Breathe
By Lina Holtzman Warszawski*
Defeat as triumph. You read it well and it is not formulated as a question but as an affirmation. I will be brief about the urgency of knowing Golda. Golda Meir. A fragment of her life is now being shown, artistically, on film. It has already been released! And why my insistence? Because there is no leadership without compassion. I am talking about the third woman in history and the first and only woman in Israel to assume more than the title, the responsibility of being Prime Minister (1969-1974). She was known as the Iron Lady long before Margaret Thatcher. I have always added that yes, iron, but with the scent of rose. Because she never lost her essence and manifested it with sweetness and/or humor on many occasions, but without any eagerness to hide her thorns. Direct. She was always like that. She was at the political command of Israel in the bloody war of Yom Kippur (1973), during which many members of her cabinet believed that we would be wiped off the map, because that was the intention of those who attacked on the holiest day of the Hebrew calendar, on which people fast, pray and ask for forgiveness.
The wars of a woman immersed in a war would be, perhaps, the theme that, according to me, corresponds to the film.
A war, whether it is won or lost, is lost! But in life you don't win or lose, you live!
"As a people, our monuments never commemorate victories, but the names of those who fell. We don't need an Arc de Triomphe we have Masada, Tel-Hai or the Warsaw Ghetto, where we lost the battle, but the war for Jewish existence triumphed," once said David "Dado" Elazar, ninth commander of the Israel Defense Forces (1972-1974) and who was forced to resign as a result of his lack of foresight before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. Was he really at fault or was he "just" one more who did not believe that neighboring countries were planning a massive attack on such a special day?
Next Sunday, September 24, will be Yom Kippur again. 50 years of that tragic moment in which the leader of the nation was wrong in many ways, but not in one thing: in knowing how to be responsible for what happened. In knowing that she was capable, at the same time, of dealing with those who wanted to disappear her people and those who, "wanting to help", did not do so.
How do we explain this to families who have lost the most precious thing, the life of a son, a brother, a father... How do we explain that oil is worth more than a human being?
To date there is no answer. Am I wrong? At least one thing is certain: The explanation begins with acknowledging, taking responsibility as Golda did. How she knew, how she could, facing death with life and life with compassion.
50 years after this bloody moment, from which we have not recovered, I see "leaders" more interested in their own triumphal monuments than in knowing the names of those who today can count neither a triumph nor a defeat because their lives have been taken from them.
You and I are here, let's not let them take away our own leadership, because, mind you, it starts with our own capacity to be compassionate, respectful. It starts with ourselves. I know it sounds corny, but it's the truth.
"Trust yourself. Create the kind of 'self' you will be happy with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning little sparks of possibility into flames of achievement," Golda Meir once said.
My father, of blessed memory, called that light Glow! (and yes, that is why the magazine I founded is called that way). I hope that we are capable of not allowing it to fade, beyond its moments of lesser or greater power, and not only to become an achievement but to illuminate the path of those who also want to achieve.
Perhaps, then, we will no longer need monuments, because every human being will be the representation of the true victory: respect and honor to life.
PS: I invite you to watch the movie Golda, starring Helen Mirren and directed by Guy Nativ.
A little more about Golda Meir:
(Golda Mabovich; Kiev, Ukraine, 1898 - Jerusalem, 1978) was the daughter of a modest Jewish carpenter from the western part of the Russian Empire who emigrated to the United States in 1906, like many Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the marginalization and persecutions they suffered in Eastern Europe at the turn of the century. The family settled in Milwaukee, Golda became a teacher and married Morris Myerson in 1917 (she later Hebraized her surname as Meir).
In 1921 they migrated to the British Mandate (Mandate Palestine) and settled in Kibbutz Merhavia.
She later served as Secretary of the Liga de Mujeres Trabajadoras,
member of the Workers' Union (Histadrut), among other positions. After the end of World War II and the creation of the State of Israel, she was First Delegate to the Soviet Union. Later, Minister of Labor, Minister of Foreign Affairs until she became Prime Minister in 1969. On April 10, 1974, she resigned from office.
He died at the age of 80, on December 8, 1978 (Kislev 8, 5739, in the Jewish calendar).
*After a long trajectory, she founded and directs the magazines GLOW! and BLACK and in digital platforms you can find her as MUY LINA.
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