Israel’s iconic leader Golda Meir was blamed for her country’s near-defeat in the Yom Kippur war. But secret government files reveal that while the war hero Moshe Dayan considered surrender, it was Golda who pulled victory from the jaws of defeat.

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When Meir became prime minister of Israel in 1969, the Jewish state that she had done so much to bring into existence was barely 20 years old and faced Arab nations committed to its destruction. Already 70 years old and often in poor health, she was widely seen as a stopgap leader who would be shunted aside once the right man came along. For a nation that had already fought three wars and was in thrall to its dashing military commanders, a small, wrinkled grandmother who wore baggy dresses and shuffled around in orthopaedic shoes seemed an unlikely saviour.

Yet in the five years that Golda held office, she would stamp her personality indelibly on a country where fierce political feuding was the norm and any sign of weakness could be fatal. Beyond Israel she became a global celebrity, regularly voted the world’s most admired woman in opinion polls. Chain-smoking her way from the UN to the White House, Downing Street to the Elysée Palace, she became, in the words of one observer, “a symbol of the new Israel, its courage, strength and boundless devotion”.

Much the same was said of Moshe Dayan, the legendary general with the black eye patch who in 1967 had led Israel to a famous victory in the six-day war. He was serving as minister of defence in Golda’s cabinet when Egypt and Syria launched an overwhelming surprise attack in October 1973 that began on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Utterly unprepared, with too few soldiers guarding its borders, Israel was brought almost to its knees and feared another Holocaust as Arab tanks crushed its defences and advanced towards civilian population centres.

So great was the threat to Israel’s survival that Golda reportedly prepared a doomsday scenario: she ordered the country’s nuclear arsenal be made ready. Thirteen small nuclear bombs were strapped to the underbellies of Phantom jets ready to scramble, in case Israel faced defeat.

How these two towering figures coped with the threat to Israel’s survival is examined at length in a new biography of Golda Meir by the distinguished American author Elinor Burkett. Drawing on five years of research, Burkett arrives at an intriguing conclusion: contrary to popular belief, it was the self-described “old lady”, unable to remember how many troops formed an army division, who was the real hero of the war, while Dayan, Israel’s most revered soldier, had buckled and contemplated surrender.