David Ben-Gurion

Prime minister of Israel (1948-1953, 1955-1963)

• Born: October 16, 1886
• Birthplace: Płońsk, Poland, Russian Empire (now in Poland)
• Died: December 1, 1973
• Place of death: Tel Aviv, Israel

Ben-Gurion dreamed of the state of Israel, then turned that vision into reality. As Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, he laid a solid foundation for the country’s survival and prosperity; as its leading statesman, he established the principles that continue to guide it.

Early Life

The son of Avigdor and Sheindel (Friedman) Gruen, David Ben-Gurion (behn-goor-YAWN) was born in Płónsk, Poland. His father was a local leader in Hovevai Zion (lovers of Zion), a forerunner of the Zionist movement, and a product of the Haskalah (Jewish enlightenment), which sought to fuse traditional and modern thought and to revive Hebrew as a living language. At the age of fourteen, he and two friends organized the Ezra Society to teach local children to speak and write Hebrew. Despite opposition from religious leaders who regarded Hebrew as too sacred for daily use, the group attracted 150 students.

Along with his love of Israel, the young Ben-Gurion was imbibing socialist principles. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Leo Tolstoy, and Abraham Mapu shaped his politics, and in 1905 he joined Poalei Zion (workers of Zion), which sought to build a workers’ state in Israel. A natural organizer and orator, Ben-Gurion united the seamstresses of Płónsk to strike for a shorter workday, and he repeatedly outdebated non-Zionist opponents who argued for assimilation and socialist revolution in Europe.

Another lifelong belief also revealed itself in Płónsk, then ruled by czarist Russia. The country had witnessed numerous pogroms against the Jews, who rarely fought back against their attackers. Ben-Gurion, whose heroes were the Maccabees and Old Testament warriors, successfully urged his coreligionists to arm themselves for self-defense, as later he would organize the Haganah in Palestine to thwart Arab raids. Never a zealot, he did not want to turn Jews into wolves, but neither did he want his people to be sheep.

In 1906, Ben-Gurion’s Zionist dream took him to Petach Tikva in Turkish Palestine, and for the next several years he worked in various settlements, living his idea of creating a Jewish state through labor. He was never physically strong, though, and Poalei Zion recognized that he could make a more significant contribution with his head than with his back. Appointed editor of the organization’s newspaper, Ahdut, he took as his pseudonym the name of Yosef Ben-Gurion, a moderate leader of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 c.e.

Life’s Work

Believing that Turkey could be persuaded to grant a Jewish state, Ben-Gurion went to Constantinople in 1912 to pursue a law degree, after which he planned to enter the Turkish parliament and work for an independent Israel. The Balkan War interrupted his studies; the outbreak of World War I ended them. He returned to Palestine, where he urged support for Turkey against the entente, fearing that if the Central Powers were defeated, anti-Semitic Russia would be awarded the ancient Jewish homeland. Indifferent to his pro-Ottoman stance, Turkish authorities arrested Ben-Gurion in February, 1915, for his Zionist activities and deported him. Together with Itzhak Ben-Zvi, later to serve as Israel’s president, Ben-Gurion went to the United States to encourage Jewish immigration; throughout his life, he believed that a Jewish state would arise and prosper only if Jews settled and worked the land. He made few converts, but one of them was a young girl from Milwaukee, Goldie Mabovitch; as Golda Meir, she would be Israel’s prime minister. While in the United States, Ben-Gurion published Yizkor (1916) and Eretz Yisrael (1918) to promote Jewish settlement in Palestine. These volumes did little to further that cause, but they did enhance Ben-Gurion’s reputation. While in the United States, he met and married Paula Munweis (December 5, 1917).

When the United States entered World War I, Ben-Gurion realized that Turkey and the other Central Powers were doomed. His shift of allegiance to the Entente was guaranteed by the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917), promising a Jewish homeland in Israel; he could not know that Great Britain was also pledging to give the same territory to the Arabs and to France. Urging the creation of a Jewish Legion to support Great Britain, Ben-Gurion himself enlisted, leaving his pregnant wife. The legion saw little action, but it did return Ben-Gurion to the Middle East, where he immediately resumed his efforts to forge a united labor organization. Crucial to this goal was the Histadrut. Founded in December, 1920, with only 4,433 of the 65,000 Jews of Palestine, it grew throughout the decade, establishing its own bank, newspaper (Davar), construction company, and recreational facilities. Under Ben-Gurion’s leadership, the various labor factions also joined politically, so that by 1930 his Mapai Party included 80 percent of the region’s Jewish workers.

While Ben-Gurion’s achievements and reputation grew in Palestine, he could not influence Zionist policy. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth World Zionist Congresses encouraged middle-class rather than worker immigration and favored urban instead of rural development. Ben-Gurion was philosophically opposed to this emphasis on bourgeois capitalism; he also recognized that businessmen, with no tie to the land, were likely to leave the country once prosperity ended, and so they did after 1927. Another disagreement, with Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, arose over how far to press Great Britain to allow Jewish settlement in Palestine; Weizmann favored conciliation at almost any cost.

Unable to compete within the World Zionist Organization, Ben-Gurion in 1930 created a rival, the World Congress for Labor Palestine, dedicated to “a Jewish state, a laboring society, [and] Jewish-Arab cooperation.” Through this new institution, Ben-Gurion hoped to enlist international Jewish support for his views, but Great Britain’s efforts to placate the Arabs at Jewish expense were turning mainstream Zionists away from Weizmann. At the Seventeenth World Zionist Congress, the World Congress for Labor Palestine comprised the largest single bloc of votes, and its representatives received two seats on the executive committee. Two years later, when the organization convened again, the World Congress for Labor Palestine held 44.6 percent of the votes, thanks in large measure to Ben-Gurion’s vigorous campaigning in Eastern Europe; Ben-Gurion himself was named to the Executive. By 1935, the World Congress for Labor Palestine had gained control, and Ben-Gurion became chair of the Zionist Executive and head of the Jewish Agency.

Although he had refused the presidency of the World Zionist Organization in favor of Weizmann, the two men continued to disagree over unlimited immigration and relations with Great Britain. Realizing that Great Britain never would willingly fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration, Ben-Gurion in 1936 began training the Haganah, the underground Jewish army, for future conflicts with the Arabs and British. Throughout World War II, he opposed guerrilla warfare against Great Britain, but as soon as Germany surrendered he went to the United States to secure money for weapons. In October, 1945, he ordered the Haganah to use force if necessary to protect Jews entering Palestine illegally, Great Britain having refused to lift tight restrictions on Jewish immigration, and he supported a number of attacks against British installations. Great Britain responded by arresting Jewish leaders and confiscating weapons, but it also resolved to abandon its mandate, agreeing to a partition plan adopted by the United Nations on November 29, 1947.

After almost two thousand years, after a third of their number had been killed in the Nazi Holocaust, the Jewish people were to have a country of their own if they could defend it from the armies of five Arab nations poised to invade as soon as the British mandate ended. George C. Marshall, the U.S. secretary of state, urged Ben-Gurion not to declare independence but to wait five or ten years more. Instead, on May 14, 1948, in the Tel Aviv Museum, Ben-Gurion declared “the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called the State of Israel.”

Ben-Gurion had been modern Jewry’s Moses, leading it to the promised land. Now he would also be its Joshua, as the army he had trained and supplied turned back the invaders. At the same time, he overcame threats from Menachem Begin’s Irgun Z’vai Leumi on the right and from the Palmach on the left, each seeking to maintain autonomous military organizations. He thus established the principle of civilian control over the military. Over the next four years (1949-1953), he led the fledgling nation as prime minister and defense minister, doubling the nation’s Jewish population and securing international financial support.

At the end of 1953, he temporarily retired for two years, he said to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert, fifty miles south of Beersheba. He wanted a rest, a chance to read and write, but he also wanted to foster in others the pioneer spirit that had brought him to Israel almost fifty years earlier. Moreover, he regarded settlement of the Negev as crucial to the country’s security against Egypt and hoped others would follow him into this area.

His absence from government actually lasted more than a year. A scandal in the defense ministry led to the resignation of Pinḥas Lavon, and Ben-Gurion replaced him. After the 1955 elections, he also resumed the post of prime minister, leading the country to victory in the 1956 Suez campaign. Although much of the victory was annulled by pressure from the United States to return to prewar borders, Israel had secured freedom of navigation through Elath. Also, France, which had helped Israel during the fighting, agreed to build a nuclear reactor at Dimona.

At the same time that Ben-Gurion was making Israel the strongest military power in the region, he also wanted it to be one of the world’s great moral forces. To the newly independent states of Africa and to Burma he sent technicians and scientists, and from these countries came students who would be doctors, nurses, and teachers in their homelands.

Well into his seventies, Ben-Gurion exemplified his definition of a leader: “You must know when to fight your political opponents and when to mark time. . . . And . . . you must constantly reassess chosen policies.” In the 1960’s, though, he became increasingly inflexible and out of touch with reality. He refused to recognize the evidence that exonerated Pinḥas Lavon, who had been forced to leave the defense ministry in 1955 after perjured testimony and forged documents caused him to be blamed for terrorist acts in Egypt. While Ben-Gurion recruited the next generation of Israel’s leaders, among them Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, and Abba Eban, he antagonized many of his older colleagues, such as Moshe Sharett and Golda Meir, by seeming to ignore them in favor of younger protégés. His close ties to Germany brought Israel many benefits, but he failed to gauge the hostility that many of his countryfolk harbored against that country. In 1963, amid growing opposition to his leadership, he resigned from the government; two years later he left the Mapai Party he had done so much to create, challenging it in the 1965 elections. His faction won ten seats, Mapai forty-five. When tension with Egypt increased in 1967, there were calls for Ben-Gurion’s return to the prime ministry, but only from those unaware that he was urging peace. It was his disciple, Dayan, who as defense minister led the nation to its swift, overwhelming victory in the Six-Day War.

In 1970, Ben-Gurion left the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, for what he thought was the last time, but, on his eighty-fifth birthday, he spoke to a special session called in his honor and received a standing ovation from friends and opponents alike. He then returned to the Negev, and there, after his death on December 1, 1973, he was buried, overlooking the Wilderness of Zin, where Israel’s saga had begun three millennia before.

Significance

Ben-Gurion observed that “history would have been quite different if there had been no Churchill.” History also would have been different had there been no Ben-Gurion. As a young pioneer in Turkish Palestine, he had resolved, “I have but a single aim: to serve the Jewish worker in the Land of Israel.” He never strayed from that purpose. When others hesitated to pressure Great Britain to declare Israeli independence and to open Israel’s borders to unlimited immigration, he pressed boldly on. Though he might have shifted tactics, supporting the Central Powers and then the Entente in World War I, opposing guerrilla warfare against Great Britain and then favoring it, he never altered his goal of building a secure, moral Jewish nation.

Ben-Gurion sacrificed much for his dream. As a young man he was often ill, lonely, and hungry, as he sought work, frequently unsuccessfully, in a malaria-ridden land. Later he would have virtually no family life, traveling around Europe and the United States to cajole and coerce others into sharing his dream. His insistence on principles above politics alienated many former friends. Nor did he accomplish all that he sought, never reconciling Sephardic Jews from Africa and Asia with the European Ashkenazis, certainly not achieving peace with the Arabs. His hope of making Israel a leader among developing world nations remained unrealized.

For what Ben-Gurion did accomplish, though, he will remain, as Charles de Gaulle described him in 1960, the symbol of Zionism and “one of the greatest statesmen of [the twentieth] century.” He had built his castles in the air, then had put solid foundations under them. The state of Israel is his legacy; he shaped its history and left a blueprint for its future to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with its God.

Bibliography

Avi-hai, Avraham. Ben-Gurion, State-Builder: Principles and Pragmatism, 1948-1963. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974. This work argues that Ben-Gurion was successful in shaping modern Israel, because he could find practical ways to fulfill his ideals. It ends with Ben-Gurion’s resignation as prime minister in 1963.

Bar-Zohar, Michael. Ben-Gurion: A Biography. New York: Delacorte Press, 1978. Bar-Zohar spent much time with Ben-Gurion and interviewed other Israeli leaders. Presents not only the public figure but also the private man behind the decisions.

Ben-Gurion, David. David Ben-Gurion in His Own Words. Edited by Amram Ducovny. New York: Fleet Press, 1968. Ducovny provides a brief biography of the Israeli leader and then arranges Ben-Gurion’s statements under such headings as “The Philosopher” (chapter 2) and “The Scholar” (chapter 7). Includes a useful chronology through 1968.

Heller, Joseph. The Birth of Israel: Ben-Gurion and His Critics. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000. Chronicles the events that led to the founding of Israel after World War II and the Holocaust, describing how and why Ben-Gurion prevailed in the political struggles to create a Jewish state.

Kurzman, Dan. Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983. Based on extensive interviews and archival research as well as published material, this work provides a comprehensive survey of Ben-Gurion’s life. Contains fascinating photographs and an extensive bibliography.

Shalom, Zakai. Ben-Gurion’s Political Struggles: A Lion in Winter. New York: Routledge, 2005. Chronicles Ben-Gurion’s career after he resigned from the government in 1963 as well as his political activities during the Six-Day War.

Teveth, Shabtai. Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Maintains that Ben-Gurion determined Israel’s attitude toward the Arabs within its borders. Traces the evolution of Ben-Gurion’s thoughts on Jewish-Arab relations. Ends with the establishment of the state of Israel.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. A scholarly companion to Avi-hai’s work about Ben-Gurion after 1948. Ben-Gurion’s papers are voluminous, and this work draws heavily on them. Ends at 1948 because official documents thereafter were inaccessible at the time of publication and because he sees Ben-Gurion as changing after Israel gained its independence.