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David Ben-Gurion: “The ties binding the State of Israel to the Jewish
People are not motivated by immediate needs or tangible gains but out of
a sense of common purpose and destiny.”
The man who made
his dream come true
by Shimon Ben Noach
World Zionist Press Service
The simplicity of David Ben-
Gurion’s grave belies the impact of
his life on the affairs of mankind.
More than any other single person
it was Ben-Gurion who brought
the Jewish people out of the wil
derness of exile into its ancestral
homeland. Yet, at his request, the
tombstone at Kibbutz Sde Boker
in his beloved Negev desert bears
one brief epitaph: “alah artzah
1906,” (emigrated to Israel in
1906).
Though he was Israel’s first
prime minister and his nation’s
most influential politician for se
veral decades, the act of aliyah
remained in his own eyes the most
important deed of his life.
Thus it was in 1906 that David
Grien, with only a small knapsack
on his back, left his native Plonsk
in Russian-ruled Poland. He was
20 years old at the time and the
sixth child of Sheindle and Avig-
dor Grien. His father was a lawyer;
his mother had died in his infancy.
As a teenager, young David became
obsessed by the dream of Zionism
and determined to settle in Eretz
Yisrael.
His first experience in the land
of his dreams was the dusty port of
Jaffa. David did not like its squa
lor and he continued on foot across
the swamps and sand dunes that
today have become the metropolis
of Tel Aviv. He eventually arrived
in the small village of Petach Tik-
vah, where he found housing in a
workers’ hostel and hired himself
out as a field worker.
After several years of work in
the Lower Galilee and Zichron
Ya’acov, Ben-Gurion came to Jer
usalem, joining the editorial staff
of the Labor newspaper Ahdut.
The following year, he went to
Turkey for university studies, hop
ing to influence the 1 urkish estab
lishment into supporting the Zion
ist cause. At any rate, in 1917, the
Turkish rule of Palestine was ended
by the British and the subsequent
Balfour Declaration made Jewish
statehood seem viable.
In that same year Ben-Gurion
married Paula Munweis, a Nfcw
York nurse, while on a fund-rais
ing visit to America. After a spell in
the British office of the Poalei Zion
labor organization, Ben-Gurion re
turned to Eretz Yisrael to be elec
ted secretary-general of the newly
formed Histadrut Trade Union
Movement in 1921. He held this
post for 14 years, as the Histadrut
became the political force that was
to mold Israel’s economy and then
served as chairman of the Jewish
Agency Executive from 1935 to
1948.
When the U.N. voted to parti
tion Palestine, it was Ben-Gurion’s
initiative that led to the decision to
declare independence on the day of
partition. The following year saw
elections to the first Knesset with
Ben-Gurion officially becoming
prime minister. He also held the
post of minister of defense and
thus helped nurture the Israel De
fense Forces into the formidable
fighting force that it was to
become.
Ben-Gurion remained prime min
ister until December 1953, when he
retired to settle in the desert at Sde
Boker. In 1955 he was recalled to
government, resuming the role of
prime minister in November. He
remained in office until 1963, when
he once again resigned.
In retirement Ben-Gurion re
mained involved in the controver
sies of the Mapai party he was
instrumental in founding. He broke
with his party in 1965, forming his
own Rafi party along with Moshe
Dayan, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak
Navon and Teddy Kollek. Although
living in Sde Boker, he retained his
Knesset seat and remained active
See Dream, page 28.
The Southern
Israelite
The Weekly Newspaper For Southern Jewry §
'Since 1925' "
Vol. LXII Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, May 9, 1986 No. 19
Israel signs with U.S.
on ‘Star Wars’ program
by Joseph Polakoff
TSI’s Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON-Israel’s par
ticipation in the Strategic Defense
Initiative Program with the United
States will help it meet its own
necessities, Israeli Defense Minis
ter Yitzhak Rabin said after sign
ing a secret memorandum of un
derstanding at the Pentagon on its
role in the program.
“We expect to do the things in
this research and development
program in a way that will help our
own problems along,” Rabin said.
“Every research and development,
for example in the field of lasers,
helps everything.” He also said
SDI is of “great interest to the
future of the world.”
Rabin’s comments came at the
Pentagon where he and Defense
Secretary Casper Weinberger signed
a memoranda outlining Israel’s
participation in what is widely
called “Star Wars.” Israel is the
Yitzhak Rabin
third country to enter the program,
joining Britain and West Germany.
Japan and Italy are reported on the
verge of entering into the project.
It has been attacked as wasteful
and contrary to peacemaking with
the Soviet Union, which has been
campaigning against it. Some
Israelis have opposed participation
on the grounds that it would further
distance Israel from renewal of
relations with Moscow'.
Weinberger said Israeli partici
pation will “advance the research
program in significant ways and
that, in turn, will advance the cause
of peace and freedom.”
Officials gave few details of the
classified agreement. While the
purpose of the U.S. program is
intended to block Soviet nuclear
missiles, Israel is reportedly inter
ested in adapting the system to
conventional defense purposes such
as stopping ballistic missiles based
in Syria. Deputy Defense Secre
tary Frank Gaffney said the agree
ments with Israel, Britain and
Germany do not guarantee U.S.
contracts for them, but will facili
tate procurement orders.
He said, “There is no floor, there
is no ceiling” to the financial
amount of contracts for which Israel
can compete.
Jewish history remembered
in wake of nuclear disaster
by Joseph Polakoff
TSI’s Washington correspondent
WASHINGTON —Both the
town of Chernobyl, where the dis
aster at the Soviet Union’s nuclear
power plant has alarmed the world,
and the Ukraine’s capital, Kiev. 60
miles away, are prominent in Jew
ish history and usually remembered
with tears by those familiar with
them.
Chernobyl, on the River Pripyat,
is among the oldest Jewish settle
ments in the Ukraine, dating from
the end of the 17th century, and
famed in the late 18th century for
its Hassidic dynasty and the
preacher Menachem Nahum, a fol
lower of the Ba’al Shem Tov.
Kiev, once outside the pale of
Jewish settlement, was a great cen
ter of Yiddishkeit in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. As late as
1959 the official Soviet census re
ported nearly 15 percent of its
154,000 Jews had declared Yiddish
as their mother tongue.
Nazi slaughter and Communist
repression, plus hostility within the
local population, reduced Jewry in
Chernobyl to a few in recent years
with no synagogue and no rabbi.
The latest available information
indicates that when the Soviet cen
sus was taken in 1969 about 150
Jewish families lived there.
Kiev is considered by many as
synonymous with Babi Yar, the
ravine outside the city where some
90,000 Jews were slaughtered in
World War II by the German army
and collaborating Ukrainian militia.
More than a million and a half
Jews perished during the Nazi oc
cupations of the Ukraine, Byelo
russia and Russia. They were not
sent to concentration camps like
others in Europe but usually herded
into masses and shot to death in
the shtetels and outside the towns
where they lived or asphyxiated by
groups in mobile gas chambers.
Neither Babi Yar nor the mass
execution area in the historic Jew
ish cultural city of Vilna in Lithua
nia bear identification as localities
of slaughtered Jews. In the 1960s,
when Soviet authorities began
opening Vilna to tourism, a marker
was erected there to “victims of
Nazis.” Similarly, in Babi Yar,
despite pleas from Jews in and out
of the Soviet U nion, the authorities
have permitted only a marker that
refers also to “victims of Nazis.”
Chernobyl’s Jewish history has
been traced to 1765 when 695 Jews
were recorded as being payers of
poll taxes, a levy imposed on Jews.
By 1897, there were 5,286 Jews,
more than 59 percent of the popu
lation. They were engaged mainly
in agricultural production, crafts
and trade.
In the spring of 1919, bands of
U krainian peasants committed po
groms in Chernobyl. When the
Soviets took power in the Ukraine
in 1920, Jewish religous social and
communal life came to an end, the
Encyclopedia Judaica reports. In
1926, the Jewish population dropped
to 3,165, about 39 percent of the
total.
During World War II, the com
munity was annihilated. Some Jews
who had fled returned after the
war. With no synagogue allowed
under Soviet rule, Jews worshipped
in private homes but in 1965 those
groups were dispersed by militia
and religious articles were confis
cated. When Jews complained to
authorities in Kiev, only prayer
shawls were returned to them.
Officially barred for centuries to
Jewish habitation, Kiev became
accustomed to some doctors and
lawyers in the 19th century. Later
See Disaster, page 28.