But Meir, who was confirmed by the Knesset as prime minister 50 years ago on Sunday, was also renowned for her more xenophobic remarks, particularly at the expense of Palestinians.
"There were no such thing as Palestinians," she was quoted as saying in the Sunday Times and Washington Post in June 1969.
"When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? ... It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist," Meir said.
For her critics, Meir's jingoistic comments concerning Palestinians remain one of her defining - and most damning - legacies.