Golda Meir Dies: Israel's Iron Lady at Eighty
Golda Meir died in December 1978, eighty years old. She'd kept her lymphoma secret for twelve years while running Israel's foreign ministry and then the country itself. She was prime minister when Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 — a surprise attack that nearly destroyed the Israeli Army before the tide turned. She resigned in 1974, accepting responsibility for the intelligence failure, even though she'd been warned the attack was coming and chose to wait. She was born in Kyiv, raised in Milwaukee, and ended up the most powerful woman in the world in 1973. She didn't think "woman" was the interesting part of that sentence.
December 8, 1978
48 years ago
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