Golda Meir

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World renowned as a founder of the State of Israel and its first woman prime minister, Golda Meir was a political activist for her entire adult life. Born in Kiev in 1889 as Goldie Mabovitch, she and her family moved to Wisconsin when she was 8, and in 1921 she and her husband Morris Myerson emigrated to Palestine to join a Kibbutz. She became a forceful spokeswoman for the Zionist cause, and was elected to the Knesset (Israeli parliament) after Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. Appointed foreign minister in 1956, she Hebraized her name to Golda Meir. Elected prime minister in 1969, she pressed for a peace settlement with the Arab states but her efforts were halted by the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Not until her death in 1978 was it revealed that she had suffered from leukemia since 1966

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