WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.600 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are opening 00:00:03.600 --> 00:00:07.519 a file that is, well, it's heavy. It's heavy 00:00:07.519 --> 00:00:10.240 with history, heavy with emotion, and just heavy 00:00:10.240 --> 00:00:12.439 with the kind of contradictions that make you 00:00:12.439 --> 00:00:14.720 stare at the ceiling at two in the morning. Yeah, 00:00:14.800 --> 00:00:17.120 trying to figure out how one person could contain 00:00:17.120 --> 00:00:20.199 them all. Exactly. We're talking about a figure 00:00:20.199 --> 00:00:24.820 who was somehow both the adorable cake baking 00:00:24.820 --> 00:00:28.519 grandmother of a nation. And at the same time, 00:00:28.559 --> 00:00:31.559 a chain smoking political operator who ordered 00:00:31.559 --> 00:00:34.020 assassinations. And who held the fate of the 00:00:34.020 --> 00:00:36.640 Middle East in her handbag, so to speak. It's 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:38.460 one of those biographies where if you wrote it 00:00:38.460 --> 00:00:40.780 as a novel, an editor would send it back saying, 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:43.079 tone it down. It's not believable. Too much. 00:00:43.140 --> 00:00:45.020 It's just too much. We are talking, of course, 00:00:45.039 --> 00:00:47.600 about Golda Meir. The Iron Lady. The original 00:00:47.600 --> 00:00:49.539 Iron Lady. And, you know, that's a crucial point. 00:00:49.600 --> 00:00:51.759 The press gave her that nickname a full decade 00:00:51.759 --> 00:00:54.259 before Margaret Thatcher even. set foot in Downing 00:00:54.259 --> 00:00:56.340 Street. So our mission for today isn't just to 00:00:56.340 --> 00:00:59.119 recount a Wikipedia page or list off a bunch 00:00:59.119 --> 00:01:02.159 of dates. We have a specific goal with this stack 00:01:02.159 --> 00:01:04.540 of sources we've been pouring over. Right. We 00:01:04.540 --> 00:01:06.840 need to try and reconcile the two Goldas that 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:09.739 history has left us. Version A and version B. 00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:13.439 Exactly. You have version A, the founding mother. 00:01:14.079 --> 00:01:17.000 the lioness of Zionism, the woman on the banknote 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:19.340 who represents the sheer miraculous survival 00:01:19.340 --> 00:01:21.780 of the state. And then you have version B, which 00:01:21.780 --> 00:01:23.659 I think has gotten a lot louder in recent years, 00:01:23.739 --> 00:01:27.129 the symbol of this. ossified leadership, the 00:01:27.129 --> 00:01:30.129 woman who was asleep at the wheel in 1973. And 00:01:30.129 --> 00:01:32.430 of course, the politician whose views on Palestinians 00:01:32.430 --> 00:01:35.930 are still radioactive today. So our goal is to 00:01:35.930 --> 00:01:39.310 find the aha moments, the things that explain 00:01:39.310 --> 00:01:41.790 how a carpenter's daughter from Milwaukee, of 00:01:41.790 --> 00:01:44.450 all places, ends up running a war room in Tel 00:01:44.450 --> 00:01:46.989 Aviv. We want to understand the steal, the survey, 00:01:47.150 --> 00:01:49.489 and yes, the massive, massive failures. And to 00:01:49.489 --> 00:01:51.909 do that, you can't start in Israel. You can't 00:01:51.909 --> 00:01:53.450 even start in Milwaukee. You have to go back 00:01:53.450 --> 00:01:54.829 further. We have to go all the way back to the 00:01:54.829 --> 00:01:58.299 Russians. Empire to Kiev in 1898. And the sources 00:01:58.299 --> 00:02:01.079 all point to this one memory that Golda herself 00:02:01.079 --> 00:02:03.620 said was the moment her life truly began. She's 00:02:03.620 --> 00:02:05.219 just a little girl, maybe four or five years 00:02:05.219 --> 00:02:07.260 old. And she's not playing with dolls or running 00:02:07.260 --> 00:02:10.900 in a field. No. She's standing in a hallway watching 00:02:10.900 --> 00:02:14.300 her father, Moshe, taking these big planks of 00:02:14.300 --> 00:02:17.120 wood and frantically nailing them across the 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:18.699 front door of their house. Because there's a 00:02:18.699 --> 00:02:22.000 pogrom coming? A mob. A mob is coming to attack 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:25.680 Jews. That image. It's like the rosebud of her 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:28.180 entire life, you know? It's the key that unlocks 00:02:28.180 --> 00:02:30.500 her whole psyche. She wrote about the rage she 00:02:30.500 --> 00:02:33.240 felt seeing her father, this big, strong man, 00:02:33.280 --> 00:02:36.560 a carpenter, reduced to complete and utter helplessness. 00:02:36.659 --> 00:02:39.120 He couldn't fight. He could only hide. And that 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:42.400 feeling of never again. It didn't start with 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:44.599 the Holocaust for her. It started right there 00:02:44.599 --> 00:02:47.219 in that hallway in Kiev. That was the foundational 00:02:47.219 --> 00:02:49.900 trauma. It frames absolutely everything. Her 00:02:49.900 --> 00:02:52.520 entire political philosophy later on. Yeah. It 00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:54.659 wasn't just about power or territory. It was 00:02:54.659 --> 00:02:56.900 about the absence of fear. Yes. It was about 00:02:56.900 --> 00:02:59.080 making sure that no Jew would ever have to be 00:02:59.080 --> 00:03:01.080 the person hiding behind a boarded -up door again. 00:03:01.560 --> 00:03:04.699 But they do get out. Her father leaves first, 00:03:04.860 --> 00:03:07.560 goes to New York, finds the unions there a bit 00:03:07.560 --> 00:03:09.979 too tough to crack, and ends up in Milwaukee, 00:03:10.240 --> 00:03:12.939 Wisconsin. And the rest of the family joins him 00:03:12.939 --> 00:03:16.360 in 1906. And this is the part of the story that 00:03:16.360 --> 00:03:18.599 always gets me. For the first big chunk of her 00:03:18.599 --> 00:03:21.400 life, Golda Meir wasn't really Israeli. She was 00:03:21.400 --> 00:03:23.599 an American teenager. She was Golda Mabovich 00:03:23.599 --> 00:03:26.139 from Milwaukee. And she spoke English with a 00:03:26.139 --> 00:03:29.259 perfect Midwest accent. But this was not some 00:03:29.259 --> 00:03:31.199 kind of, you know, leave it to beaver childhood. 00:03:31.860 --> 00:03:33.819 The sources are pretty clear that by the age 00:03:33.819 --> 00:03:37.000 of eight, eight years old. Unbelievable. She 00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.740 is basically running her mother's grocery store. 00:03:40.139 --> 00:03:42.219 on the north side of town. Because her mother 00:03:42.219 --> 00:03:43.900 has to go to the market at four in the morning 00:03:43.900 --> 00:03:46.680 to buy supplies. Right. And this is where you 00:03:46.680 --> 00:03:49.599 see the builder archetype emerge almost immediately. 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:53.259 There's this incredible anecdote from 1908 that 00:03:53.259 --> 00:03:55.460 I think just perfectly sums up who she would 00:03:55.460 --> 00:03:58.020 become. The textbooks. The textbooks. She's in 00:03:58.020 --> 00:04:00.520 grade school. She sees her classmates can't afford 00:04:00.520 --> 00:04:02.860 their textbooks. Now, most kids, what do they 00:04:02.860 --> 00:04:04.900 do? They feel bad. Maybe they complain to the 00:04:04.900 --> 00:04:06.800 teacher. Maybe share their book if they're nice. 00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:09.430 Golda organizes a fundraiser. She doesn't just 00:04:09.430 --> 00:04:13.009 organize a fundraiser. She creates a whole society, 00:04:13.310 --> 00:04:16.850 the American Young Sisters Society. I mean, even 00:04:16.850 --> 00:04:20.189 the name sounds so serious and official. It sounds 00:04:20.189 --> 00:04:22.230 cute, but look at the logistics she pulled off. 00:04:22.430 --> 00:04:25.170 She's maybe 10 years old. She rents a hall. She 00:04:25.170 --> 00:04:28.269 mobilizes a committee of her friends. She schedules 00:04:28.269 --> 00:04:30.670 a public meeting and gets up and gives a speech 00:04:30.670 --> 00:04:33.069 to a room full of adults to raise capital. That 00:04:33.069 --> 00:04:35.579 is terrifyingly competent. I was still trying 00:04:35.579 --> 00:04:37.420 to figure out how to tie my own shoelaces at 00:04:37.420 --> 00:04:40.120 that age. It's a complete precursor. I mean, 00:04:40.139 --> 00:04:42.600 the exact mechanism she used to get textbooks 00:04:42.600 --> 00:04:44.980 in Milwaukee is the same one she used 40 years 00:04:44.980 --> 00:04:47.540 later to buy spitfires and tanks for the Israeli 00:04:47.540 --> 00:04:49.939 army. She understood it instinctively. She got 00:04:49.939 --> 00:04:52.519 it early on. If you want to change reality, you 00:04:52.519 --> 00:04:55.180 don't pray, you don't ask for permission, you 00:04:55.180 --> 00:04:58.779 organize. You pool your resources and you act. 00:04:58.959 --> 00:05:02.199 But that knack for organizing. Yeah. It didn't 00:05:02.199 --> 00:05:03.860 seem to extend to her own family life, which 00:05:03.860 --> 00:05:06.279 sounds incredibly stifling. Oh, very much so. 00:05:06.579 --> 00:05:09.639 Her mother, Bloom, was very traditional. The 00:05:09.639 --> 00:05:12.180 plan was simple. You finish a little bit of school, 00:05:12.339 --> 00:05:14.220 you find a good husband, you learn to bake bread, 00:05:14.399 --> 00:05:17.040 and that's your life. That was the ceiling of 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:19.300 ambition her mother had for her. And Golda was 00:05:19.300 --> 00:05:22.819 having none of it. Not a chance. She rebels hard. 00:05:23.389 --> 00:05:25.410 She runs away from home. She gets on a train 00:05:25.410 --> 00:05:27.370 and goes to Denver to live with her older sister, 00:05:27.529 --> 00:05:29.810 Shana. And we really need to double click on 00:05:29.810 --> 00:05:32.689 this Denver period. The sources frame this as 00:05:32.689 --> 00:05:35.610 her real university. She didn't go to some Ivy 00:05:35.610 --> 00:05:37.949 League school. She went to Shana's living room. 00:05:38.139 --> 00:05:40.519 the intellectual evenings. It was basically a 00:05:40.519 --> 00:05:43.560 salon in the classic European sense. Right. You 00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:47.000 had anarchists, socialists, Zionists, trade unionists. 00:05:47.060 --> 00:05:49.279 All chain smoking and drinking tea and arguing 00:05:49.279 --> 00:05:51.660 about the fate of the world until sunrise. And 00:05:51.660 --> 00:05:53.660 this is where Golda gets radicalized in the best 00:05:53.660 --> 00:05:55.980 sense of that word. She moves from a sort of 00:05:55.980 --> 00:06:00.560 vague cultural Jewish identity to a hard edged, 00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:04.000 very specific political ideology. Socialist Zionism. 00:06:04.569 --> 00:06:06.790 Exactly. And we should probably define that because 00:06:06.790 --> 00:06:09.529 those words get thrown around a lot. What did 00:06:09.529 --> 00:06:12.069 socialist Zionism actually mean to a teenager 00:06:12.069 --> 00:06:15.990 in Denver in, say, 1913? It wasn't just about 00:06:15.990 --> 00:06:18.170 having a country, right? No, it was so much more 00:06:18.170 --> 00:06:20.470 than that. It meant that the return of the Jewish 00:06:20.470 --> 00:06:23.189 people to their homeland had to be a revolution 00:06:23.189 --> 00:06:26.540 of labor. They wanted to create a new kind of 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:29.699 Jew, a Jew who was strong, who worked the land, 00:06:29.939 --> 00:06:32.399 who lived in these communes, these kibbutzim, 00:06:32.439 --> 00:06:35.519 sharing everything. A rejection of the old stereotypes. 00:06:35.720 --> 00:06:38.160 A total rejection of the merchant or intellectual 00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:40.860 stereotype. It was about becoming a worker. It 00:06:40.860 --> 00:06:42.480 wasn't just about building a country. It was 00:06:42.480 --> 00:06:44.620 about building a utopia. And somewhere in the 00:06:44.620 --> 00:06:46.779 middle of all this high -minded debate, amidst 00:06:46.779 --> 00:06:49.120 all the tea and the cigarette smoke, she meets 00:06:49.120 --> 00:06:52.360 a guy. Morris Meyerson, the sign painter. who 00:06:52.360 --> 00:06:54.759 sounds like he was her complete opposite. The 00:06:54.759 --> 00:06:58.019 sources describe him as gentle, quiet. He loved 00:06:58.019 --> 00:07:01.160 poetry. He loved music. He just wanted a peaceful 00:07:01.160 --> 00:07:04.459 evening at home. And she's this, tornado of political 00:07:04.459 --> 00:07:08.060 activity. But they fall in love. They do. But 00:07:08.060 --> 00:07:11.519 even in romance, Gold is a negotiator. When they 00:07:11.519 --> 00:07:13.959 decide to get married in 1917, back in Milwaukee, 00:07:14.319 --> 00:07:18.220 she hits him with an ultimatum, a literal precondition 00:07:18.220 --> 00:07:20.879 for the marriage certificate. She says, I will 00:07:20.879 --> 00:07:23.420 marry you, but on one condition. We are moving 00:07:23.420 --> 00:07:26.360 to Palestine. Which is such a heavy ask. Yeah. 00:07:26.439 --> 00:07:29.220 Hey, honey, let's leave, you know, modern America 00:07:29.220 --> 00:07:31.540 with its plumbing and its electricity and move 00:07:31.540 --> 00:07:35.240 to malaria infested backwater of the crumbling 00:07:35.240 --> 00:07:37.699 Ottoman Empire. And Morris, bless his heart, 00:07:37.779 --> 00:07:39.639 he agrees. Maybe he thought she'd grow out of 00:07:39.639 --> 00:07:41.459 it or maybe he was just that much in love. I 00:07:41.459 --> 00:07:44.240 don't know. But they arrive in 1921 on a ship 00:07:44.240 --> 00:07:47.100 called the SS Pocahontas. And the reality check 00:07:47.100 --> 00:07:50.040 must have been brutal. Oh, immediate. They apply 00:07:50.040 --> 00:07:53.199 to join a kibbutz, kibbutz Moravia. And they 00:07:53.199 --> 00:07:55.680 get rejected. They get rejected. The kibbutz 00:07:55.680 --> 00:07:57.720 members looked at this American girl with her 00:07:57.720 --> 00:08:00.480 nice clothes and she actually brought an electric 00:08:00.480 --> 00:08:02.259 iron with her. Oh, that's amazing. And they just 00:08:02.259 --> 00:08:04.480 assumed she was a princess. They thought, she 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:06.199 won't last a week in the fields. She'll break 00:08:06.199 --> 00:08:08.519 a nail and run back to Milwaukee. So she has 00:08:08.519 --> 00:08:11.459 to prove them wrong. The sources describe her 00:08:11.459 --> 00:08:15.449 work. Picking almonds. planting trees, and eventually 00:08:15.449 --> 00:08:17.569 taking over the chicken coops. And apparently 00:08:17.569 --> 00:08:19.910 she was fanatical about it. She wanted to be 00:08:19.910 --> 00:08:22.329 the perfect worker. She wanted to prove she could 00:08:22.329 --> 00:08:25.310 suffer and toil just as much as anyone born there. 00:08:25.470 --> 00:08:27.810 It was a point of pride. But the Kibbutz saw 00:08:27.810 --> 00:08:29.550 the same thing we saw in that Milwaukee story. 00:08:29.670 --> 00:08:32.529 They saw a leader. Exactly. They realized, okay, 00:08:32.570 --> 00:08:35.009 she's a hard worker, but her real talents are 00:08:35.009 --> 00:08:38.179 being wasted on chickens. This woman is an incredible 00:08:38.179 --> 00:08:40.720 organizer. She's a brilliant talker. So they 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:42.799 pull her out of the fields. And they send her 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:46.240 as their representative to the Institute, the 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:48.559 General Federation of Labor. And that's the beginning 00:08:48.559 --> 00:08:50.559 of her political career. But what about poor 00:08:50.559 --> 00:08:53.539 Morris? Morris just couldn't adapt. He hated 00:08:53.539 --> 00:08:56.399 the physical labor. He hated the communal living 00:08:56.399 --> 00:08:59.600 with its total lack of privacy. He got sick. 00:08:59.720 --> 00:09:02.940 He was deeply unhappy. And this becomes a really 00:09:02.940 --> 00:09:05.340 tragic thread in her life. Her rise to power. 00:09:05.740 --> 00:09:07.779 It basically comes at the direct cost of her 00:09:07.779 --> 00:09:10.639 marriage. They separated years later, though 00:09:10.639 --> 00:09:13.519 they never actually divorced. She shows the cause 00:09:13.519 --> 00:09:16.360 over the home every single time. Which brings 00:09:16.360 --> 00:09:20.480 us to the pivotal year, 1948. The state of Israel 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:22.919 is about to be declared. The British are pulling 00:09:22.919 --> 00:09:25.940 out. Five Arab armies are warming up their tanks 00:09:25.940 --> 00:09:29.360 on the borders. And the Jewish leadership has 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.039 a massive... Massive problem. They're broke. 00:09:32.320 --> 00:09:34.860 Utterly broke. They have people willing to fight, 00:09:34.919 --> 00:09:37.580 but they have no heavy weapons, no planes, no 00:09:37.580 --> 00:09:41.360 tanks. The treasurer of the Jewish agency, a 00:09:41.360 --> 00:09:44.620 man named Eliezer Kaplan, does the math. He figures 00:09:44.620 --> 00:09:47.759 they need about $7 to $8 million just to survive 00:09:47.759 --> 00:09:49.820 the first few weeks. And he doesn't think he 00:09:49.820 --> 00:09:52.759 can get it. He thinks maybe, maybe he can scrape 00:09:52.759 --> 00:09:55.539 that together from American donors. But the mood 00:09:55.539 --> 00:09:58.240 in the U .S. was donor fatigue. They'd been giving 00:09:58.240 --> 00:10:00.240 for years. And this is when Golda steps in and 00:10:00.240 --> 00:10:02.600 says, let me go. And Kaplan, the treasurer, actually 00:10:02.600 --> 00:10:04.480 tried to stop her. He said, the Americans are 00:10:04.480 --> 00:10:06.539 tired of giving. You won't get a dime. Don't 00:10:06.539 --> 00:10:09.100 waste the money on a plane ticket. She went anyway. 00:10:09.419 --> 00:10:11.679 And she didn't just go to New York. She crisscrossed 00:10:11.679 --> 00:10:13.990 the country. And she didn't have a PowerPoint 00:10:13.990 --> 00:10:16.889 presentation or a slick video. She just stood 00:10:16.889 --> 00:10:19.889 up there with no notes, this intense woman from 00:10:19.889 --> 00:10:22.429 Milwaukee, and she just told these crowds of 00:10:22.429 --> 00:10:25.269 American Jews the truth. What did she say? She 00:10:25.269 --> 00:10:27.549 basically said, we are going to fight. If we 00:10:27.549 --> 00:10:29.629 have guns, we'll fight with guns. If not, we'll 00:10:29.629 --> 00:10:32.190 fight with stones. But you have to decide if 00:10:32.190 --> 00:10:35.690 we are going to live or die. If we die... The 00:10:35.690 --> 00:10:38.250 dream dies with us. And the money just starts 00:10:38.250 --> 00:10:41.889 pouring in. Raining down. She raised over $50 00:10:41.889 --> 00:10:46.429 million. In 1948 dollars. In 1948 dollars. Adjusted 00:10:46.429 --> 00:10:48.049 for inflation, you're talking about hundreds 00:10:48.049 --> 00:10:50.590 of millions, maybe a billion in terms of purchasing 00:10:50.590 --> 00:10:54.100 power for a tiny brand new state. It completely 00:10:54.100 --> 00:10:57.019 changed the trajectory of the war. Ben -Gurion's 00:10:57.019 --> 00:10:59.100 famous quote. David Ben -Gurion, the first prime 00:10:59.100 --> 00:11:01.340 minister, said, Someday when history is written, 00:11:01.480 --> 00:11:03.039 it will be said that there was a Jewish woman 00:11:03.039 --> 00:11:04.980 who got the money which made the state possible. 00:11:05.259 --> 00:11:08.240 It funded a third of the entire war effort. Incredible. 00:11:08.279 --> 00:11:11.000 She literally bought the weapons that saved the 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:13.919 country. So she funded the war. But she also 00:11:13.919 --> 00:11:16.879 tried to stop it, or at least manage the odds 00:11:16.879 --> 00:11:19.799 through some incredibly risky personal diplomacy. 00:11:20.139 --> 00:11:22.779 This is the spy thriller part of her story. It 00:11:22.779 --> 00:11:25.919 really is. It's May 1948, just days before independence 00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:28.279 is declared. She needs to know one thing for 00:11:28.279 --> 00:11:31.179 certain. Is King Abdullah I of Jordan going to 00:11:31.179 --> 00:11:33.539 join the other Arab armies and invade? So what 00:11:33.539 --> 00:11:35.840 does she do? She disguises herself as an Arab 00:11:35.840 --> 00:11:38.500 woman. I just... I still can't get over this 00:11:38.500 --> 00:11:41.539 image. Golda Meir in full traditional Arab dress, 00:11:41.720 --> 00:11:45.139 getting in a car, crossing enemy lines, and driving 00:11:45.139 --> 00:11:47.220 to Amman for a secret meeting with a king. The 00:11:47.220 --> 00:11:49.220 danger is immense. If she's caught, she's not 00:11:49.220 --> 00:11:51.779 just a prisoner of war. She's a spy. She's dead. 00:11:52.740 --> 00:11:55.639 So she gets to the meeting. And it's this fascinating 00:11:55.639 --> 00:11:58.340 clash of worlds. She reminds Abdullah that he 00:11:58.340 --> 00:12:00.700 had promised in a previous secret meeting not 00:12:00.700 --> 00:12:03.990 to attack. And Abdullah gives this very... poetic 00:12:03.990 --> 00:12:07.070 and very sad answer. He says, when I made that 00:12:07.070 --> 00:12:10.669 promise, I was alone. Now I am one of five, meaning 00:12:10.669 --> 00:12:13.309 the other Arab leaders. He said the pressure 00:12:13.309 --> 00:12:15.389 was just too great. And he asks her to wait. 00:12:15.789 --> 00:12:17.990 He says, why are you in such a hurry to declare 00:12:17.990 --> 00:12:21.149 independence? And her response is just legendary. 00:12:21.509 --> 00:12:25.129 It's pure Golda. She looks at him and says, we've 00:12:25.129 --> 00:12:27.690 been waiting for 2000 years. Is that being in 00:12:27.690 --> 00:12:30.879 a hurry? The steal. Yeah. Just. Pure steel. Right. 00:12:30.980 --> 00:12:32.919 And she walked away from that meeting knowing 00:12:32.919 --> 00:12:35.840 that war was unavoidable. She failed to stop 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:38.059 it, but she succeeded in confirming the intelligence. 00:12:38.379 --> 00:12:41.440 She came back and told Ben -Gurion, prepare for 00:12:41.440 --> 00:12:45.179 the absolute worst. So the war happens. Israel 00:12:45.179 --> 00:12:48.340 survives against all odds. Golda signs the Declaration 00:12:48.340 --> 00:12:50.639 of Independence. She's one of only two women 00:12:50.639 --> 00:12:53.360 to do so. Right. And then her reward for all 00:12:53.360 --> 00:12:57.139 this is not a cabinet post in Tel Aviv. No. She 00:12:57.139 --> 00:12:59.100 gets shipped off to Moscow. Which she hated, 00:12:59.139 --> 00:13:00.940 apparently. She felt like she was being exiled 00:13:00.940 --> 00:13:03.059 from the main event. She was appointed minister 00:13:03.059 --> 00:13:05.960 plenipotentiary to the Soviet Union. And this 00:13:05.960 --> 00:13:08.279 posting leads to what's known as the Rosh Hashanah 00:13:08.279 --> 00:13:09.919 incident, which is one of the most emotional 00:13:09.919 --> 00:13:12.179 moments in modern Jewish history. You really 00:13:12.179 --> 00:13:14.269 have to understand the context here. This is 00:13:14.269 --> 00:13:16.549 Stalin's Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain is down. 00:13:16.750 --> 00:13:19.370 Soviet Jews are terrified. Their culture is being 00:13:19.370 --> 00:13:22.470 systematically crushed. Hebrew is banned. Zionism 00:13:22.470 --> 00:13:24.990 is a capital crime. So Golda decides to go to 00:13:24.990 --> 00:13:27.009 the Moscow Choral Synagogue for the New Year 00:13:27.009 --> 00:13:29.909 services. She probably expected to find a few 00:13:29.909 --> 00:13:33.169 old men praying quietly in the shadows. But when 00:13:33.169 --> 00:13:35.750 she arrives, the street is packed. Completely 00:13:35.750 --> 00:13:39.090 packed. Estimates say up to 50 ,000 people showed 00:13:39.090 --> 00:13:41.789 up. They are risking their jobs, their freedom, 00:13:41.909 --> 00:13:44.809 maybe their lives. to be there. And when they 00:13:44.809 --> 00:13:47.250 see her, the living, breathing representative 00:13:47.250 --> 00:13:50.870 of this new Jewish state, they just erupt. And 00:13:50.870 --> 00:13:53.409 they're chanting. They're chanting Nasha Golda, 00:13:53.490 --> 00:13:56.649 which is Russian for our Golda. That must have 00:13:56.649 --> 00:13:59.080 been an absolutely electrifying moment. It terrified 00:13:59.080 --> 00:14:01.480 the Soviet authorities. It was this spontaneous 00:14:01.480 --> 00:14:04.000 proof that despite decades of brutal suppression, 00:14:04.340 --> 00:14:06.460 Jewish identity was still alive and kicking. 00:14:07.000 --> 00:14:10.059 For Golda, it was a profound validation of everything 00:14:10.059 --> 00:14:12.200 she believed in. That the state wasn't just for 00:14:12.200 --> 00:14:14.000 the people living there? No, it was a beacon. 00:14:14.139 --> 00:14:16.620 It was a source of pride and hope for Jews trapped 00:14:16.620 --> 00:14:19.200 everywhere. She wrote later that she felt like 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:21.360 she was dissolving into the crowd, that the boundary 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:23.919 between her and them had just vanished. She eventually 00:14:23.919 --> 00:14:26.519 comes back to Israel and gets the job she always 00:14:26.519 --> 00:14:29.570 wanted. what she later called her seven beautiful 00:14:29.570 --> 00:14:32.370 years. She becomes the minister of labor in 1949. 00:14:32.909 --> 00:14:36.710 And this is where the revolutionary ideals meet 00:14:36.710 --> 00:14:39.570 the brutal reality of governing. It's one thing 00:14:39.570 --> 00:14:42.529 to talk about building a socialist utopia in 00:14:42.529 --> 00:14:44.730 a Denver living room. It's another thing entirely 00:14:44.730 --> 00:14:47.809 when you're the minister of labor in 1950. Israel's 00:14:47.809 --> 00:14:51.309 population is doubling, then tripling. Immigrants 00:14:51.309 --> 00:14:53.409 are pouring in from the displaced persons camps 00:14:53.409 --> 00:14:57.029 in Europe, Holocaust survivors, and then... Huge 00:14:57.029 --> 00:15:00.149 waves from Arab countries, Iraq, Yemen, Morocco. 00:15:00.610 --> 00:15:03.129 And they arrived with nothing. No money, no Hebrew, 00:15:03.289 --> 00:15:05.669 and literally nowhere to sleep. This is the era 00:15:05.669 --> 00:15:07.769 of the Marlboro, the transit camps. We're talking 00:15:07.769 --> 00:15:10.629 about tent cities. Tent cities, tin huts, mud 00:15:10.629 --> 00:15:12.830 in the winter, baking heat in the summer, disease, 00:15:13.049 --> 00:15:15.980 unemployment, despair. And gold is the person 00:15:15.980 --> 00:15:18.299 responsible for fixing this nightmare. And she 00:15:18.299 --> 00:15:20.120 was ruthless about it. About the construction. 00:15:20.379 --> 00:15:22.779 Absolutely ruthless. She oversaw the construction 00:15:22.779 --> 00:15:26.659 of 200 ,000 apartments. Now, were they pretty? 00:15:26.759 --> 00:15:30.179 No. They were these brutalist concrete blocks, 00:15:30.440 --> 00:15:33.019 these shikunim. But she got people out of the 00:15:33.019 --> 00:15:35.379 tents and into homes with a roof and a door. 00:15:35.600 --> 00:15:37.960 She was also building the welfare state. Social 00:15:37.960 --> 00:15:40.480 security, maternity leave, health care infrastructure. 00:15:41.039 --> 00:15:43.019 This goes back to the core contradiction we talked 00:15:43.019 --> 00:15:45.860 about at the start. If Golda had retired in, 00:15:45.919 --> 00:15:49.659 say, 1965, she would be remembered almost universally 00:15:49.659 --> 00:15:52.679 as the great builder, the social architect. A 00:15:52.679 --> 00:15:55.120 mother of the welfare state. Exactly. She was 00:15:55.120 --> 00:15:58.080 literally constructing brick by brick the country 00:15:58.080 --> 00:15:59.919 she had dreamed of all those years ago. Then 00:15:59.919 --> 00:16:03.519 comes the foreign ministry in 1956. And this 00:16:03.519 --> 00:16:06.039 is where she stops being Golda Meyerson. And 00:16:06.039 --> 00:16:08.759 becomes Golda Meir. Why the name change? It was 00:16:08.759 --> 00:16:11.720 Ben -Gurion's policy. He insisted that all foreign 00:16:11.720 --> 00:16:14.299 service members, all diplomats representing Israel 00:16:14.299 --> 00:16:17.620 abroad have Hebrew names. So Meyerson, her married 00:16:17.620 --> 00:16:20.799 name, became Meir. Which means illuminate or 00:16:20.799 --> 00:16:24.539 burn brightly. Pretty fitting, I'd say. And her 00:16:24.539 --> 00:16:26.659 time as foreign minister is interesting. She 00:16:26.659 --> 00:16:28.399 seems to have focused very heavily on Africa. 00:16:28.879 --> 00:16:31.820 What was the thinking there? Well, she saw a 00:16:31.820 --> 00:16:34.220 kind of shared experience. Israel was a young 00:16:34.220 --> 00:16:36.759 nation that had thrown off. British colonial 00:16:36.759 --> 00:16:40.399 rule. These newly independent African nations 00:16:40.399 --> 00:16:43.039 were throwing off British, French, Belgian colonial 00:16:43.039 --> 00:16:45.460 rule. So there was a sense of solidarity. Sense 00:16:45.460 --> 00:16:48.080 of solidarity. Absolutely. She believed Israel 00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:50.559 could be a model that they could teach these 00:16:50.559 --> 00:16:52.679 new countries how to build a nation from scratch. 00:16:52.919 --> 00:16:54.919 You know, irrigation techniques, agricultural 00:16:54.919 --> 00:16:58.120 co -ops, public health clinics. It was soft power. 00:16:58.600 --> 00:17:00.820 but also something more. I think so. The sources 00:17:00.820 --> 00:17:03.360 suggest she was genuinely invested in this idea 00:17:03.360 --> 00:17:05.980 of an alliance of young post -colonial nations, 00:17:06.220 --> 00:17:08.859 and she traveled extensively building relationships 00:17:08.859 --> 00:17:11.420 and alliances that actually lasted for decades. 00:17:11.920 --> 00:17:14.000 Okay, so she does all that, then she retires 00:17:14.000 --> 00:17:17.599 in 1966. She's tired. Yeah. And we now know she's 00:17:17.599 --> 00:17:20.099 sick. She has lymphoma, though she keeps it a 00:17:20.099 --> 00:17:21.960 complete secret from the public. She thinks she's 00:17:21.960 --> 00:17:25.759 done. And then, in 1969, Prime Minister Levi 00:17:25.759 --> 00:17:28.650 Eshkol dies suddenly of heart attack. The Labor 00:17:28.650 --> 00:17:31.589 Party is in chaos and they need a unifying figure, 00:17:31.730 --> 00:17:34.630 a stabilizing hand to hold the coalition together. 00:17:34.849 --> 00:17:36.990 And they look around the room and there's Golda, 00:17:37.029 --> 00:17:39.410 the grandmother of the nation. She's 71 years 00:17:39.410 --> 00:17:41.269 old. And she becomes the prime minister. The 00:17:41.269 --> 00:17:43.670 accidental prime minister. And, you know, initially 00:17:43.670 --> 00:17:46.809 she is wildly popular. She leads the party to 00:17:46.809 --> 00:17:49.410 its best ever election result. She's this tough 00:17:49.410 --> 00:17:53.039 but motherly figure. But this. This is where 00:17:53.039 --> 00:17:55.599 the conception begins to take hold. And it's 00:17:55.599 --> 00:17:57.759 where her legacy gets really, really complicated. 00:17:58.140 --> 00:18:00.579 Let's talk about that. Because her time as prime 00:18:00.579 --> 00:18:03.400 minister is really defined by two massive blind 00:18:03.400 --> 00:18:06.480 spots. Her blindness to the Palestinian issue 00:18:06.480 --> 00:18:08.960 and her blindness to the war drums beating in 00:18:08.960 --> 00:18:12.559 1973. They're connected in a way. They both stem 00:18:12.559 --> 00:18:15.980 from a kind of intellectual rigidity. A certainty 00:18:15.980 --> 00:18:18.099 that her view of the world was the only correct 00:18:18.099 --> 00:18:19.839 one. Let's start with the Palestinians. There's 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:22.059 a quote from a 1969 interview with the Sunday 00:18:22.059 --> 00:18:24.619 Times that has haunted her legacy ever since. 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:28.079 Oh, it's the they did not exist quote. It's probably 00:18:28.079 --> 00:18:30.819 the single most famous or infamous thing she 00:18:30.819 --> 00:18:32.819 ever said. The interviewer asked her about the 00:18:32.819 --> 00:18:35.480 rise of the Palestinian fedayeen, the fighters. 00:18:35.920 --> 00:18:38.869 And Golda said, quote. There was no such thing 00:18:38.869 --> 00:18:41.029 as Palestinians. It was not as though there was 00:18:41.029 --> 00:18:43.069 a Palestinian people in Palestine considering 00:18:43.069 --> 00:18:45.609 itself as a Palestinian people. And we came and 00:18:45.609 --> 00:18:47.289 threw them out and took their country from them. 00:18:47.369 --> 00:18:49.930 They did not exist. Hearing that today, I mean, 00:18:49.930 --> 00:18:51.650 it's just shocking. It sounds like a complete 00:18:51.650 --> 00:18:53.890 denial of reality. And the sources are clear. 00:18:53.930 --> 00:18:55.509 This wasn't just a slip of the tongue. This was 00:18:55.509 --> 00:18:58.700 her deeply held worldview. It was. She was an 00:18:58.700 --> 00:19:01.079 old school, dyed in the wool Zionist who saw 00:19:01.079 --> 00:19:04.720 the conflict in very simple terms. It was Jews 00:19:04.720 --> 00:19:08.180 versus Arabs. She did not recognize a distinct, 00:19:08.380 --> 00:19:11.539 separate Palestinian national identity. To her, 00:19:11.539 --> 00:19:13.700 they were just southern Syrians or Jordanians 00:19:13.700 --> 00:19:15.640 who happened to live in the area. And that blindness 00:19:15.640 --> 00:19:18.859 had consequences. Massive consequences. It meant 00:19:18.859 --> 00:19:21.740 she completely underestimated the rise of Palestinian 00:19:21.740 --> 00:19:24.940 nationalism and the power of the PLO. She thought 00:19:24.940 --> 00:19:26.880 she could just manage the status quo and the 00:19:26.920 --> 00:19:29.299 occupied territories forever, that it was a problem 00:19:29.299 --> 00:19:31.220 that could be contained, not one that had to 00:19:31.220 --> 00:19:34.019 be solved politically. That same rigidity that 00:19:34.019 --> 00:19:37.119 I know I'm right attitude, it served her well 00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:38.900 when she was fundraising, but it's incredibly 00:19:38.900 --> 00:19:41.140 dangerous when you're conducting diplomacy. And 00:19:41.140 --> 00:19:44.200 you see again in 1972 with the Munich Olympics 00:19:44.200 --> 00:19:47.000 massacre. Right. The Black September attack. 00:19:47.319 --> 00:19:50.299 Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches murdered 00:19:50.299 --> 00:19:53.220 on global television. Golda appealed to the world 00:19:53.220 --> 00:19:56.059 to save our citizens. And when the international... 00:19:56.140 --> 00:19:59.779 was, in her view, weak and ineffective, she didn't 00:19:59.779 --> 00:20:02.700 hesitate. She authorized the Mossad to hunt down 00:20:02.700 --> 00:20:05.000 and assassinate every single person believed 00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:07.619 to be responsible. Operation Wrath of God. It 00:20:07.619 --> 00:20:10.180 showed her ruthless streak. When it came to protecting 00:20:10.180 --> 00:20:12.400 Israelis, there was no line she wouldn't cross. 00:20:12.599 --> 00:20:15.319 But that ruthlessness, or maybe that overconfidence, 00:20:15.539 --> 00:20:17.940 it eventually backfired spectacularly. Which 00:20:17.940 --> 00:20:21.599 brings us to the tragedy. October 1973. The Yom 00:20:21.599 --> 00:20:24.059 Kippur War. This is the fall. And to understand 00:20:24.059 --> 00:20:26.559 what happened, you have to understand the Israeli 00:20:26.559 --> 00:20:28.579 mindset at the time. You have to understand what 00:20:28.579 --> 00:20:31.720 they called the conception, or in Hebrew, ha 00:20:31.720 --> 00:20:33.660 -conceptia. Walk us through that. What was the 00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:37.599 conception? In a nutshell, it was supreme overconfidence. 00:20:38.420 --> 00:20:41.480 After Israel's stunning six day victory in the 00:20:41.480 --> 00:20:45.140 1967 war, the Israeli military and intelligence 00:20:45.140 --> 00:20:47.740 community convinced themselves of a very specific 00:20:47.740 --> 00:20:50.720 narrative. Which was? That the Arabs knew they 00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:52.859 couldn't possibly win a conventional war against 00:20:52.859 --> 00:20:54.900 Israel and therefore they wouldn't even try. 00:20:55.519 --> 00:20:57.759 Specifically, the conception was that Egypt would 00:20:57.759 --> 00:20:59.819 not attack until it had an air force capable 00:20:59.819 --> 00:21:02.279 of striking deep into Israel, which was years 00:21:02.279 --> 00:21:05.319 away. So any evidence to the contrary was just 00:21:05.319 --> 00:21:07.240 dismissed. It was filtered through this lens 00:21:07.240 --> 00:21:09.579 of arrogance. Golda was actually getting raw 00:21:09.579 --> 00:21:11.539 intelligence reports in the weeks leading up 00:21:11.539 --> 00:21:14.519 to the war. Hey, the Syrians are massing hundreds 00:21:14.519 --> 00:21:17.180 of tanks on the Golan Heights. The Egyptians 00:21:17.180 --> 00:21:19.359 are moving massive amounts of equipment to the 00:21:19.359 --> 00:21:21.880 Suez Canal. And she was worried. The sources 00:21:21.880 --> 00:21:23.660 say she had a gut feeling that something was 00:21:23.660 --> 00:21:27.170 wrong. She was. On October 5th, the day before 00:21:27.170 --> 00:21:29.230 the war broke out, she called in her military 00:21:29.230 --> 00:21:32.150 advisors. Her defense minister, the legendary 00:21:32.150 --> 00:21:35.210 Moshe Dayan, was there, and she asked them point 00:21:35.210 --> 00:21:37.809 blank, are you sure we're safe? And they basically 00:21:37.809 --> 00:21:40.009 patted her on the head. They told her, don't 00:21:40.009 --> 00:21:42.089 worry, Golda, it's just maneuvers. The Arabs 00:21:42.089 --> 00:21:44.430 are too weak to attack. Don't panic. They were 00:21:44.430 --> 00:21:46.950 prisoners of their own conception. Until 4 o 00:21:46.950 --> 00:21:50.140 'clock in the morning on October 6th. Yom Kippur. 00:21:50.359 --> 00:21:52.920 The holiest day of the Jewish year. The country 00:21:52.920 --> 00:21:55.319 is shut down. People are in synagogue. And the 00:21:55.319 --> 00:21:57.480 phone rings in Golda's residence. It's her military 00:21:57.480 --> 00:22:01.000 secretary. And he says, it's not maneuvers. War 00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:03.960 is starting today. Probably at sunset. So now 00:22:03.960 --> 00:22:05.819 she has a decision to make. And this is probably 00:22:05.819 --> 00:22:09.140 the most debated, most agonizing moment in Israeli 00:22:09.140 --> 00:22:11.599 military history. Her chief of staff, David Elazar, 00:22:11.740 --> 00:22:14.039 wants to launch an immediate preemptive strike. 00:22:14.240 --> 00:22:16.819 Hit the Egyptian and Syrian air forces on the 00:22:16.819 --> 00:22:19.849 ground, just like they did in 67. annihilate 00:22:19.849 --> 00:22:21.710 them before they can even get off the ground. 00:22:21.869 --> 00:22:24.430 And Golda says no. Golda says no. And the question 00:22:24.430 --> 00:22:27.630 is why? Why would the Iron Lady refuse to strike 00:22:27.630 --> 00:22:30.450 first when she knows an attack is imminent? It 00:22:30.450 --> 00:22:33.109 all came down to one person, Henry Kissinger. 00:22:33.269 --> 00:22:35.410 Exactly. She was playing three -dimensional chess. 00:22:35.690 --> 00:22:39.349 She knew the world had changed since 1967. Israel 00:22:39.349 --> 00:22:42.509 was much more diplomatically isolated. And more 00:22:42.509 --> 00:22:44.900 importantly, She knew they would eventually need 00:22:44.900 --> 00:22:47.500 a massive American airlift of weapons and supplies 00:22:47.500 --> 00:22:50.660 to win a prolonged war. And Kissinger had made 00:22:50.660 --> 00:22:52.640 it crystal clear. He had basically told them, 00:22:52.700 --> 00:22:54.799 if you guys strike first, if you are seen as 00:22:54.799 --> 00:22:56.740 the aggressor, don't even bother calling us. 00:22:57.119 --> 00:22:59.420 The line he supposedly used was, you wouldn't 00:22:59.420 --> 00:23:03.539 get so much as a nail. So Goldemere, the tough, 00:23:03.599 --> 00:23:06.700 uncompromising Iron Lady, made the conscious 00:23:06.700 --> 00:23:09.180 decision to let her country get hit first. To 00:23:09.180 --> 00:23:11.849 absorb the first blow. It is a chilling, almost 00:23:11.849 --> 00:23:14.710 unbearable calculus to know the bombs are coming 00:23:14.710 --> 00:23:17.130 and to wait for them all to secure your diplomatic 00:23:17.130 --> 00:23:19.730 and military lifeline. And that decision, as 00:23:19.730 --> 00:23:22.150 you said, both saved the country and nearly destroyed 00:23:22.150 --> 00:23:25.069 it. Absolutely. By waiting, they allowed the 00:23:25.069 --> 00:23:27.750 Egyptians and Syrians to make huge gains in the 00:23:27.750 --> 00:23:30.730 first 48 hours. Thousands of Israeli soldiers 00:23:30.730 --> 00:23:33.130 were killed or captured. The Golan Heights were 00:23:33.130 --> 00:23:35.289 almost completely overrun. There were moments 00:23:35.289 --> 00:23:38.940 in that war room. where Dien, the hero of 67, 00:23:39.299 --> 00:23:41.559 was reportedly talking about the fall of the 00:23:41.559 --> 00:23:43.519 Third Temple. He thought it was the end. He was 00:23:43.519 --> 00:23:45.980 having a nervous breakdown. And Golda. Golda 00:23:45.980 --> 00:23:48.619 was reportedly devastated. There were rumors 00:23:48.619 --> 00:23:51.259 she contemplated suicide in those first few days. 00:23:51.359 --> 00:23:53.980 But, and this is the critical part, she held 00:23:53.980 --> 00:23:56.579 it together in public. While her famous generals 00:23:56.579 --> 00:23:58.960 were panicking, she was the one on the phone 00:23:58.960 --> 00:24:01.519 to Nixon and Kissinger. Using the fact that they 00:24:01.519 --> 00:24:04.240 hadn't struck first as leverage. Total leverage. 00:24:04.339 --> 00:24:06.640 She basically said, we did what you asked. We 00:24:06.640 --> 00:24:08.859 took the hit. Now, where is our stuff? And it 00:24:08.859 --> 00:24:11.980 worked. Operation Nickel Grass, those giant American 00:24:11.980 --> 00:24:15.160 C -5 Galaxy transport planes started landing 00:24:15.160 --> 00:24:18.259 every 15 minutes, packed with tanks and ammunition. 00:24:18.559 --> 00:24:20.859 And that's what turned the tide of the war. So 00:24:20.859 --> 00:24:24.140 militarily, her gamble paid off. Israel pushed 00:24:24.140 --> 00:24:28.380 back, crossed the Suez and won the war. But politically. 00:24:28.879 --> 00:24:31.000 Politically, she was a dead woman walking. The 00:24:31.000 --> 00:24:33.279 public could not forgive the surprise. They couldn't 00:24:33.279 --> 00:24:35.160 forgive the arrogance, the lack of preparedness. 00:24:35.660 --> 00:24:38.259 They looked at the 2 ,600 fresh graves and they 00:24:38.259 --> 00:24:40.220 asked, where were you? Why didn't you see this 00:24:40.220 --> 00:24:42.640 coming? Even though the official commission of 00:24:42.640 --> 00:24:45.420 inquiry, the Agronaut Commission. It technically 00:24:45.420 --> 00:24:48.279 cleared her. It placed the blame squarely on 00:24:48.279 --> 00:24:50.779 the military intelligence chiefs. The report 00:24:50.779 --> 00:24:53.119 actually praised her decision making on that 00:24:53.119 --> 00:24:55.400 fateful morning. But the public didn't care about 00:24:55.400 --> 00:24:57.940 technicalities. No. The trust was shattered. 00:24:58.079 --> 00:25:00.960 The myth of competence was broken. She resigned 00:25:00.960 --> 00:25:04.539 in April of 1974. She gave a speech where she 00:25:04.539 --> 00:25:07.420 just said, it is beyond my strength to continue 00:25:07.420 --> 00:25:09.680 carrying this burden. And she died just four 00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:12.420 years later. The lymphoma she had kept secret 00:25:12.420 --> 00:25:15.279 for so long finally caught up with her. A tragic 00:25:15.279 --> 00:25:17.559 end to a titanic life. Before we wrap up, I do 00:25:17.559 --> 00:25:19.220 want to touch on some of the more personal stuff 00:25:19.220 --> 00:25:23.000 because the Golda brand was such a huge part 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:25.609 of her political power. The shoes, for instance. 00:25:25.789 --> 00:25:28.890 Gold shoes. It's amazing. They became actual 00:25:28.890 --> 00:25:32.930 Israeli army slang for those ugly, sturdy, orthopedic 00:25:32.930 --> 00:25:35.970 lace -up shoes that they issued to female soldiers. 00:25:36.210 --> 00:25:37.990 Because she just did not care about fashion at 00:25:37.990 --> 00:25:40.670 all. Not in the slightest. She projected this 00:25:40.670 --> 00:25:44.619 image of austere, grandmotherly simplicity. She 00:25:44.619 --> 00:25:46.460 was famous for holding cabinet meetings in her 00:25:46.460 --> 00:25:48.380 kitchen while serving cakes she'd baked herself. 00:25:48.599 --> 00:25:51.099 The kitchen cabinet wasn't a metaphor. It was 00:25:51.099 --> 00:25:53.279 a literal place. But there's a detail in the 00:25:53.279 --> 00:25:55.319 sources about where she lived that I found really, 00:25:55.380 --> 00:25:58.339 really unsettling. The story of the Villa Harun 00:25:58.339 --> 00:26:01.500 al -Rashid. Ah, yes. This is the detail that, 00:26:01.519 --> 00:26:04.220 for me, just perfectly captures the unresolved 00:26:04.220 --> 00:26:06.039 tension of her life and of the state itself. 00:26:06.500 --> 00:26:09.440 In the 1960s, as foreign minister, she lived 00:26:09.440 --> 00:26:12.299 in this beautiful stone house in Jerusalem. But 00:26:12.299 --> 00:26:14.859 it wasn't a house built by Jews. No. It was built 00:26:14.859 --> 00:26:17.799 in 1926 by a prominent Christian Arab family, 00:26:17.880 --> 00:26:21.700 the Bishrots, who fled during the 1948 war. And 00:26:21.700 --> 00:26:24.480 the villa had its name, Villa Harun al -Rashid, 00:26:24.539 --> 00:26:27.380 written in beautiful Arabic ceramic tiles on 00:26:27.380 --> 00:26:29.359 the front. And the sources say Golda had the 00:26:29.359 --> 00:26:31.720 tiles sandblasted off the wall. She had the Arabic 00:26:31.720 --> 00:26:34.339 script removed, erased. She lived in the house, 00:26:34.359 --> 00:26:36.740 but she erased its history. It's such a powerful 00:26:36.740 --> 00:26:39.420 and painful metaphor for that entire generation's 00:26:39.420 --> 00:26:41.660 attitude. It connects right back to the they 00:26:41.660 --> 00:26:44.640 did not exist quote. It's the same impulse, this 00:26:44.640 --> 00:26:48.079 desire to build a new future so intensely that 00:26:48.079 --> 00:26:51.119 it required actively unseeing the past, unseeing 00:26:51.119 --> 00:26:53.180 the people who were there before you. It's a 00:26:53.180 --> 00:26:55.880 willful blindness that existed right alongside 00:26:55.880 --> 00:26:59.140 her incredible creative nation building energy. 00:26:59.460 --> 00:27:01.000 And what about her relationship with religion? 00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:04.380 She was famously an atheist. A staunchly secular 00:27:04.380 --> 00:27:07.579 cultural Zionist. She had that classic line, 00:27:07.660 --> 00:27:09.779 which is just the perfect politician's answer. 00:27:10.019 --> 00:27:12.119 When asked about her faith, she said, I believe 00:27:12.119 --> 00:27:14.000 in the Jewish people and the Jewish people believe 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:16.440 in God. It's brilliant. It sidesteps the question 00:27:16.440 --> 00:27:18.660 completely. But it also reflects. her generation 00:27:18.660 --> 00:27:20.859 of labor Zionists. They weren't religious. They 00:27:20.859 --> 00:27:24.079 were socialists. But they were absolutely 100 00:27:24.079 --> 00:27:26.880 percent committed to the history and the survival 00:27:26.880 --> 00:27:29.599 of the Jewish people. So bringing this all together. 00:27:30.430 --> 00:27:32.809 It is just so complicated. You have the woman 00:27:32.809 --> 00:27:35.789 who raised $50 million to prevent a second Holocaust, 00:27:35.869 --> 00:27:38.630 who built housing for hundreds of thousands of 00:27:38.630 --> 00:27:41.049 immigrants, who shattered the glass ceiling for 00:27:41.049 --> 00:27:43.630 women in global politics. And you have the woman 00:27:43.630 --> 00:27:45.990 who erased the tiles from the front of her house 00:27:45.990 --> 00:27:48.390 and who missed the most obvious warning signs 00:27:48.390 --> 00:27:51.769 of a catastrophic war. It leaves us with a really 00:27:51.769 --> 00:27:54.470 provocative question, I think. Which is? Are 00:27:54.470 --> 00:27:57.230 the skills required to build a nation fundamentally 00:27:57.230 --> 00:27:59.630 different from the skills required to lead one 00:27:59.630 --> 00:28:02.349 in a time of crisis? Say more about that. Well, 00:28:02.450 --> 00:28:04.890 Golda had the skills of a builder in spades. 00:28:04.990 --> 00:28:07.690 She was stubborn. She was single -minded. She 00:28:07.690 --> 00:28:10.269 had this absolute moral certainty. And you need 00:28:10.269 --> 00:28:12.670 that when you're draining swamps or fighting 00:28:12.670 --> 00:28:14.849 an independence war against impossible odds. 00:28:15.069 --> 00:28:17.049 You need to see the world in black and white. 00:28:17.349 --> 00:28:20.089 But when you're a prime minister trying to navigate 00:28:20.089 --> 00:28:23.099 a complex diplomatic landscape, When you need 00:28:23.099 --> 00:28:25.220 to read the subtle signals coming from Anwar 00:28:25.220 --> 00:28:28.380 Sadat in Egypt or understand the nuances of an 00:28:28.380 --> 00:28:31.000 emerging Palestinian identity. That black and 00:28:31.000 --> 00:28:33.660 white vision makes you blind. Exactly. The very 00:28:33.660 --> 00:28:36.660 stubbornness that made her a hero in 1948 helped 00:28:36.660 --> 00:28:39.759 make her a failure in 1973. She was the Iron 00:28:39.759 --> 00:28:42.880 Lady, but iron doesn't bend. And in politics, 00:28:43.039 --> 00:28:46.299 if you can't bend, eventually you break. A heck 00:28:46.299 --> 00:28:49.839 of a place to land. Golda Meir, the builder who 00:28:49.839 --> 00:28:52.640 couldn't renovate her own worldview. A fascinating, 00:28:52.940 --> 00:28:56.319 flawed, and unforgettable giant. Thank you all 00:28:56.319 --> 00:28:58.579 for listening to this deep dive. If you enjoyed 00:28:58.579 --> 00:29:00.720 it, pass it on to someone who might. There is 00:29:00.720 --> 00:29:03.180 always more to uncover. Stay curious. We'll catch 00:29:03.180 --> 00:29:03.759 you on the next one.