World Book - Golda Meir: with profiles of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin

• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Profile: David Ben-Gurion (18861973)
• Golda Meir (18981978)
  • Chronology and Introduction to Meirs Life
  • Chapter 1: Goldie in the Goldena Medina
  • Chapter 2: Immigration to Palestine
  • Chapter 3: Zionist Leadership
  • Chapter 4: Serving the New Nation
  • Chapter 5: Prime Minister
• Profile: Yitzhak Rabin (19221995)
• Notes
• Recommended Reading
• Glossary

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the following sources for the photographs in this volume. All maps are the exclusive property of World Book, Inc.

Corbis
Getty Images
Bar-Am Collection, Magnum Photos

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Archives

AP/Wide World

Biographical Connections takes a contextual approach in presenting the lives of important people. In each volume, there is a biography of a central figure. This biography is preceded and followed by profiles of other individuals whose lifework connects in some way to that of the central figure. The three subjects are associated through the influences they had on one another, the successes they achieved, or the goals they worked toward. The series includes men and women from around the world and throughout history in a variety of fields.

This volume presents three people who made significant contributions to the development of Israel, a modern nation established in an ancient land. Among their many accomplishments, each of them served as prime minister, the head of Israels government. David
Ben-Gurion, the subject of the opening profile, was Israels first prime minister. He served from 1948, when the nation of Israel officially came into being, until 1953 and from 1955 to 1963. Golda Meir, the central biography in this volume, was prime minister from 1969 to 1974. Yitzhak Rabin, the subject of the concluding biography, was prime minister from 1974 to 1977 and from 1992 until his assassination in 1995. In addition to feeling pride as leader of Israels people, each of these three individuals felt a special connection to the land itself. All three spent time early in their careers on communal farm settlements in the nation now known as Israel called kibbutzim. Many of these settlements were in sparsely populated areas where the work involved hard labor clearing rocks and draining mosquito-ridden swamps to make the soil suitable for agriculture. Ironically, each of the three leaders initially expected to live out his or her life in contentment on a kibbutz, yet each was destined for a larger role in Israels history.

Ben-Gurion was among the Jewish pioneers who left the Russian-ruled part of Europe in the early 1900s to settle in the southwestern Asian region, where the religious and cultural identity of the Jews began to develop as early as 1800 B.C. Most of the Jews were driven out of that region in the A.D. 130s by the Romans, who called the region Palaestina, a name that became Palestine in English. During the A.D. 600s, Muslim Arabs took control of Palestine and eventually made up most of the regions population. When Ben-Gurion arrived in 1906, Palestine was under Turkish rule as part of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish pioneers called themselves Zionists, because in Hebrew, the language of the Jewish people, the name for Palestine is Zion. The Zionists sought to build the new Jewish nation with their own hands and established the first kibbutzim. Ben-Gurion helped form an armed guard unit to defend Jewish settlements against Arab opponents. In the 1920s, he helped create a labor federation to unite various organizations of pioneers, farmers, and workers. In the 1930s, he oversaw the agency that directed Jewish affairs in Palestine until the independent State of Israel came into existence with a proclamation he publicly read.

Golda Meir also grew up in Russian-ruled Europe, but as a child moved to the United States with her family. By the time Meir emigrated to Palestine in 1921, it had been taken over by the British. Meir first lived on a kibbutz but soon became an activist in the growing labor movement. An engaging and persuasive public speaker, Meir spent much of her time in the 1930s traveling abroad to raise money for Zionism. Fluent in English, she made many subsequent successful appeals to the Jewish community of the United States, particularly for the financing that was vital to the new nations early survival against Arab attacks following Israels proclamation of independence. Meir served as minister of labor and minister of foreign affairs in the 1950s and 1960s before becoming prime minister.

Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem the year after Meir arrived in Palestine. His parents were Zionist pioneers who crossed paths with both Ben-Gurion and Meir. Rabin was a soldier in the 1940s. He fought for the establishment of an independent Jewish state, and he smuggled Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany into Palestine in defiance of British immigration restrictions. He continued his military career after Israel came into existence, defending the new country against Arab opposition. As head of the Israel Defense Forces, he planned the strategy for Israels spectacular victory against Arab forces in 1967 that made him a national hero. Soon afterward, he embarked on the political career that would lead him to the nations top office, where he would emerge as a strong leader for peace in the region.

David Ben-Gurion (behn GOO rih uhn) devoted his life to the establishment and maintenance of the Jewish homeland that came into existence in 1948 as the nation of Israel. He often is referred to as the founder of Israel, and he served as the nations first president. His keen mind and forceful personality made him a world leader respected by allies and enemies alike.