Mrs Meir’s admiration for Dr Kissinger

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33964, 3 October 1975, Page 5

Mrs Meir’s admiration for Dr Kissinger

(By

COLIN BICKLER.

LONDON, October 2.

The United States Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) nearly called off last year’s negotiations between Syria and Israel for a disengagement agreement, but was persuaded by the then Prime Minister of Israel, Mrs Golda Meir, to make one more effort in Damascus which succeeded, she says in a book published in London. “My Life” (Weidenfeld and Nicholson), the autobiography of the now-retired Mrs Meir, reveals her strong admiration of Dr Kissinger, who, she says, has everything — intelligence, diligence, stamina and the fact that he rep-, resented the greatest Power in the world. Correspondents covering the month-long marathon I shuttle in May, 1974, were aware at the time that the involved negotiations seemed on the verge of collapse. Mrs Meir explains in one of her behind-the-scenes revelations just how near they were to failure. Israel had just rejected a demand from the Syrian President (Hafez Al Assad) and Dr Kissinger told Mrs Meir then: “This is the end. Sisco (the Under-Secretary of State, Mr Joseph Sisco) will go to Damascus today with in-

structions to say there will !be no more negotiations and that we suggest a joint communique be issued,” Mrs Meir writes. But Dr Kissinger had another meeting with Mrs Meir that afternoon and asked if she thought he ought to make the trip himself.

“So I said: ‘Look. I know one thing, if you yourself go, there is some chance you will make it this time. Otherwise

there is no chance at all’,’’ Mrs Meir writes, adding that Mr Sisco agreed with her. “O.K. I’ll go. Maybe I can do something after all,” she quotes Dr Kissinger as saying. He returned from Damascus at 1.30 a.m. the next morning and met the Israeli negotiators soon after. Mrs Meir adds: “He bounced in and said ‘it’s all right. We’ve done it’.” After 50 years of public life, Mrs Meir, who is 77, has many such anecdotes to tell about people and events of her faith in the United States and concern about the Soviet Union. But the autobiography, written the way she often talks, is more revealing about what went into developing the person who (became one of the few (women to help found and (lead a modem nation. I A Zionist, socialist, and obviously a strong believer in women's rights, Mrs Meir is no militant Women’s Liberationist. “I am not a great admirer of the kind of feminism that gives rise to bra-burning, hatred of men, or a campaign against motherhood, but I had a great regard for those

N.Z.P.A. correspondent)

energetic hard-working women within the ranks of the Labour movement,” she says. Her own life demonstrates the belief. One strong element of the autobiography is her unease about the conflict; she experienced from school-i days until her retirement, be- j tween her commitment to public leadership and being a wife, mother and grandmother. BROKEN MARRIAGE Her marriage broke down under the strain and she accepts much of the blame because of her inability to reconcile her love for her husband, Morris, with her drive to be an activist for the things she believed in. How she coped or failed to cope possibly has great relevance for modern women. She apparently succeeded, at least in her relationship with her two children, though she constantly 'talks of qualms of conscience stemming from her regular absences on tours, first for the Labour Zionist Movement and, after 1948, for the State of Israel. Mrs Meir—or Golda as she is universally called by Israelis—was shaped by her

childhood experiences. Bom in Russia in 1898, she has strong memories of fear of anti-Jewish pogroms, memories that remained with her even in the much more liberal atmosphere of MilI waukee, Wisconsin, to which (she went with her parents and two sisters at the age of eight. Of the Russian period she writes: “I remember how scared I was and how angry that all my father could do to protect me was to nail a few planks together (to bar the way) while we waited for the hooligans to come.” She has often talked of this at public gatherings and it helps explain her belief that Jews need a strong State of their own to defend themselves. It was this which first guided her to a kibbutz (communal settlement) in Palestine in 1921 and then into the political activity surrounding the creation and development of the State alongside such people as her godfather, David Ben Gurion. For all her prominence in the Israel Labour movement, her elevation to the Premiership was not something that either she or many of her colleagues had expected.