The phone rang through the night’s silence. Then another machine came to life, and then another. The telephones had been installed in every corner of the large, empty apartment and all started ringing at once, but nobody answered. The elderly woman living in the apartment knew exactly what the sound of the phone ringing meant, and she was afraid to pick up.

Then she woke up with a jolt. She sat up in bed, covered in a cold sweat. It was 4:00 a.m., and Golda Meir could not get back to sleep. “It was the same nightmare, repeating itself,” Israel’s fourth prime minister told a close friend in the morning. Together, they tried to work out what her subconscious was trying to say.

It was the summer of 1973, and Israel’s situation, or so people thought, had never been better. Golda Meir was a sharp-tongued and active politician, especially in the field of social policy.