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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.