why did we want Arabs to stay ?’,she answers diplomatically, but with a realistic undertone: “There were two very good reasons – first of all, we wanted to prove to the world that Jews and Arabs could live together…secondly, we knew perfectly well that if half a million Arabs left Palestine at that point, it would create a major economic upheaval in the country. “ During her incumbency in the Labour Ministry, she was also responsible for laying the foundations of Israel’s comprehensive social insurance system .
Eventually, as a“concensus candidate” and despite objections raised by the religious on her eligibility for the post as a woman, she was elected Prime Minister and Head of State of Israel . Despite the armistice agreements that brought relative peace to Israel, the Palestinian Fedayun (suicide troops) were trained, equipped and sustained by the Egyptian intelligence to remind the Arab populace that the War was not over, and at the same time to harass and embarrass Israel. The Fedayun operated from bases in Jordan and with every attack , would invite Israeli retaliation on Jordanian soil, for which Israel would receive UN Security Council condemnation .
Golda Meir’s era as Prime Minister was only as turbulent as the continuing Wars between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Israeli intelligence then (the forerunner of the Moshad) had been convinced that Colonel Nasser of Egypt, in his drive to wrest leadership from the Moslem states , had as his endgoal the annihilation of Israel. As Nasser moved to nationalize the Suez Canal, thereby restricting a possible route of supplies to Israel, the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) using French armor began the Sinai Campaign of 1956. Within 100 hours, under Moshe Dayan, the entire Sinai Peninsula fell into Israeli hands at a cost of 231 soldiers killed. The campaign succeeded not only in freeing an illegal blockade of Israeli training sites of the Fedayun in the Sinai Peninsula. As the Fedayun ceased to exist, however, in its place the Palestine Liberation Organization was organized, and its principal military arm, the Fatah, began its operations from across the Lebanese border. Although Israel was compelled to withdraw its forces from Sinai without security guarantees, ( except for the UNEF- United Nations Emergency Force) the campaign still bought them ten years of relative peace.
In 1967, with Russia’s support, Nasser mobilized 100,000 troops and succeeded in the withdrawal of the UNEF forces from the Sinai Peninsula. Thereafter, Nasser announced the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. This time, Syria and Jordan lent their Forces to the Egyptians.
Within the brief span of six days (The Six-Day War), the IDF overran the whole Sinai Peninsula up to the Suez Canal, took the entire West Bank of the River Jordan and in the last days, without the benefit of surprise, captured a great part of the Golan Heights, including Mount Hebron., the Old City of Jerusalem and the re-encounter with the place most revered by Jews, the Western (Wailing ) Wall . The following year, Nasser embarked on what was to be a lengthy and inconclusive war, The War of Attrition (1968-70).along the Bar-Lev Line on the Suez Canal where exchange of artillery fire escalated rapidly.
When the Israeli Air Force began its bombing attacks against targets in Egypt , Nasser turned to the Soviet Union not only for Russian equipment but for air and ground troops as well. Fearing a nuclear confrontation, the US and USSR agreed to a “ceasefire, stand-still formula of the Security Council.
Among the major military campaigns waged by Israel against its Arab attackers, none was too painful for Golda Meir to relate than the Yom-Kippur War of 1973. Egyptians and Syrians were able to seize the initiative by staging the attack during Yom-Kippur, the Day of Attonement , the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, when communications , work and radio were discouraged in favor of fasting and prayer. Although Israel, mainly through its naval craft carrying Gabriel sea-to-sea missiles, and US assistance, were able to reverse its fortunes despite the enemy’s initial strategic advantage, the Yom-Kippur War went down as aqualified failure in Israel’s history. The government was severely criticized for its lack of preparedness and Golda Meir received the most blame. Although the Agranat Commission of Inquiry had exonerated her of direct responsibility, Golda Meir bowed to what she felt was the “will of the people” and resigned in mid-1974 .
We did see decisiveness in her leadership but did we see flexibility ? On Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel to establish formal diplomatic relations in October, 1977, the woman present in the Knesset to greet him was none other than Golda Meir.
Her death due to cancer in December, 1978 at the age of 80 closed a vibrant chapter in Israeli history.Despite significant steps such as the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May,1994 which marked conciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, the resurrection of the rigid rightist policies in Israel today which may have been appropriate during Golda Meir’s time, threaten to steal the gains harnessed by the peace process. In this day and age when the question of Israel’s right to exist is more of a historical footnote than a valid question, continued Israeli intransigence in recognizing a Palestinian state to exist will only serve to fan the flames of Islamic Fundamentalism across the world., endangering global security. From Pakistani miltants ,the jihadists of Iraq, Malaysian mujahedins, to the Philippines’ Abbu Sayaf, the spillover of Golda Meir’s wars and the displacement of a people who, like the Israelis then, fight “with stones in their hands”,have produced multiple versions of Osama Bin Ladens throughout the world.
Apart from wondering ,as a student of history, if lessons would be largely ignored even by those who remember the past, the face of an eight year old Zionist revolutionary comes to mind - transported pale, exhausted and scared in Milwaukee ,who comically seemed to have started it all. It is the face of Golda Meir - the face of Israel , at its birth. It was the same face, though matured and worn in years that later greeted a former enemy, Anwar Sadat at the Knesset – a face that the World had hoped would represent Israel at its maturity, ready to live with its neighbors and accepted into the family of nations.
Events that would later unfold such as the murder of Yithzak Rabin, the Israeli leader who shook hands with Israel’s long-time nemesis, Yasser Arafat, and the rise of Ariel Sharon and his controversial version of a “Berlin Wall” protecting Israel seems to blur the prospects for peace in the region.
If Golda Meir were alive, what would she say to Ariel Sharon ? Would it be:
“The blood debts run deep, Ari. I know you’d rather see Arafat at the end of your missile rather than the end of a negotiating table, but there is no end in sight . Israel cannot live like a fortress forever. It cannot forever hang the badge of the Holocaust on its sleeve and expect the world’s pity while having to use the same maniacal methods our enemies use. We have to negotiate now with people who want their own homeland just like we wanted our own before. Better them than those crazy fundamentalists.!”
And what would Ariel Sharon answer? The Israelis should know .
