Tohu

@MyFringes

I'll listen with compassion, and give you my truth.

Joined June 2012

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MyFringes retweeted

Imtiaz Mahmood

@ImtiazMadmood

about 2 months ago

"May 1948. Haifa. Golda Meir sat in a car leaving the city in darkness, wrapped in the wide dark robes of a Muslim woman. She did not speak Arabic. Her companion, Ezra Danin, a Haganah intelligence expert who did, was dressed as an Arab man. Together they posed as a married couple, moving through checkpoints into Transjordan, heading toward a secret meeting in Amman with King Abdullah I. The windows of a second car had been covered with heavy black fabric so she could not be identified. The king had refused to come to the border. He had refused to alert his Arab Legion that Jewish guests were coming. If anything went wrong, she was on her own. C*pture meant interrogation. The implications beyond that were clear. She went anyway. This was not their first meeting. In November 1947, she had traveled to Naharayim on the banks of the Jordan River for a clandestine meeting with Abdullah, no disguise required that time. At that meeting, Abdullah had given his word. If the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, he would not att*ck the Jewish state. He promised. Six months later, word reached the Jewish leadership that Abdullah had joined the Arab League and was preparing to march. On May 11, 1948, four days before Israel would declare independence, Golda Meir traveled to Amman in secret to ask him directly. Would he keep his promise? She found a different man from the one she had met in November. Pale, tense, and depressed. He explained that he had spoken to her as a man alone. Now he was """"one of five,"""" bound to Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq in a coalition he could no longer break from. He asked her to accept a proposal: Palestine would not become a Jewish state. Jews would receive autonomy within a unified Jordan and after a year the whole territory would be merged under his rule with Jewish representation in his parliament. She refused immediately. He asked why the Jews were in such haste to declare a state. She told him they had been waiting two thousand years. He told her the Arabs could not wait longer. She told him that if he turned his back on his promise, w*r was inevitable because the Jews would resist. The meeting ended. The w*r came anyway, five days later, on the morning after Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948. But Golda Meir had already been shaping that moment for months. In January 1948, with the pre-state leadership desperately short of funds and w*r visibly approaching, she had been sent to the United States to raise money. The treasurer of the Jewish Agency believed they might collect seven or eight million dollars if they were fortunate. Meir aimed for twenty-five million. She spoke at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations in Chicago, a speech she later described as unscheduled, unrehearsed, and unannounced, and the response was unlike anything the room had experienced. She raised twice the requested amount in that tour alone, ultimately bringing back more than thirty million dollars. After independence was declared she returned to the United States on a second fundraising mission and raised approximately fifty million dollars more. In total, her two tours brought in around ninety million dollars, roughly a third of the entire cost of Israel's W*r of Independence. David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first Prime Minister, wrote in his diary: """"Someday when history will be written, it will be said that there was a Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible." On May 14, 1948, Golda Meir stood in a room in Tel Aviv and signed her name to Israel's Declaration of Independence. She was one of two women among the signatories. She later recalled: """"When I studied American history as a schoolgirl and I read about those who signed the Declaration of Independence, I couldn't imagine these were real people doing something real. And there I was sitting down and signing a declaration of establishment. She wept. The decades that followed built one of the most consequential political careers of the twentieth century. She served as Israel's first Ambassador to the Soviet Union, as Minister of Labor overseeing the construction of 200,000 apartments, and then as Foreign Minister for a decade. In 1969, at age seventy, she became Prime Minister. She was also, by then, secretly fghting cncer, diagnosed in the mid-1960s with a lymphatic condition she kept entirely hidden. She governed Israel and managed international crises while battling a terminal illness she had decided no one needed to know about. The country's needs, she had concluded, were larger than her own. The wr she had spent her life trying to prevent came anyway in a different form on a different day. On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attck on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The intelligence failure was catastrophic. In the first hours, Meir made decisions her military commanders later credited with preventing total disaster: authorizing the mobilization of reserves against cautious advice and refusing to collapse under the weight of what was happening. Israel survved. But the political aftermath was merciless. In April 1974, Golda Meir resigned, not because she was found personally responsible, but because she understood that democratic leadership sometimes requires absorbing institutional failure regardless of individual blme. She ded on December 8, 1978, in Jerusalem, at the age of eighty, survved by her children, grandchildren, and a nation she had helped bring into existence, fund into survval, and govern through its most dngerous years. She had carried her illness in secret for more than a decade. She had crossed into enemy territory disguised as another person to try to stop a w*r with words. She had raised the money that by any honest accounting made the state possible. When asked what she thought of being called a great woman, she reportedly said she had worked to be a great leader. The adjective, she suggested, was beside the point. She was right about the point. She was both things anyway."

ImtiazMadmood's tweet photo. "May 1948. Haifa.
Golda Meir sat in a car leaving the city in darkness, wrapped in the wide dark robes of a Muslim woman. She did not speak Arabic. Her companion, Ezra Danin, a Haganah intelligence expert who did, was dressed as an Arab man. Together they posed as a married couple, moving through checkpoints into Transjordan, heading toward a secret meeting in Amman with King Abdullah I.

The windows of a second car had been covered with heavy black fabric so she could not be identified. The king had refused to come to the border. He had refused to alert his Arab Legion that Jewish guests were coming. If anything went wrong, she was on her own. C*pture meant interrogation. The implications beyond that were clear.
She went anyway.

This was not their first meeting. In November 1947, she had traveled to Naharayim on the banks of the Jordan River for a clandestine meeting with Abdullah, no disguise required that time. At that meeting, Abdullah had given his word. If the United Nations voted to partition Palestine, he would not att*ck the Jewish state. He promised.

Six months later, word reached the Jewish leadership that Abdullah had joined the Arab League and was preparing to march.

On May 11, 1948, four days before Israel would declare independence, Golda Meir traveled to Amman in secret to ask him directly. Would he keep his promise?
She found a different man from the one she had met in November. Pale, tense, and depressed. He explained that he had spoken to her as a man alone. Now he was """"one of five,"""" bound to Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq in a coalition he could no longer break from.

He asked her to accept a proposal: Palestine would not become a Jewish state. Jews would receive autonomy within a unified Jordan and after a year the whole territory would be merged under his rule with Jewish representation in his parliament.
She refused immediately.

He asked why the Jews were in such haste to declare a state. She told him they had been waiting two thousand years. He told her the Arabs could not wait longer. She told him that if he turned his back on his promise, w*r was inevitable because the Jews would resist.

The meeting ended. The w*r came anyway, five days later, on the morning after Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948.

But Golda Meir had already been shaping that moment for months.

In January 1948, with the pre-state leadership desperately short of funds and w*r visibly approaching, she had been sent to the United States to raise money. The treasurer of the Jewish Agency believed they might collect seven or eight million dollars if they were fortunate. Meir aimed for twenty-five million.

She spoke at the General Assembly of Jewish Federations in Chicago, a speech she later described as unscheduled, unrehearsed, and unannounced, and the response was unlike anything the room had experienced. She raised twice the requested amount in that tour alone, ultimately bringing back more than thirty million dollars.

After independence was declared she returned to the United States on a second fundraising mission and raised approximately fifty million dollars more. In total, her two tours brought in around ninety million dollars, roughly a third of the entire cost of Israel's W*r of Independence.
David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first Prime Minister, wrote in his diary: """"Someday when history will be written, it will be said that there was a Jewish woman who got the money which made the state possible."

On May 14, 1948, Golda Meir stood in a room in Tel Aviv and signed her name to Israel's Declaration of Independence. She was one of two women among the signatories. She later recalled: """"When I studied American history as a schoolgirl and I read about those who signed the Declaration of Independence, I couldn't imagine these were real people doing something real. And there I was sitting down and signing a declaration of establishment. She wept.

The decades that followed built one of the most consequential political careers of the twentieth century. She served as Israel's first Ambassador to the Soviet Union, as Minister of Labor overseeing the construction of 200,000 apartments, and then as Foreign Minister for a decade. In 1969, at age seventy, she became Prime Minister.

She was also, by then, secretly fghting cncer, diagnosed in the mid-1960s with a lymphatic condition she kept entirely hidden. She governed Israel and managed international crises while battling a terminal illness she had decided no one needed to know about. The country's needs, she had concluded, were larger than her own.

The wr she had spent her life trying to prevent came anyway in a different form on a different day. On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attck on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. The intelligence failure was catastrophic. In the first hours, Meir made decisions her military commanders later credited with preventing total disaster: authorizing the mobilization of reserves against cautious advice and refusing to collapse under the weight of what was happening.

Israel survved. But the political aftermath was merciless. In April 1974, Golda Meir resigned, not because she was found personally responsible, but because she understood that democratic leadership sometimes requires absorbing institutional failure regardless of individual blme.

She ded on December 8, 1978, in Jerusalem, at the age of eighty, survved by her children, grandchildren, and a nation she had helped bring into existence, fund into survval, and govern through its most dngerous years.

She had carried her illness in secret for more than a decade. She had crossed into enemy territory disguised as another person to try to stop a w*r with words. She had raised the money that by any honest accounting made the state possible.

When asked what she thought of being called a great woman, she reportedly said she had worked to be a great leader. The adjective, she suggested, was beside the point.

She was right about the point.
She was both things anyway."

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