David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion
Term of office May 17, 1948 - January 26, 1954
Political party	Mapai
Preceded by	''New office''
Succeeded by	Moshe Sharett
Term of office November 3, 1955 - June 26, 1963
Preceded by	Moshe Sharett
Succeeded by	Levi Eshkol
Born	October 16, 1886 Jerusalem
Died	December 1, 1973 Tel Aviv
Religion	Atheism

David Ben-Gurion (Oct 16, 1886, in Jerusalem, Israel – Dec 1, 1973, Tel-Aviv) was a leader of the modern state of Israel, which he proclaimed on May 4, 1948. He served Israel as its first prime minister until 1963 except for a brief period from 1954 to 1955. He also served as the minister of defense.

Biography

A Zionist, he settled in Palestine as an orchard worker in 1906. He was involved in the foundation of the worker's union Histradut (general secretary 1921–1935) and of the socialist party Mapai. As chairman of the Jewish Agency (1935–1948), he organized the immigration of Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine against the resistance of the Palestinian Arabs and the British, who held a League of Nations mandate over the area and wished to avoid immigration policies that would upset the status quo. In 1944, he became president of the World Zionist Organization.

In 1956 during the Suez Crisis as a result of Egyptian provocations Ben-Gurion ordered to take over the Sinai Peninsula. The Israeli army withdrew from it when Israel was allowed to use the Strait of Tiran and when de facto peace was established along the Egyptian-Israeli border.

He read extensively, accumulating a library of some 20,000 books.

• About 1933-1936:
  

Meetings with Arab leaders.

About a year after that, Arlozorov was assassinated, and in the elections for the Israel National Congress (in 1933) there was a radical change in the balance of power of the Zionist movement. For the first time in the history of the Zionist movement, the Working Israel faction was the largest faction in Congress. The 17th Zionist Congress (1931) had 69 delegates out of 240 for the workers, the 18th Congress (1933) had 132 delegates out of 306. The general Zionists had 80 delegates in the 17th Congress, the 18th Congress - only 70; The revisionists also dwindled. Instead of 47 delegates in the 17th Congress, they had only 46 in the 18th Congress (43 delegates from Jabotinsky's people, 3 delegates from Grossman's people). A management of workers and radical Zionists was established in this Congress, with the majority of the management being workers. In this year I was elected to the Zionist management; I then saw the main role of the Zionist movement in increasing the immigration; This was the year Hitler came to power in Germany. At the first Histadrut Council that was held after the 18th Congress, I clarified our path in Zionism: "At a difficult and perilous time, a heavy responsibility fell upon our movement, when it never had, for the fate of Zionism. The disaster that befell German Jewry is not limited to Germany alone. Hitler's rule endangers the entire Jewish people. Hitlerism fought not only the Jews of Germany, but the Jews of the whole world. Hitler's regime cannot exist for a long time without war, without a war of revenge against France, Poland, the Czech Republic and the other countries where the German tribes land or against the expansive Soviet Russia. The Jewish people do not have a global factor in their power to prevent and delay this danger, or to weaken and reduce it. But there is one corner of the world, where we are a major factor, if not yet decisive, and this corner conditioned our entire national future as a nation. What will be our strength and weight in this corner on the terrible judgment day, when the great disaster breaks out in the world? Who knows, maybe only four or five years (if not less) stand between us and that terrible day. During this period we must double our number, because the size of the settlement that day will perhaps determine the fate of our future on the day of decision. This is one of the reasons why we need to see the question of aliyah at the center of our questions".

And although we were able to increase the immigration in those years, until in 1935 it reached a peak of 61,000; And the right of the High Commissioner, General Walkop, who helped us to a considerable extent in those days, will be remembered.

However, as the person responsible for the Zionist policy, I could not ignore the Arab problem, and after being elected to the board, I spoke with the leaders of the Arabs in Israel and with the representatives of Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, and tried to find a common platform for the Zionist movement and its aspirations and the Arab national movement.

• From his January 1939 speech "Behind the Arab Kings Lurks Hitler's Shadow," in Closing Washington Conference:

Mr; Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen : T'was asked by the executive of the Zionist organization of the Jewish Agency to convey to you and to our constituencies their heartiest greetings. I was also asked by the oldest and youngest Jewish community in the world, to give you a short message, a message from...

Palestine Jewish.

Even from the point of view of the present, not only of the past, and it was pointed out last week in an article in a big American paper, it is no more an Arab country. The three big great cities of Palestine, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv, are predominantly Jewish cities. Haifa has a Jewish majority, and it is the economic and strategic key to Palestine; Jerusalem, you know what Jerusalem means to the Jewish people ; and to the whole world. It has a majority of three to two. Tel Aviv is one hundred percent Jewish, but even taken together with Jaffa, it has a majority of three to one. The industry of Palestine is purely Jewish. Culture in Palestine is purely Jewish. Science, art in Palestine, as much as there is, Is purely Jewish. Even agriculture, if there is intensive agriculture pregnant with great possibilities, it is Jewish.

London Conference.

Next month we are going to meet His Majesty's Government in London. We will meet there not only representatives of the British government. We will meet there representatives of all Arab countries, but we meet there something more. Behind the Arab kings there lurks the shadow of Hitler. The British government and the British government for the last five years and my main job has been struggling with this government, but I am bound to say, they have not only fought, they have done something, and I must pay tribute, not only to what the Yishuv did, but also to the sacrifices of British soldiers and British policemen who fell in Palestine.

This government would not go out of its way and bring in a few Arab kings who have no status in Palestine, who have no right to say what should happen to Palestine, they wouldn't go out of their way if they were faced only with the terror of the Mufti. They know that behind the terror of these little cowardly Arab fuehrers, there is the big Mufti in Berlin, and they are afraid of him, and when we are going to face next month the British government and the Arab kings, we will also face the most terrible enemy that we have in the world. He will not be there but his menace will be felt just the same. We were also willing to cooperate with our Arab neighbors in spite of this campaign of terror and bloodshed and we are willing to cooperate. There is no place for vengeance in our hearts and if there is any chance of building up a Jewish-Arab cooperation, I can promise you you will not miss it, but I must also tell you, on behalf of the executive who sent me over, that there is one point on which we cannot yield a single thing, and this is the question of our rights, the right of the Jewish people, to return to their historic homeland, what is called our right to emigrate to Palestine. We are going to London, not with a light heart. We do not underestimate the difficulties.</small>

• After WW2:

Most of the Arabs in the Land of Israel (Mandatory "Palestine", ed.) and the neighboring countries, most of the Arab leaders in the entire Middle East, pinned their hopes on Hitler's victory and expected a fascist Nazi invasion. With the heavy blows inflicted on the "Axis" on the North African front, the pro-Nazi position was undermined, but the pro-Nazi leaders remained the leaders of Arab public opinion even now.

See also

• Binyamin Netanyahu

References

• Bar-Zohar, Michael: Ben Gurion, 1971–1974

External links

• Knesset: David Ben-Gurion