I've just finished Francine Klagsburn's 'Lioness' and like all good books I read, once I am done I always feel like I have lost a good friend but am grateful for the journeys we had together. 🤗
Here are the some cool things I learned along the way:
Here are the some cool things I learned along the way:
Statecraft is hard; it often entails navigating good policies vs good policies and that is exceedingly difficult. Golda Meir sometimes succeeded, sometimes failed, but she was one of the titans of Israeli leadership and embodies a type of leadership that is needed everywhere.
Today there is a great amount of rhetoric in domestic politics; Golda was involved in actually building something -- which is hard and takes a lifetime and is far more interesting to me than what passes for politics in today's zeitgeist.
Golda's policies in the 50s re immigration could appear to be tone deaf or insensitive to, say, the needs of the Mizrachi community. But really the shortcomings had more to do w/ Israel being overpopulated by hundreds of thousands of new immigrants and trying to absorb them.
The saga with the Mizrachi Black Panthers is fascinating to me because memory of it in popular culture doesn't exactly reflect the historical record. Both Golda and the BP misunderstood each other. As for Golda's shortcoming, it was cultural elitism more than it was prejudice.
Everyone knows it already but her biggest defeat was really the Yom Kippur war which is ironic because she was defeated because she didn't trust her gut and instead deferred to her generals. (Also Moshe Dayan not being called upon to resign was ridiculous. But I digress.)
Above all, this book has given me pause to consider the trials and tribulations that come with leadership. In a way (because my mind rambles) it reminds me of Kendrick Lamar's take on kingship as expressed in his BP album. If you notice, he speaks extensively about responsibility
And that is the impression I'm left with: Golda, a Jew from Eastern Europe who saw pogroms in her neighborhood and who left the comfort of America to go build something lasting for her people. Despite the hell and high water that came. Golda built and Golda led.
