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PAGE 14 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE October 17, 1986
David Ben-Gurion:The
by Sheldon Kirshner
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
One hundred years ago this
month, Sheindel Gruen, the wife of
Avigdor, gave birth to a son, David,
in the Polish town of Plonsk. The
boy became a man and the man
became the first Jew in 2,000 years
to head a Jewish state.
David Ben-Gurion, the name by
which he would be known, was one
of the towering figures in Jewish
history.
Twice prime minister of Israel,
Ben-Gurion lived a long, fruitful
life, dying as the dust of the 1973
Yom Kippur War settled. The
quintessential Zionist, he immi
grated to Palestine in 1906, labor
ing in the orange groves of Petah
Tikvah and in the wine cellars of
Rishon Le Zion, before becoming
politically involved in the supreme
battle to secure a Jewish homeland
in what is now Israel.
In this respect, it was not by
chance that he changed his name.
Ben-Gurion, which means son of a
lion cub, was one of the leaders of
the Jewish revolt against the
Romans in 66 C.E. His namesake
fought the Arabs and the British in
the bloody attempt to create a
place in the sun for Jews.
A keen student of Greek and
Eastern philosophies, a practitioner
of yoga, as well as a master of seven
languages. Ben-Gurion carved out
a career whose contours followed
the course of Zionist politics.
Ben-Gurion, a gruff man whose
idealism was tempered by pragma
tism, served as secretary-general of
the Histadrut labor federation at a
time when Jews sought to create a
Jewish workers society in Palestine.
He was founder of Mapai, the
political party that mixed Social
ism with capitalism and ruled Israel
from 1949 until its defeat at the
hands of the Likud block in 1977.
He was chairman of the Jewish
Agency executive for 13 years, pre
paring the groundwork for the
establishment of Israel in 1948.
When the War of Independence
broke out, Ben-Gurion, as prime
minister of the provisional govern
ment, headed the defense effort
and took charge of raising funds
for the beleaguered Jewish state.
In the 1949 general election,
Ben-Gurion, having failed to obtain
an overall majority, formed a coa
lition government and thus set the
pattern for future governments.
He retired in 1953, joining a kib
butz in the Negev Desert. But
within two years, Ben-Gurion
emerged from the wilderness, first
becoming minister of defense under
Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and
then winning back the prime
ministership.
For the next eight years, Ben-
Gurion, a short, bulky man whose
snow white hair framed a pudgy
face, wielded power as Israel made
the gradual transition from child
hood to adulthood. He retired in
1963, designating Levi Eshkol as
his successor.
The infamous Lavon Affair,
which rumbled across the Israeli
political landscape like a menacing
earthquake, led to his resignation.
The controversy, which revolved
around a bungled espionage oper
ation in Egypt in the mid-1950s,
effectively spelled finis to Ben-
Gurion’s spectacular career.
When he attempted a third
comeback, Mapai thwarted his
ambition. He formed an independ
ent list for the 1965 election, Rafi,
and acolytes like Moshe Dayan
and Shimon Peres joined him. But
Rafi performed poorly at the polls
and any hope Ben-Gurion may
have had about being a kingmaker
vanished.
In 1969, he tried once again to
use his past to appeal to the Israeli
electorate, but he failed. His state
list floundered, and the “old man”
resigned from the Knesset just a
year later.
When he died, in a year when
Israel’s arrogant self-confidence
was badly shaken by a war which
claimed more than 2,000 Israeli
lives, Ben-Gurion was effectively
in political exile, a lonely, embit
tered figure who had been over
taken by the rush of events. Never
theless, Ben-Gurion’s contributions
to Israel’s rebirth and consolida
tion were never forgotten, not even
by his most formidable enemies.
Ben-Gurion, despite enormous
pressure from the U.S. and the
doubts of many of his colleagues,
proclaimed the state of Israel. A
lesser leader might have hesitated
and postponed a decision, but he
charged ahead. In declaring state
hood, Ben-Gurion had come a long
way.
Before the dissolution of the
Ottoman Empire in 1918, he had
urged Jews to support the Turks in
World War I to win from them the
promise of autonomy in Palestine.
But when the Turkish authorities
cracked down on Zionism, he
switched sides and championed the
British cause.
In the 1930s, when Palestinian
Arabs were rising up in revolt
against Jewish settlement and the
British mandate, Ben-Gurion fav
ored a Jewish homeland but felt
that statehood should be deferred
until the country was sufficiently
populated with Jews. By the early
1940s, he had come around to
favoring the creation of a Jewish
commonwealth; By 1948, he was
prepared to declare statehood.
Ben-Gurion fathered the mod
ern Israeli army and considered it a
tool of national unity. As the War
of Independence raged, he dis
banded all Jewish militias, includ
ing the Palmach, the Haganah and
the Irgun, and molded them into
the new Israel Defense Force, the
IDF.
“...I see in it (IDF) not only the
fortess of our security...but also an
educational force for national uni
fication, and a loyal instrument for
welding together the dispersed
ethnic groups,” he said.
Ben-Gurion viewed aliya as one
of his chief nation-building tasks.
He promulgated the Law of Return,
which enabled Jews to claim im
mediate Israeli citizenship, and he
diverted scarce financial resources
to ensure that the new arrivals
Ben-Gurion presents President Harry S Truman with a Hanukia during a 1951 visit to the United States.
Abba Eban, then ambassador to the United Nations, is in the center.
father of Israel
Ben-Gurion with his wife Paula. 1917.
from all corners of the world would
be properly integrated.
“Aliyah precedes everything
else,” he was fond of saying. “For
in aliyah there is security, in aliyah
there is renaissance...”
Ben-Gurion, in opposition to
the United Nations, declared Jer
usalem as Israel’s capital. “Jewish
Jerusalem is an organic and insep
arable part for Israel, just as it is an
inseparable part of Jewish history,
Jewish religion and the Jewish
soul,” he wrote.
Ben-Gurion, though totally sec
ular, signed an historic agreement
with Jewish Orthodox parties
granting certain concessions in
return for their acceptance of a
Jewish state. The so-called “status
quo” in religion was frayed at the
edges and alienated many Israelis,
but it has helped preserve Israel’s
national unity.
Ben-Gurion turned Israeli for
eign policy westward, away from
neutrality, and sowed the seeds of
Israel’s alliance with the United
States. He laid the foundation for
Israel s relationship with West
Germany, and he cultivated Afri
can and Asian nations.
He opened up the Negev, the
sandy, desolate wasteland which
comprises two-thirds of Israel’s
land area. But for all his efforts, the
Negev still remains sparsely popu
lated and, in comparison to the
West Bank, a financial stepchild.
Despite all his successes, Ben-
Gurion failed at peace-making. He
wanted to come to terms with
Israel’s Arab neighbors, but could
not do so. In general, he adopted a
hardline approach to the Arabs,
permitting the IDF to retaliate for
each blow delivered bv the enemy.
According to some historians,
Ben-Gurion relied too heavily on
retaliatory raids. They claim that il
he had been less provocative, that
if he had not ordered the assault on
Egyptian positions in the Gaza
Strip in February 1955, Israel
might have had a chance to enter
into meaningful talks with Egypt,
the leader of the Arab world.
In retrospect, Ben-Gurion’s fate
ful decision to collude with France
and Britain in the 1956 Arab-Israeli
war was probably a strategic error,
for it branded Israel with the stamp
as a collaborator of colonial Euro
pean powers.
After his retirement, and partic
ularly in wake of the 1967 Six-Day
War, Ben-Gurion’s attitude mel
lowed. A hawk during much of his
tenure as prime minister, he turned
into something of a dove in his dec
lining years.
“...we must return to the pre-
1967 borders,” he told an inter
viewer several years before his
death. “Peace is more important
than real estate.”
David Ben-Gurion usually knew
what was good for Israel.