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March 27, 2009
Golda merely a bully?
Biography of Meir doesn't delve deeply enough.
MARK GURVIS
This is the sixth in a monthly series co-ordinated by the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library and the Jewish Independent, featuring local community members reviewing books that they have recently read.
I had the good fortune to spend most of last summer in Israel with my family. I took advantage of that opportunity to re-read some books about Israel that I had read many years ago (Exodus by Leon Uris; O Jerusalem by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins). As the reading coincided with Israel's 60th anniversary, it gave me a rich opportunity to reflect on the early days of the modern state of Israel. So when I was approached by Karen Corrin of the Waldman library to write a book review, I naturally gravitated to a new biography of Golda Meir by Elinor Burkett.
The book reinforced reflections from my summer reading – the degree to which the issues and challenges faced by Israel today in her relationship with her neighbors and with internal social issues have been with her from the start. It is amazing to look back amid the explosion of economic, intellectual and social developments that characterize Israel and to realize how little has changed on some fundamental issues. At the same time, I found myself struggling with what felt like a one-dimensional portrait of an historical figure that had to be more complex than this book captured.
Because of the many and varied roles that Golda Meir played in the life and history of Israel, from before 1948 and through Israel's first three decades, Burkett's book covers in detail issues such as the Palestinian refugee problem and Israel's evolving relationship with her Arab neighbors. The book suggests that Meir's finest hours came at the very end of her political career, during the Yom Kippur War, when she literally kept the country and military together through sheer force of will. She was 75 years old and in poor health. She was in the role because there was simply no other political leader capable of holding together a ruling coalition. At a moment of true crisis, she galvanized the country's will to survive.
In such a crisis, her defining personal characteristics were the lifeline that kept Israel going long enough to prevail past the terrible early days of the 1973 war. Burkett amply describes these traits as being Meir's strong ideological grounding in a socialist collectivist vision of the state of Israel; her incredible political skills, honed during years of partisan political wrangling; and her force of personality, experienced as a mix of cajoling, manipulating and browbeating opponents and allies into submission. Burkett also details, however, how these same personal characteristics made it impossible for Meir to bridge emerging social divisions between Israel's Ashkenazi "haves" and Sephardi "have-nots," or between Israel's increasingly nationalistic religious Zionists and the secular world from which she emerged.
For Burkett, the main theme is that mix of defining personal characteristics and their impact on the people around Meir. What I found lacking in her book was more detail on some of the career steps along the way that allowed Meir to build the political capital that catapulted her into the role of prime minister. Meir may well have bullied her way into the job – and bullied her way into keeping it – but I suspect the real story is more complex. In that sense, I found the book interesting history, but not a deep enough character sketch to be confident that the historical portrait was complete.
Mark Gurvis is the chief executive officer of Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver.
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