title: Social networking service

text: In 2007, when Obama first announced his candidacy, there was no such thing as an iPhone or Twitter. However, a year later, Obama was sending out voting reminders to thousands of people through Twitter, showing just how fast social media moves. Obama's campaign was current and needed to be successful in incorporating social media, as social media acts best and is most effective in real time.


title: Social networking service

text: Building up to the 2012 presidential election, it was interesting to see how strong the influence of social media would be following the 2008 campaigns, where Obama's winning campaign had been social media-heavy, whereas McCain's campaign did not really grasp social media. John F. Kennedy was the first president who really understood television, and similarly, Obama is the first president to fully understand the power of social media. Obama has recognized social media is about creating relationships and connections and therefore used social media to the advantage of presidential election campaigns, in which Obama has dominated his opponents in terms of social media space.


title: Social networking service

text: Other political campaigns have followed on from Obama's successful social media campaigns, recognizing the power of social media and incorporating it as a key factor embedded within their political campaigns, for example, Donald Trump's presidential electoral campaign, 2016. Dan Pfeiffer, Obama's former digital and social media guru, commented that Donald Trump is "way better at the internet than anyone else in the GOP which is partly why he is winning".


title: Social networking service

text: Research has shown that 66% of social media users actively engage in political activity online, and like many other behaviors, online activities translate into offline ones. With research from the 'MacArthur Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics' stating that young people who are politically active online are double as likely to vote than those who are not politically active online. Therefore, political applications of social networking sites are crucial, particularly to engage with the youth, who perhaps are the least educated in politics and the most in social networking sites. Social media is, therefore, a very effective way in which politicians can connect with a younger audience through their political campaigns.


title: Social networking service

text: On June 28, 2020, "The New York Times" released an article sharing the finding of two researchers who studied the impact of TikTok, a video-sharing and social networking application, on political expression. The application, besides being a creative space to express oneself, has been used maliciously to spread disinformation ahead of US President Donald Trump's Tulsa rally in Oklahoma and amplified footage of police brutality at Black Lives Matter protests.


title: Social networking service

text: Crowdsourcing social media platform, such as Design Contest, Arcbazar, Tongal, combined group of professional freelancers, such as designers, and help them communicate with business owners interested in their suggestion. This process is often used to subdivide tedious work or to fund-raise startup companies and charities, and can also occur offline.


title: Social networking service

text: There are a number of projects that aim to develop free and open source software to use for social networking services. These technologies are often referred to as social engine or social networking engine software.


title: Social networking service

text: The following is a list of the largest social networking services, in order by number of active users, as of April 2021, as published by Statista:


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Keurig Dr Pepper Inc., formerly Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (1981–2014) and Keurig Green Mountain (2014–2018), is a publicly-traded American beverage and coffeemaker conglomerate with headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. Formed in July 2018 with the merger of Keurig Green Mountain and Dr Pepper Snapple Group (formerly Dr. Pepper/7up Inc.), Keurig Dr Pepper offers over 125 hot and cold beverages. The company's Canadian business unit subsidiary operates as Keurig Dr Pepper Canada (formerly Canada Dry Motts).


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: The company's east-coast division manufactures Keurig brewing systems; sources, produces, and sells coffee, hot cocoa, teas, and other beverages under various brands for its Keurig machines; and sells coffee beans and ground coffee in bags and fractional packs. As of 2018, the newly merged conglomerate also sells sodas, juices, and other soft drinks via its Dr Pepper Snapple division based in Texas.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) was established in 1981. After regional and national expansion in the late 1980s, and an IPO in 1993, the company completed its acquisition of the brewing-machine manufacturer Keurig, Inc. in 2006, enabling rapid growth through the high-margin sales of its many varieties of single-serve K-Cup pods. In March 2014, GMCR changed its name to Keurig Green Mountain.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: A publicly traded company from 1993 through 2015, Keurig Green Mountain was acquired by a group of investors led by JAB Holding Company in March 2016 for $13.9 billion in cash. Keurig Green Mountain became a privately-held company for two years, and was an independent entity run by its pre-existing management team and a new CEO.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: On July 9, 2018, Keurig Green Mountain acquired the Dr Pepper Snapple Group in an $18.7-billion deal. The combined company was renamed "Keurig Dr Pepper", and traded publicly again on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "KDP" until 2020 when it switched to Nasdaq while retaining the same ticker. Shareholders of Dr Pepper Snapple Group own 13% of the combined company, with Keurig shareholder Mondelez International owning 13% to 14% of that fraction. JAB Holdings owns the remaining 73-74%.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: On February 21, 2019, the company announced that they are building a second headquarters in Frisco, Texas.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) began when entrepreneur Bob Stiller was near a Vermont ski resort, where he discovered a cup of coffee which he enjoyed so much that he sought after its source. In 1981, he and a partner bought a two-thirds stake in the small specialty coffee roasting company in Waitsfield, Vermont, that produced the roasted beans. The store and café sold beans, grounds, and coffee to the public and a few restaurants. Stiller dedicated himself to coffee-roasting, using exclusively arabica coffee beans. By 1982, the company had around 30 employees, and moved its production facilities to Waterbury, Vermont.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Stiller bought out his two partners for $100,000 and became sole proprietor of the company within two years of his original purchase, but it took four years to turn a profit. To grow the business, Stiller sold the coffee to high-end restaurants and gas stations alike, and gave out free samples as he could not afford advertising. In 1986, he launched a mail-order business which he advertised in gourmet magazines, and acquired his first supermarket-chain customer, Kings.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Stiller adopted technology to track customers' orders; to regulate roasting-heat levels appropriate to each bag; and to track distribution, manufacturing, sales, and personnel (adopting PeopleSoft in 1997). By 1983, employees composted used coffee grounds at its retail stores, and by 1986, Green Mountain introduced its first organic coffee in a retail market test. The company became one of the largest suppliers of double-certified fair-trade and organic coffee in the world.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: As American tastes in coffee changed, sales of Green Mountain roasted coffee beans grew. In 1991, GMCR had seven retail outlets, 1,000 wholesale clients, $11 million in sales, and $200,000 in profits. By 1993, the company had 2,400 wholesale accounts and sales of about $10 million, and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. started trading publicly, under the ticker "GMCR". The company expanded its retail locations, food-service distribution, mail-order business, and wholesale business.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In 1994, Green Mountain began exporting to Canada and Taiwan. In the late 1990s, it broadened its national supermarket chain distribution, gas-station and convenience-store distribution throughout the northeast, and it sold its product in airlines and Amtrak, specialty coffee stores, and venues such as LL Bean, Weight Watchers International, and Staples.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In 1993, three engineering entrepreneurs from a Massachusetts start-up called Keurig approached GMCR about developing a single-cup coffee brewing system, marking GMCR's first investment in Keurig. In 1996, GMCR invested further in Keurig, buying a 35% interest in the company. The following year, GMCR became the first roaster to offer coffee in a K-Cup pod for the Keurig Single-Cup Brewing System; in 1998 Keurig delivered its first brewing system, designed for office use. The launch of the first K-Cups with Green Mountain Coffee helped GMCR begin to further compete with the ubiquitous presence of Starbucks, by allowing people to brew their own single servings of premium coffee.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Also in 1997, a deal with Poland Spring opened the office-worker market by distributing Green Mountain Coffee to thousands of offices in the Northeast. In 1998, GMCR closed its 12 retail shops in favor of the burgeoning direct-mail and online market, its growing distributions to business offices and other national venues, and its wholesale market. That year, the company signed an exclusive deal with American Skiing Company, offered its first corporate gifts catalogue, sold its certified organic coffee in ExxonMobil's national and international On the Run convenience stores, and expanded its supermarket distribution to 500 stores. In 1999, it expanded its export market, including to Great Britain.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In 2000, Green Mountain reached an agreement to promote and sell fair trade coffee, committing to making at least 3% of its sales fair trade—certified by TransFair USA. In 2001, the company acquired Frontier Organic Coffee, and in 2002, it signed an agreement to sell fair trade coffee under the Newman's Own Organics label. In late 2005, GMCR reached a deal to sell its Newman's Own Organics Blend coffee in more than 600 McDonald's restaurants in New England and Upstate New York.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In 2006, Green Mountain—which had successively invested in and acquired increasing percentage ownership of Keurig, Inc. in 1993, 1996, and 2003, by which time it had a 43% ownership—completed its full acquisition of the single-cup brewing systems manufacturer. The successive acquisition allowed Green Mountain to adopt a multi-brand portfolio, and multichannel distribution of brands in a variety of settings. It also fueled enormous revenue growth, and allowed GMCR to transition fully from deriving 95% of its revenue from its low-margin wholesale coffee business in the late 1990s (approximately $65 million), to deriving 95% of its revenue from high-margin sales of K-Cups as of 2014 (more than $4.3 billion).


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: On September 28, 2010, GMCR's stock rose to what was then an all-time high; however, the company disclosed after the markets closed that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had requested documents and data related to an inquiry into how it accounted for revenue. The company announced that U.S. regulators had inquired into some of Green Mountain's accounting practices, including revenue recognition, and the large inventory with a single vendor, M. Block and Sons, Inc. Most analysts felt that the company practices were sound. The SEC ended the probe in October 2014, and brought no enforcement action against Green Mountain or its employees.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In February 2011, Green Mountain announced an agreement with Dunkin' Donuts to make Dunkin’ Donuts coffee available in single-serve K-Cup pods for use with Keurig Single-Cup Brewers. In addition, participating Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants on occasion offer Keurig Single-Cup Brewers for sale. In March 2011, Green Mountain Coffee and Starbucks announced a similar deal whereby the latter would sell its coffee and tea in Keurig single-serve pods, and would in return sell Keurig machines in their stores as part of the deal.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters introduced the Keurig Vue brewer, paired with new Vue packs, in February 2012, seven months before patents on the K-Cup expired in September 2012. The Vue system was announced as having customizable features so consumers had control over the strength, size, and temperature of their beverages, and the Vue pack is made of recyclable #5 plastic. In November 2012, GMCR released its espresso, cappuccino, and latte brewer, the Rivo, co-developed with the Italian coffee company Lavazza. In the fall of 2013, the company released a full-pot brewer, the Keurig Bolt, for use mainly in offices.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In February 2014, The Coca-Cola Company purchased a 10% stake in the company, valued at $1.25 billion, with an option to increase their stake to 16%, which was exercised in May 2014. The partnership was part of Coca-Cola's support of a cold beverage system to be developed by Keurig that allows customers to make Coca-Cola and other brand soft drinks at home. In January 2015, the company made a similar deal with Dr Pepper Snapple Group, but without a stockholder stake.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In early March 2014, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters shareholders voted to change its name to Keurig Green Mountain to reflect its business of selling Keurig coffee makers. Its stock-market symbol remained "GMCR".


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In the fall of 2014, Keurig Green Mountain introduced the Keurig 2.0 brewer, with technology to prevent old or unlicensed pods being used in the brewer. The digital lock-out sparked hacking attempts and antitrust lawsuits. The 2.0 brewer also has the capacity to brew full carafes in addition to single servings, via the use of the new K-Carafe portion pack.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In March 2015, it launched the K-Mug pod, a recyclable pod which brews large travel mug–sized portions. In mid 2015 Keurig debuted the K200, a smaller Keurig 2.0 model that can brew single cups or four-cup carafes and comes in a variety of colors. General Electric announced that its new Café French Door refrigerator, due out in late 2015, would have a Keurig coffee machine built into the door.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In September 2015, Keurig launched a line of Campbell's Soup available in K-Cups. The kits come with a packet of noodles and a K-Cup pod of soup, and the varieties include Chicken Noodle and Southwest Style Chicken Noodle.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Also in September 2015, Keurig launched Keurig Kold, a brewer which created a variety of cold beverages including soft drinks, functional beverages, and sparkling waters. The machine brewed beverages from The Coca-Cola Company and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, in addition to Keurig's own line of flavored sparkling and non-sparkling waters and teas, sports drinks, and soda-fountain drinks. The company's primary competitor in this market area was SodaStream. In June 2016 Keurig announced it was discontinuing the machine and offered refunds to purchasers.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: On December 7, 2015, an investor group led by private-equity firm JAB Holding Company—an investment firm dealing in high-end consumer goods, whose holdings include Peet's Coffee & Tea—announced its intent to acquire Keurig Green Mountain for $13.9 billion. The minority investors in the KGM purchase included shareholders in the global coffee and tea company Jacobs Douwe Egberts, which owns Tassimo. The agreement was unanimously approved by Keurig Green Mountain's board of directors.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: The selling price, at $92 per share, represented a 77.9% premium over the closing price of Keurig Green Mountain (stock ticker "GMCR") on December 5, 2015. The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Green Mountain's largest shareholder at 17.4%, announced its support for the JAB takeover since the sale of its stock holding would provide Coca-Cola with a substantial financial benefit.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: The acquisition closed in March 2016. Keurig Green Mountain became a privately held company, and remained an independent entity run by its existing management team, retaining its head office in Waterbury, Vermont. In a statement, JAB's chairman Bart Becht said that "Keurig Green Mountain will operate as an independent entity... The company’s management team...will continue to run Keurig."


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In July 2018, Keurig Green Mountain acquired Dr Pepper Snapple Group in a deal worth $18.7 billion. Legally, Dr Pepper Snapple Group was the surviving company; it remained publicly traded and changed its name to Keurig Dr Pepper. This created the third largest beverage company in North America. On July 10, shares in Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Its stock switched to NASDAQ in 2020. Dr Pepper Snapple Group continues to operate as a business unit under the Keurig Dr Pepper parent company.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: GMCR began to embrace an environmental ethos within two years of its founding, and environmentalism and sustainability were overarching policies for which Green Mountain became well known. Among other initiatives within Green Mountain's first decade, in 1983 employees began composting used coffee grounds at its retail stores; in 1986 the company introduced its first organic coffee in a retail market test; in 1989 it formed an Employee Environmental Committee, and began a recycling program; and in 1990 it introduced Rain Forest Nut coffee to sponsor rainforest preservation, donating 10% of the product's profits to Conservation International and the Rainforest Alliance, and it introduced the first earth-friendly, oxygen-whitened, dioxin-free coffee filters. In 1992 it formed a Stewardship Program to promote sustainability and sound environmental practices; in 1997 it pioneered the first biodegradable bag for bulk coffee purchases; and in 2006 it introduced the ecotainer, a to-go cup for hot beverages made entirely out of renewable materials.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In 2005, Green Mountain was the first coffee company to support the United Nations' Global Reporting Initiative mission to develop globally accepted sustainability reporting guidelines. In 2008 GMCR's board of directors added a social and environmental responsibility committee. During that time period GMCR also established a vice president for environmental affairs reporting directly to the CEO. As of 2015, Keurig Green Mountain has a Chief Sustainability Officer.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: The company offsets 100% of its direct greenhouse gases, and prioritizes waste reduction and responsible energy use, and sustainability over the life-cycle of its products. In addition to other awards and recognition for sustainable practices, GMCR was on "Sustainable Business"s "World's Top 20 Sustainable Business Stocks" annually from 2002 to 2007, and as of 2015 it is on the EPA's National Top 100 of green power users in the U.S. In 2014, Keurig Green Mountain announced a multi-faceted effort to address the long-term challenges of the global water crisis, and instituted an initial commitment of $11 million to support nonprofits working to promote water security.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Environmental advocates and journalists have criticized the company for the billions of non-recyclable and non-biodegradable K-Cups consumers purchase and dispose of every year, and for the dichotomy between the company's historic environmentally conscious image and the impact of K-Cups on the environment. GMCR's vice president of sustainability stated in 2013 that "The system has a lot of pretty demanding technical requirements in terms of being able to withstand certain amount of temperature and to have a certain kind of rigidity, and provide the right kinds of moisture barriers and oxygen barriers and the like. So it isn't the simplest challenge." In 2015, the company's chief sustainability officer stated that every new K-Cup spin-off product introduced since 2006 – including the Vue, Bolt, and K-Carafe cups – is recyclable if disassembled into paper, plastic, and metal components. In its 2014 Sustainability Report, released in February 2015, Keurig Green Mountain re-affirmed that a priority for the company is ensuring that 100% of K-Cup pods are recyclable by 2020.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: From its inception, and in tandem with its environmentally conscious outlook, Green Mountain has had a culture grounded in social responsibility, community mindedness, philanthropy, and respect for employees. Among other recognition and awards for its corporate social responsibility (CSR), GMCR was in the top ten of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" each year from 2003 to 2007, and was ranked #1 in 2006 and 2007. GMCR was not under consideration for the ranking in 2008, because the focus switched to exclusively large-cap companies. It re-entered the "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list in 2010 and 2013. In 2005, Green Mountain released its first Corporate Social Responsibility Report. In 2008 GMCR's board of directors added a social and environmental responsibility committee overseeing the company's social responsibilities. It also established a vice president for corporate social responsibility who reports directly to the CEO. In addition to its environmental oversight, the company's Sustainability Committee focuses on areas including the financial and environmental viability, health, and resiliency of its coffee-growing and manufacturing supply chains; community outreach; and corporate and employee social responsibility and awareness.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: GMCR was a pioneer in the Fair Trade movement in 2000, guaranteeing farmers a steady minimum price far above market value. Since 2010 Green Mountain has been the largest purchaser of Fair Trade coffee in the world. In addition, the company was from its beginnings known for its long-term relationships and fair dealings with coffee-growing suppliers, and for its large percentage of farmer-direct coffee purchases. Since the early 1990s, the company has annually sent groups of employees on trips to coffee farms in Latin America, to gain first-hand experience in the lives of coffee growers. GMCR has prioritized initiatives to alleviate poverty and hunger in coffee-growing communities. These include Coffee Kids, an international non-profit which improves the lives of children and families in remote coffee-growing villages; and the FomCafe cooperative's quality-control training program, which helps farmers earn higher profits for coffee. In 2002 GMCR was the first corporate investor of the non-profit micro-loan organization Root Capital, and through it Green Mountain has provided millions of dollars in loans to cash-strapped coffee farmers. In 2002 Green Mountain also formed a joint alliance with the U.S. Agency for International Development, to improve the livelihoods of those in impoverished coffee-growing regions.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Internally, GMCR has cultivated and maintained a flat corporate culture, where employee buy-in, enthusiasm and vision, collaboration, and input is important. The company offers employees continuous training and development opportunities; tuition for outside education; profit-sharing; financial education; and continuous career-advancement support. Employees are paid for up to 52 hours of volunteer work in their community per year. GMCR has been on "Forbes" list of Best Small Companies five times, and has been recognized as a "Best Place to Work" in "HR Magazine".


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Keurig Green Mountain operates in two business segments: domestic and Canada. The domestic segment produces and sells coffee, hot cocoa, teas and other beverages, to be prepared hot or cold, in Keurig pods; it also sells coffee in traditional packaging, including whole beans and ground coffee in bags, and ground coffee in fractional packs. It also sells patented Keurig single-cup brewing systems for use both at home and away from home.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: The Canadian business unit – Keurig Canada Inc. – sells Keurig brewers, and produces and sells coffees, teas, and other beverages in a variety of packaging formats, including Keurig pods, as well as coffee in traditional packaging such as bags, cans, and fractional packs. It sells under a variety of brands, including Van Houtte, Brulerie St. Denis, Brulerie Mont-Royal, and Orient Express, and its licensed Bigelow and Wolfgang Puck brands.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Through its owned brands and through its partnerships and licensing, Keurig Green Mountain's K-Cup pods offer more than 400 varieties of coffee, tea, and other beverages from 60 brands, including the top ten best-selling coffee brands in the U.S.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: Founder Bob Stiller was president and CEO of the company from its inception in 1981 until 2007, when he stepped down but remained chairman until May 2012. Lawrence J. Blanford became Green Mountain's president and CEO in 2007. Brian Kelley, previously chief product supply officer of Coca-Cola Refreshments, became the company's president and CEO in December 2012.


title: Keurig Dr Pepper

text: In March 2016, JAB Holding Company and other investors acquired Keurig Green Mountain. Robert Gamgort, previously CEO of Pinnacle Foods, took over as KGM's new CEO in May 2016. The pre-existing management team, with Gamgort as its new CEO, continued to run Keurig Green Mountain as an independent entity, following its acquisition by JAB Holding Company. Following the 2018 merger with Dr Pepper Snapple, Gamgort became CEO of Keurig Dr Pepper, and Larry Young, who had been president and CEO of Dr Pepper Snapple, retired from those positions and joined the new company's board of directors.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay (Cyanocitta cristata) is a passerine bird in the family Corvidae, native to eastern North America. It lives in most of the eastern and central United States; some eastern populations may be migratory. Resident populations are also in Newfoundland, Canada; breeding populations are found across southern Canada. It breeds in both deciduous and coniferous forests, and is common in residential areas. Its coloration is predominantly blue, with a white chest and underparts, and a blue crest; it has a black, U-shaped collar around its neck and a black border behind the crest. Males and females are similar in size and plumage, and plumage does not vary throughout the year. Four subspecies have been recognized.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay feeds mainly on seeds and nuts, such as acorns, which it may hide to eat later; soft fruits; arthropods; and occasionally small vertebrates. It typically gleans food from trees, shrubs, and the ground, and sometimes hawks insects from the air. Blue jays can be very aggressive to other birds; they sometimes raid nests and have even been found to have decapitated other birds.


title: Blue jay

text: It builds an open cup nest in the branches of a tree; both sexes participate. The clutch may be two to seven eggs, which are blueish or light brown with darker brown spots. Young are altricial, and are brooded by the female for 8–12 days after hatching. They may stay with their parents for one to two months.


title: Blue jay

text: The name "jay" derives from the bird's noisy, garrulous nature and has been applied to other birds of the same family, which are also mostly gregarious. Jays are also called "jaybirds".


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay was first described as "Pica glandaria cærulea cristata" in English naturalist Mark Catesby's 1731 publication of "Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahamas". It was later described as "Corvus cristatus" in Carl Linnaeus' 1758 edition of "Systema Naturae". In the 19th century, the jay was described by French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1838 as "Cyanocorax cristatus" in "A geographical and comparative list of the birds of Europe and North America", and given its modern scientific name "Cyanocitta cristata" by Hugh Edwin Strickland in 1845. The genus name "Cyanocitta" derives from the Greek words 'kyaneos' (blue) and the 'kitta' and 'kissa' (chattering bird, jay), and the term 'blue chatterer' refers to the bright blue plumage of the head, nape, back, and tail of the bird. The specific name "cristata" (crested, tufted) derives from Latin referring to the prominent blue crest of the jay.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay measures from bill to tail and weighs , with a wingspan of . Consistent with Bergmann's rule, jays from Connecticut averaged in mass, while jays from warmer southern Florida averaged . There is a pronounced crest on the head, a crown of feathers, which may be raised or lowered according to the bird's mood. When excited or aggressive, the crest will be fully raised. When frightened, the crest bristles outwards, brushlike. When the bird is feeding among other jays or resting, the crest is flattened on the head.


title: Blue jay

text: Its plumage is lavender-blue to mid-blue in the crest, back, wings, and tail, and its face is white. The underside is off-white and the neck is collared with black which extends to the sides of the head. The wing primaries and tail are strongly barred with black, sky-blue, and white. The bill, legs, and eyes are all black. Males and females are almost identical, but the male is slightly larger. The black plumage on its nape, face, and throat varies extensively between individuals; it is believed to assist in recognition between individuals.


title: Blue jay

text: As with most other blue-hued birds, the blue jay's coloration is not derived from pigments but is the result of light interference due to the internal structure of the feathers; if a blue feather is crushed, the blue disappears because the structure is destroyed. The actual pigment in its feathers is melanin. This is referred to as structural coloration.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay occurs from southern Canada (including the southern areas of provinces from Alberta eastward to Quebec and throughout the Atlantic provinces) and throughout the eastern and central United States south to Florida and northeastern Texas. The western edge of the range stops where the arid pine forest and scrub habitat of the closely related Steller's jay ("C. stelleri") begins, generally in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Recently, the range of the blue jay has extended northwestwards so that it is now a rare but regularly seen winter visitor along the northern US and southern Canadian Pacific Coast. As the two species' ranges now overlap, "C. cristata" may sometimes hybridize with Steller's jay. The increase in trees throughout the Great Plains during the past century due to fire suppression and tree planting facilitated the western range expansion of the blue jay as well as range expansions of many other species of birds. From 1966 to 2015, the Blue Jay experienced a population decline along the Atlantic coast, but a greater than 1.5% annual population increase throughout the northern part of its range, including Labrador, Nova Scotia, southern Quebec, and southern Manitoba.


title: Blue jay

text: The northernmost subspecies "C. c. bromia" is migratory, subject to necessity. It may withdraw several hundred kilometers south in the northernmost parts of its range. Thousands of blue jays have been observed to migrate in flocks along the Great Lakes and Atlantic coasts. It migrates during the daytime, in loose flocks of 5 to 250 birds. Much about their migratory behavior remains a mystery. Some are present throughout winter in all parts of their range. Young jays may be more likely to migrate than adults, but many adults also migrate. Some individual jays migrate south one year, stay north the next winter, and then migrate south again the next year. To date, no one has concretely worked out why they migrate when they do. Likely, it is related to weather conditions and how abundant the winter food sources are, which can determine whether other northern birds will move south.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay occupies a variety of habitats within its large range, from the pine woods of Florida to the spruce-fir forests of northern Ontario. It is less abundant in denser forests, preferring mixed woodlands with oaks and beeches. It has expertly adapted to human activity, occurring in parks and residential areas, and can adapt to wholesale deforestation with relative ease if human activity creates other means for the jays to get by.


title: Blue jay

text: Four subspecies are generally accepted, though the variation within this species is rather subtle and essentially clinal. No firm boundaries can be drawn between the inland subspecies. The ranges of the coastal races are better delimited.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay is a noisy, bold, and aggressive passerine. It is a moderately slow flier (roughly ) when unprovoked. It flies with body and tail held level, with slow wing beats.


title: Blue jay

text: Its slow flying speeds make this species easy prey for hawks and owls when it flies in open areas. Virtually all the raptorial birds sympatric in distribution with the blue jay may prey upon it, especially swift bird-hunting specialists such as the "Accipiter" hawks. Diverse predators may prey on jay eggs and young up to their fledgling stage, including tree squirrels, snakes, cats, crows, raccoons, opossums, other jays and possibly many of the same birds of prey who attack adults.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay can be beneficial to other bird species, as it may chase predatory birds, such as hawks and owls, and will scream if it sees a predator within its territory. It has also been known to sound an alarm call when hawks or other dangers are near, and smaller birds often recognize this call and hide themselves away accordingly. It may occasionally impersonate the calls of raptors, especially those of the red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks, possibly to test if a hawk is in the vicinity, though also possibly to scare off other birds that may compete for food sources. It may also be aggressive towards humans who come close to its nest, and if an owl roosts near the nest during the daytime the blue jay mobs it until it takes a new roost. However, blue jays have also been known to attack or kill other smaller birds, and foliage-roosting bat species such as Eastern red bats. Jays are very territorial birds, and they will chase others from a feeder for an easier meal. Additionally, the blue jay may raid other birds' nests, stealing eggs, chicks, and nests. However, this may not be as common as is typically thought, as only 1% of food matter in one study was bird material. Despite this, other passerines may still mob jays who come within their breeding territories.


title: Blue jay

text: When a blue jay is agitated or angry, the blue crest atop its head will rise. It will lower when the bird is relaxed or calm.


title: Blue jay

text: Blue jays, like other corvids, are highly curious and are considered intelligent birds. Young individuals playfully snatch brightly coloured or reflective objects, such as bottle caps or pieces of aluminum foil, and carry them around until they lose interest. While not confirmed to have engaged in tool use in the wild, blue jays in captivity have been observed using strips of newspaper as tools to obtain food, while captive fledglings have been observed attempting to open the doors of their cages.


title: Blue jay

text: Blue jays are omnivorous, but the Audubon Society estimates that 75% of their diet is vegetable matter. They have strong black bills which they use for cracking nuts, usually while holding them with their feet, and for eating corn, grains and seeds. Blue jays particularly love to eat peanuts in the shell. Its food is sought both on the ground and in trees and includes virtually all known types of plant and animal sources, such as acorns and beech mast, weed seeds, grain, fruits and other berries, peanuts, bread, meat, small invertebrates of many types, scraps in town parks, bird-table food and rarely eggs and nestlings. Blue jays will sometimes cache food, though to what extent differs widely among individuals. Although seemingly contentious in their general behavior, blue jays are frequently subservient to other medium-sized birds who visit bird-feeders. In Florida, blue jays were dominated at feeders by eastern gray squirrels, Florida scrub-jays, common grackles and red-headed woodpeckers, all of which were occasionally observed to aggressively prevent the jays from feeding.


title: Blue jay

text: The mating season begins in mid-March, peaks in mid-April to May, and extends into July. Any suitable tree or large bush may be used for nesting, though an evergreen is preferred. The nest is preferentially built at a height in the trees of . It is cup-shaped and composed of twigs, small roots, bark strips, moss, other plant material, cloth, paper, and feathers, with occasional mud added to the cup.


title: Blue jay

text: Blue jays are not very picky about nesting locations. If no better place is available – e.g. in a heavily deforested area – they will even use places like the large mailboxes typical of the rural United States. They also appropriate nests of other mid-sized songbirds as long as these are placed in suitable spots; American robin nests are commonly used by blue jays, for example.


title: Blue jay

text: Blue jays typically form monogamous pair bonds for life. Both sexes build the nest and rear the young, though only the female broods them. The male feeds the female while she is brooding the eggs. There are usually between 3 and 6 (averaging 4 or 5) eggs laid and incubated over 16–18 days. The young fledge usually between 17 and 21 days after hatching.


title: Blue jay

text: After the juveniles fledge, the family travels and forages together until early fall, when the young birds disperse to avoid competition for food during the winter. Sexual maturity is reached after one year of age. The oldest known wild, banded Blue Jay was at least 26 years, 11 months old when it was found dead after being caught in fishing gear. It had been banded in the Newfoundland/Labrador/St. Pierre et Miquelon area in 1989 and was found there in 2016. Another wild jay was found to have been around years old. A more common lifespan for wild birds that survive to adulthood is around 7 years. Beyond predation and the occasional collision with man-made objects, a common cause of mortality in recent decades has been the West Nile virus, to which corvids as a whole seem especially susceptible. However, despite several major local declines, overall blue jays have not seemed to have been depleted by the disease.


title: Blue jay

text: Blue jays can make a large variety of sounds, and individuals may vary perceptibly in their calling style. Like other corvids, they may learn to mimic human speech. Blue jays can also copy the cries of local hawks so well that it is sometimes difficult to tell which it is. Their voice is typical of most jays in being varied, but the most commonly recognized sound is the alarm call, which is a loud, almost gull-like scream. There is also a high-pitched "jayer-jayer" call that increases in speed as the bird becomes more agitated. This particular call can be easily confused with the chickadee's song because of the slow-starting "chick-ah-dee-ee". Blue jays will use these calls to band together to mob potential predators such as hawks and drive them away from the jays' nests.


title: Blue jay

text: Blue jays also have quiet, almost subliminal calls which they use among themselves in proximity. One of the most distinctive calls of this type is often referred to as the "rusty pump" owing to its squeaky resemblance to the sound of an old hand-operated water pump. The blue jay (and other corvids) are distinct from most other songbirds for using their call as a song.


title: Blue jay

text: In old African American folklore of the southern United States, the blue jay was a significant metaphysical creature. In some tales, the blue jay was credited with making the earth ""when all de worl' was water"" by bringing the first ""grit"" or ""dirt."" In other tales the blue jay was temporarily conscripted as a servant of the Devil, and would not be seen on Friday as it was gathering twigs to furnish Hell's kindling and give fire to wicked men on Earth; relieved from duty on Saturday, its song for the day was abundant and joyous.


title: Blue jay

text: The blue jay was adopted as the team symbol of the Toronto Blue Jays Major League Baseball team, as well as some of their minor league affiliates. Their mascot, Ace, is an anthropomorphic blue jay. The blue jay is also the official mascot for Johns Hopkins University, Elmhurst University, and Creighton University. The latter two spell the name as one word - Bluejay. It is also the provincial bird of the province of Prince Edward Island in Canada. A notable example from fiction includes Mordecai from the American animated series, Regular Show.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: David Ben-Gurion ( ; ; born David Grün; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which he led until 1963 with a short break in 1954–55.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the "de facto" leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father".


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Following the war, Ben-Gurion served as Israel's first prime minister and minister of defence. As prime minister, he helped build state institutions, presiding over national projects aimed at the development of the country. He also oversaw the absorption of vast numbers of Jews from all over the world. A centerpiece of his foreign policy was improving relationships with the West Germans. He worked with Konrad Adenauer's government in Bonn, and West Germany provided large sums (in the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany) in compensation for Nazi Germany's confiscation of Jewish property during the Holocaust.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1954 he resigned as prime minister and minister of defence but remained a member of the Knesset. He returned as minister of defence in 1955 after the Lavon Affair and the resignation of Pinhas Lavon. Later that year he became prime minister again, following the 1955 elections. Under his leadership, Israel responded aggressively to Arab guerrilla attacks, and in 1956, invaded Egypt along with British and French forces after Egypt nationalised the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: He stepped down from office in 1963, and retired from political life in 1970. He then moved to Sde Boker, a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death. Posthumously, Ben-Gurion was named one of "Time" magazine's .


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk in Congress Polandthen part of the Russian Empire. His father, Avigdor Grün, was a ""pokątnym doradcą"" (secret adviser), navigating his clients through the often corrupt Imperial legal system. Following the publication of Theodore Herzl's "Der Judenstaat" in 1896 Avigdor co-founded a Zionist group called "Beni Zion"Children of Zion. In 1900 it had a membership of 200. David was the youngest of three boys with an older and younger sister. His mother, Scheindel (Broitman), died of sepsis following a stillbirth in 1897. It was her eleventh pregnancy. Two years later his father remarried. Ben-Gurion's birth certificate, found in Poland in 2003, indicated that he had a twin brother who died shortly after birth. Between the ages of 5 and 13 Ben Gurion attended 5 different heders as well as compulsory Russian classes. Two of the heders were 'modern' and taught in Hebrew rather than Yiddish. His father could not afford to enroll Ben-Gurion in Płońsk's Beth midrash so Ben Gurion's formal education ended after his Bar Mitzvah. At the age of 14 he and two friends formed a youth club, "Ezra", promoting Hebrew studies and emigration to the Holy Land. The group ran Hebrew classes for local youth and in 1903 collected funds for the victims of the Kishinev pogrom. One biographer writes that "Ezra" had 150 members within a year. A different source estimates the group never had more than 'several dozen' members.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1904 Ben Gurion moved to Warsaw where he hoped to enroll in the Warsaw Mechanical-Technical School founded by Hipolit Wawelberg. He did not have sufficient qualifications to matriculate and took work teaching Hebrew in a Warsaw heder. Inspired by Tolstoy he had become a vegetarian. He became involved in Zionist politics and in October 1905 he joined the clandestine Social-Democratic Jewish Workers' Party"Poalei Zion". Two months later he was the delegate from Płońsk at a local conference. While in Warsaw the Russian Revolution of 1905 broke out and he was in the city during the clamp down that followed; he was arrested twice, the second time he was held for two weeks and only released with the help of his father. In December 1905 he returned to Płońsk as a full-time Poalei Zion operative. There he worked to oppose the anti-Zionist Bund who were trying to establish a base. He also organised a strike over working conditions amongst garment workers. He was known to use intimidatory tactics, such as extorting money from wealthy Jews at gunpoint to raise funds for Jewish workers.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: "For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In autumn of 1906 he left Poland to go to Palestine. He travelled with his sweetheart Rachel Nelkin and her mother, as well as Shlomo Zemach his comrade from "Ezra". His voyage was funded by his father.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Immediately on landing in Jaffa, 7 September 1906, Ben Gurion set off, on foot, in a group of fourteen, to Petah Tikva. It was the largest of the 13 Jewish agricultural settlements and consisted of 80 households with a population of nearly 1500; of these around 200 were Second Aliyah pioneers like Ben Gurion. He found work as a day labourer, waiting each morning hoping to be chosen by an overseer. Jewish workers found it difficult competing with local villagers who were more skilled and prepared to work for less. Ben Gurion was shocked at the number of Arabs employed. In November he caught malaria and the doctor advised he return to Europe. By the time he left Petah Tikva in summer of 1907 he had worked an average 10 days a month which frequently left him with no money for food. He wrote long letters in Hebrew to his father and friends. They rarely revealed how difficult life was. Others who had come from Płońsk were writing about tuberculosis, cholera and people dying of hunger.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: On his disembarkation at Jaffa Ben Gurion had been spotted by Israel Shochat who had arrived two years previously and had established a group of around 25 Poale Zion followers. Shochat made a point of inspecting new arrivals looking for recruits. A month after his arrival at Petah Tikva Shochat invited Ben Gurion to attend the founding conference of the "Jewish Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Land of Israel" in Jaffa. The conference, 4–6 October 1906, was attended by 60 or so people. Shochat engineered the elections so that Ben Gurion was elected onto the 5-man Central Committee and the 10-man Manifesto Committee. He also arranged that Ben Gurion was chosen as chairman of the sessions. These Ben Gurion conducted in Hebrew, forbidding the translation of his address into Russian or Yiddish. The conference was divided: a large faction"Rostovians"wanted to create a single Arab-Jewish proletariat. This Shochat and Ben Gurion opposed. The conference delegated the Manifesto Committee the task of deciding the new party's objectives. They produced "The Ramleh Program" which was approved by a second smaller 15-man conference held in Jaffa the following January 1907. The program stated "the party aspires to political independence of the Jewish People in this country." All activities were to be conducted in Hebrew; there should be segregation of the Jewish and the Arab economies; and a Jewish trade union was to be established. Three members of the Central Committee resigned and Ben Gurion and Shochat continued meeting weekly in Jaffa or Ben Shemen where Shochat was working. Ben Gurion walked to the meetings from Petah Tikva until he moved to Jaffa where he gave occasional Hebrew lessons. His political activity resulted in the establishment of three small trade unions amongst some tailors, carpenters and shoemakers. He set up the "Jaffa Professional Trade Union Alliance" with 75 members. He and Shochat also brokered a settlement to a strike at the Rishon Le Zion winery where six workers had been sacked. After three months the two-man Central Committee was dissolved, partly because, at that time, Ben Gurion was less militant than Shochat and the Rostovians. Ben Gurion returned to Petah Tikva.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: During this time Ben Gurion sent a letter to "Yiddish Kemfer" (The Jewish Fighter), a Yiddish newspaper in New York City. It was an appeal for funds and was the first time something written by Ben Gurion was published.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: The arrival of Yitzhak Ben Zvi in April 1907 revitalised the local Poale Zion. Eighty followers attended a conference in May at which Ben Zvi was elected onto a two-man Central Committee and all Ben Gurion's policies were reversed: Yiddish, not Hebrew, was the language to be used; the future lay with a united Jewish and Arab proletariat. Further disappointment came when Ben Zvi and Shochat were elected as representatives to go to the World Zionist Congress. Ben Gurion came last of five candidates. He was not aware that at the next gathering, on Ben Zvi's return, a secret para-military group was set upBar-Gioraunder Shochat's leadership. Distancing himself from Poale Zion activism Ben Gurion, who had been a day-labourer at Kfar Saba, moved to Rishon Lezion where he remained for two months. He made detailed plans with which he tried to entice his father to come and be a farmer.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In October 1907, on Shlomo Zemach's suggestion, Ben-Gurion moved to Sejera. An agricultural training farm had been established at Sejera in the 1880s and since then a number of family-owned farms, moshavah, had been established forming a community of around 200 Jews. It was one of the most remote colonies in the foothills of north-eastern Galilee. It took the two young men three days to walk there.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Coincidently at the same time Bar Giora, now with about 20 members and calling themselves 'the collective' but still led by Shochat, took on the operating of the training farm. Ben Gurion found work in the farm but, excluded from 'the collective', he later became a labourer for one of the moshav families. One of the first acts of 'the collective' was organising sacking of the farm's circassian nightwatchman. As a result, shots were fired at the farms every night for several months. Guns were brought and the workforce armed. Ben Gurion took turns patrolling the farm at night.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In the autumn of 1908 Ben Gurion returned to Plonsk to be conscripted into the army and avoid his father facing a heavy fine. He immediately deserted and returned to Sejera, travelling, via Germany, with forged papers.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: On 12 April 1909 two Jews from Sejera were killed in clashes with local Arabs following the death of a villager from Kfar Kanna, shot in an attempted robbery. There is little conformation of Ben Gurion's accounts of his part in this event.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Later that summer Ben Gurion moved to Zichron Yaakov. From where the following spring he was invited, by Ben Zvi, to join the staff of Paole Zion's new Hebrew periodical, Ha'ahdut (The Unity), which was being established in Jerusalem. They needed his fluency in Hebrew for translating and proof reading. It was the end of his career as a farm labourer. The first three editions came out monthly with an initial run of 1000 copies. It then became a weekly with a print run of 450 copies. He contributed 15 articles over the first year, using various pen names, eventually settling for Ben Gurion. The adopting of Hebrew names was common amongst those who remained during the Second Aliyah. He chose Ben Gurion after the historic Joseph ben Gurion.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In the spring of 1911, faced with the collapse of the Second Aliyah, Poale Zion's leadership decided the future lay in "Ottomanisation". Ben Zvi, Manya and Israel Shochat announced their intention to move to Istanbul. Ben Zvi and Shochat planned to study law; Ben Gurion was to join them but first needed to learn Turkish, spending eight months in Salonika, at that time the most advanced Jewish community in the area. Whilst studying he had to conceal that he was Ashkanazi due to local Sephardic prejudices. Ben Zvi obtained a forged secondary school certificate so Ben Gurion could join him in Istanbul University. Ben Gurion was entirely dependent on funding from his father, while Ben Zvi found work teaching. Struggling with ill health Ben Gurion spent some time in hospital.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion was at sea, returning from Istanbul, when the First World War broke out. He was not amongst the thousands of foreign nationals deported in December 1914. Based in Jerusalem he and Ben Zvi recruited forty Jews into a Jewish militia to assist the Ottoman Army. Despite his pro-Ottoman declarations he was deported to Egypt in March 1915. From there he made his way to the United States, arriving in May. For the next 4 months Ben-Gurion and Ben Zvi embarked on a speaking tour planned to visit Poale Zion groups in 35 cities in an attempt to raise a pioneer army, Hechalutz, of 10,000 men to fight on the Ottoman side. The tour was a disappointment. Audiences were small; Poale Zion had fewer than 3,000 members, mostly in the New York area. Ben-Gurion was hospitalised with diphtheria for two weeks and only spoke on 5 occasions and was poorly received. Ben Zvi spoke to 14 groups as well as an event in New York City and succeeded in recruiting 44 volunteers for Hechalutz; Ben-Gurion recruited 19. Ben-Gurion embarked on a second tour in December, speaking at 19 meetings, mostly in small towns with larger events in Minneapolis and Galveston. Due to the lack of awareness of Poale Zion's activities in Palestine it was decided to republish "Yizkor" in Yiddish. The Hebrew original was published in Jaffa in 1911; it consisted of eulogies to Zionist martyrs and included an account by Ben-Gurion of his Petah Tikva and Sejera experiences. The first edition appeared in February 1916 and was an immediate success; all 3,500 copies were sold. A second edition of 16,000 was published in August. Martin Buber wrote the introduction to the 1918 German edition. The follow-up was conceived as an anthology of work from Poale Zion leaders; in fact Ben-Gurion took over as editor, writing the introduction and two-thirds of the text. He suspended all his Paole Zion activities and spent most of the next 18 months in New York Public Library. Ben Zvi, originally designated as co-editor, contributed a section on Jewish history in which he expounded the theory that the fellahin currently living in the area were descendants of pre-Roman conquest Jews. "Eretz Israel – Past and Present" was published in April 1918. It cost $2 and was 500 pages long, over twice the length of "Yizkor". It was an immediate success, selling 7,000 copies in 4 months; second and third editions were printed. Total sales of 25,000 copies made a profit of $20,000 for Poale Zion. It made David Ben-Gurion the most prominent Poale Zion leader in America.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In May 1918 Ben-Gurion joined the newly formed Jewish Legion of the British Army and trained at Fort Edward in Windsor, Nova Scotia. He volunteered for the 38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, one of the four which constituted the Jewish Legion. His unit fought against the Ottomans as part of Chaytor's Force during the Palestine Campaign, though he remained in a Cairo hospital with dysentery. In 1918, after a period of guarding prisoners of war in the Egyptian desert, his battalion was transferred to Sarafand. On 13 December 1918 he was demoted from corporal to private, fined 3 days' pay and transferred to the lowest company in the battalion. He had been 5 days absent without leave visiting friends in Jaffa. He was demobilised in early 1919.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: One of Ben Gurion's companions when he made the Aliyah was Rachel Nelkin. Her step-father, Reb Simcha Isaac, was the leading Zionist in Płońsk, and they met three years previously at one of his meetings. It was expected that their relationship would continue when they landed in Jaffa but he shut her out after she was fired on her first day labouringmanuring the citrus groves of Petah Tikva.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Whilst in New York City in 1915, he met Russian-born Paula Munweis and they married in 1917. In November 1919, after an 18-month separation, Paula and their daughter Geula joined Ben Gurion in Jaffa. It was the first time he met his one-year-old daughter. The couple had three children: a son, Amos, and two daughters, Geula Ben-Eliezer and Renana Leshem. Already pregnant with their first child, Amos married Mary Callow, an Irish gentile, and although Reform rabbi Joachim Prinz converted her to Judaism soon after, neither the Palestine rabbinate nor her mother-in-law Paula Ben-Gurion considered her a real Jew until she underwent an Orthodox conversion many years later. Amos became Deputy Inspector-General of the Israel Police, and also the director-general of a textile factory. He and Mary had six granddaughters from their two daughters and a son, Alon, who married a Greek gentile. Geula had two sons and a daughter, and Renana, who worked as a microbiologist at the Israel Institute for Biological Research, had a son.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: After the death of theorist Ber Borochov, the left-wing and centrist of Poalei Zion split in February 1919 with Ben-Gurion and his friend Berl Katznelson leading the centrist faction of the Labor Zionist movement. The moderate Poalei Zion formed Ahdut HaAvoda with Ben-Gurion as leader in March 1919.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1920 he assisted in the formation of the Histadrut, the Zionist Labor Federation in Palestine, and served as its general secretary from 1921 until 1935. At Ahdut HaAvoda's 3rd Congress, held in 1924 at Ein Harod, Shlomo Kaplansky, a veteran leader from Poalei Zion, proposed that the party should support the British Mandatory authorities' plans for setting up an elected legislative council in Palestine. He argued that a Parliament, even with an Arab majority, was the way forward. Ben-Gurion, already emerging as the leader of the Yishuv, succeeded in getting Kaplansky's ideas rejected.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1930, Hapoel Hatzair (founded by A. D. Gordon in 1905) and Ahdut HaAvoda joined forces to create Mapai, the more moderate Zionist labour party (it was still a left-wing organisation, but not as far-left as other factions) under Ben-Gurion's leadership. In the 1940s the left-wing of Mapai broke away to form Mapam. Labor Zionism became the dominant tendency in the World Zionist Organization and in 1935 Ben-Gurion became chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, a role he kept until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, Ben-Gurion instigated a policy of restraint ("Havlagah") in which the Haganah and other Jewish groups did not retaliate for Arab attacks against Jewish civilians, concentrating only on self-defense. In 1937, the Peel Commission recommended partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas and Ben-Gurion supported this policy. This led to conflict with Ze'ev Jabotinsky who opposed partition and as a result Jabotinsky's supporters split with the Haganah and abandoned Havlagah.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: The house where he lived from 1931 on, and for part of each year after 1953, is now a historic house museum in Tel Aviv, the "Ben-Gurion House". He also lived in London for some months in 1941.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1946, Ben-Gurion and North Vietnam's Politburo chairman Ho Chi Minh became very friendly when they stayed at the same hotel in Paris. Ho Chi Minh offered Ben-Gurion a Jewish home-in-exile in Vietnam. Ben-Gurion declined, telling Ho Chi Minh: "I am certain we shall be able to establish a Jewish Government in Palestine."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: According to his biographer Tom Segev, Ben-Gurion deeply admired Lenin and intended to be a 'Zionist Lenin'. In "Ben-Gurion: A Political Life" by Shimon Peres and David Landau, Peres recalls his first meeting with Ben-Gurion as a young activist in the No'ar Ha'Oved youth movement. Ben-Gurion gave him a lift, and out of the blue told him why he preferred Lenin to Trotsky: "Lenin was Trotsky’s inferior in terms of intellect", but Lenin, unlike Trotsky, "was decisive". When confronted with a dilemma, Trotsky would do what Ben-Gurion despised about the old-style diaspora Jews: he manoeuvred; as opposed to Lenin, who would cut the Gordian knot, accepting losses while focusing on the essentials. In Peres' opinion, the essence of Ben-Gurion's life work were "the decisions he made at critical junctures in Israel's history", and none was as important as the acceptance of the 1947 partition plan, a painful compromise which gave the emerging Jewish state little more than a fighting chance, but which, according to Peres, enabled the establishment of the State of Israel.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion published two volumes setting out his views on relations between Zionists and the Arab world: "We and Our Neighbors", published in 1931, and "My Talks with Arab Leaders" published in 1967. Ben-Gurion believed in the equal rights of Arabs who remained in and would become citizens of Israel. He was quoted as saying, "We must start working in Jaffa. Jaffa must employ Arab workers. And there is a question of their wages. I believe that they should receive the same wage as a Jewish worker. An Arab has also the right to be elected president of the state, should he be elected by all."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion recognised the strong attachment of Palestinian Arabs to the land. In an address to the United Nations on 2 October 1947, he doubted the likelihood of peace:


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: This is our native land; it is not as birds of passage that we return to it. But it is situated in an area engulfed by Arabic-speaking people, mainly followers of Islam. Now, if ever, we must do more than make peace with them; we must achieve collaboration and alliance on equal terms. Remember what Arab delegations from Palestine and its neighbors say in the General Assembly and in other places: talk of Arab-Jewish amity sound fantastic, for the Arabs do not wish it, they will not sit at the same table with us, they want to treat us as they do the Jews of Bagdad, Cairo, and Damascus.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Nahum Goldmann criticised Ben-Gurion for what he viewed as a confrontational approach to the Arab world. Goldmann wrote, "Ben-Gurion is the man principally responsible for the anti-Arab policy, because it was he who molded the thinking of generations of Israelis." Simha Flapan quoted Ben-Gurion as stating in 1938: "I believe in our power, in our power which will grow, and if it will grow agreement will come..."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1909, Ben-Gurion attempted to learn Arabic but gave up. He later became fluent in Turkish. The only other languages he was able to use when in discussions with Arab leaders were English, and to a lesser extent, French.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: The British 1939 White paper stipulated that Jewish immigration to Palestine was to be limited to 15,000 a year for the first five years, and would subsequently be contingent on Arab consent. Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs. After this Ben-Gurion changed his policy towards the British, stating: "Peace in Palestine is not the best situation for thwarting the policy of the White Paper". Ben-Gurion believed a peaceful solution with the Arabs had no chance and soon began preparing the Yishuv for war. According to Teveth "through his campaign to mobilize the Yishuv in support of the British war effort, he strove to build the nucleus of a 'Hebrew Army', and his success in this endeavor later brought victory to Zionism in the struggle to establish a Jewish state."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: During the Second World War, Ben-Gurion encouraged the Jewish population to volunteer for the British Army. He famously told Jews to "support the British as if there is no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there is no war". About 10% of the Jewish population of Palestine volunteered for the British Armed Forces, including many women. At the same time Ben-Gurion assisted the illegal immigration of thousands of European Jewish refugees to Palestine during a period when the British placed heavy restrictions on Jewish immigration.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1944, the Irgun and Lehi, two Jewish right-wing armed groups, declared a rebellion against British rule and began attacking British administrative and police targets. Ben-Gurion and other mainstream Zionist leaders opposed armed action against the British, and after Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State in the Middle East, decided to stop it by force. While Lehi was convinced to suspend operations, the Irgun refused and as a result, the Haganah began supplying intelligence to the British enabling them to arrest Irgun members, and abducting and often torturing Irgun members, handing some over to the British while keeping others detained in secret Haganah prisons. This campaign, which was called the Saison or "Hunting Season", left the Irgun unable to continue operations as they struggled to survive. Irgun leader Menachem Begin ordered his fighters not to retaliate so as to prevent a civil war. The Saison became increasingly controversial in the Yishuv, including within the ranks of the Haganah, and it was aborted at the end of March 1945.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: At the end of World War II, the Zionist leadership in Palestine had expected a British decision to establish a Jewish state. However, it became clear that the British had no intention of immediately establishing a Jewish state and that limits on Jewish immigration would remain for the time being. As a result, with Ben-Gurion's approval the Haganah entered into a secret alliance with the Irgun and Lehi called the Jewish Resistance Movement in October 1945 and participated in attacks against the British. In June 1946, the British launched Operation Agatha, a large police and military operation throughout Palestine, searching for arms and arresting Jewish leaders and Haganah members in order to stop the attacks and find documentary evidence of the alliance the British suspected existed between the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. The British had intended to detain Ben-Gurion during the operation but he was visiting Paris at the time. The British stored the documents they had captured from the Jewish Agency headquarters in the King David Hotel, which was being used as a military and administrative headquarters. Ben-Gurion agreed to the Irgun's plan to bomb the King David Hotel in order to destroy incriminating documents that Ben-Gurion feared would prove that the Haganah had been participating in the violent insurrection against the British in cooperation with the Irgun and Lehi with the approval of himself and other Jewish Agency officials. However, Ben-Gurion asked that the operation be delayed, but the Irgun refused. The Irgun carried out the King David Hotel bombing in July 1946, killing 91 people. Ben-Gurion publicly condemned the bombing. In the aftermath of the bombing, Ben-Gurion ordered that the Jewish Resistance Movement be dissolved. From then on, the Irgun and Lehi continued to regularly attack the British, but the Haganah rarely did so, and while Ben-Gurion along with other mainstream Zionist leaders publicly condemned the Irgun and Lehi attacks, in practice the Haganah under their direction rarely cooperated with the British in attempting to suppress the insurgency.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Due to the Jewish insurgency, bad publicity over the restriction of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, non-acceptance of a partitioned state (as suggested by the United Nations) amongst Arab leaders, and the cost of keeping 100,000 troops in Palestine the British Government referred the matter to the United Nations. In September 1947, the British decided to terminate the Mandate. In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution approving the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. While the Jewish Agency under Ben-Gurion accepted, the Arabs rejected the plan and the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine broke out. Ben-Gurion's strategy was for the Haganah to hold on to every position with no retreat or surrender and then launch an offensive when British forces had evacuated to such an extent that there would be no more danger of British intervention. This strategy was successful, and by May 1948 Jewish forces were winning the civil war. On 14 May 1948, a few hours before the British Mandate officially terminated, Ben-Gurion declared Israeli independence in a ceremony in Tel Aviv. A few hours later, the State of Israel officially came into being when the British Mandate terminated on 15 May. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War began immediately afterwards as numerous Arab nations then invaded Israel.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: After the ten-day campaign during the 1948 war, the Israelis were militarily superior to their enemies and the Cabinet subsequently considered where and when to attack next. On 24 September, an incursion made by the Palestinian irregulars in the Latrun sector (killing 23 Israeli soldiers) precipitated the debate. On 26 September, Ben-Gurion put his argument to the Cabinet to attack Latrun again and conquer the whole or a large part of West Bank. The motion was rejected by a vote of seven to five after discussions. Ben-Gurion qualified the cabinet's decision as ("a source of lament for generations") considering Israel may have lost forever the Old City of Jerusalem.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: There is a controversy around these events. According to Uri Bar-Joseph, Ben-Gurion placed a plan that called for a limited action aimed at the conquest of Latrun, and not for an all-out offensive. According to David Tal, in the cabinet meeting, Ben-Gurion reacted to what he had been just told by a delegation from Jerusalem. He points out that this view that Ben-Gurion had planned to conquer the West Bank is unsubstantiated in both Ben-Gurion's diary and in the Cabinet protocol.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: The topic came back at the end of the 1948 war, when General Yigal Allon also proposed the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state. This time, Ben-Gurion refused although he was aware that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest. He feared the reaction of Western powers and wanted to maintain good relations with the United States and not to provoke the British. Moreover, in his opinion the results of the war were already satisfactory and Israeli leaders had to focus on the building of a nation.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: According to Benny Morris, "Ben-Gurion got cold feet during the war. (...). If [he] had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country -the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion rather than a partial one- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In order to prevent the coalescence of the religious right, the Histadrut agreed to a vague "status quo" agreement with Mizrahi in 1935.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion was aware that world Jewry could and would only feel comfortable to throw their support behind the nascent state, if it was shrouded with religious mystique. That would include an orthodox tacit acquiescence to the entity. Therefore, in September 1947 Ben-Gurion decided to reach a formal status quo agreement with the Orthodox Agudat Yisrael party. He sent a letter to Agudat Yisrael stating that while being committed to establishing a non-theocratic state with freedom of religion, he promised that the Shabbat would be Israel's official day of rest, that in state-provided kitchens there would be access to kosher food, that every effort would be made to provide a single jurisdiction for Jewish family affairs, and that each sector would be granted autonomy in the sphere of education, provided minimum standards regarding the curriculum be observed. To a large extent this agreement provided the framework for religious affairs in Israel till the present day, and is often used as a benchmark regarding the arrangement of religious affairs in Israel.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion described himself as an irreligious person who developed atheism in his youth and who demonstrated no great sympathy for the elements of traditional Judaism, though he quoted the Bible extensively in his speeches and writings. Modern Orthodox philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz considered Ben-Gurion "to have hated Judaism more than any other man he had met". He was proud of the fact that he had only set foot in a synagogue once in Israel, worked on Yom Kippur and ate pork. In later time, Ben-Gurion refused to define himself as "secular", and he regarded himself a believer in God. In a 1970 interview, he described himself as a pantheist, and stated that "I don't know if there's an afterlife. I think there is." During an interview with the leftist weekly "Hotam" two years before his death, he revealed, "I too have a deep faith in the Almighty. I believe in one God, the omnipotent Creator. My consciousness is aware of the existence of material and spirit ... [But] I cannot understand how order reigns in nature, in the world and universeunless there exists a superior force. This supreme Creator is beyond my comprehension . . . but it directs everything."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In a letter to the writer Eliezer Steinman, he wrote "Today, more than ever, the 'religious' tend to relegate Judaism to observing dietary laws and preserving the Sabbath. This is considered religious reform. I prefer the Fifteenth Psalm, lovely are the psalms of Israel. The Shulchan Aruch is a product of our nation's life in the Exile. It was produced in the Exile, in conditions of Exile. A nation in the process of fulfilling its every task, physically and spiritually ... must compose a 'New Shulchan'--and our nation's intellectuals are required, in my opinion, to fulfill their responsibility in this."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Ben-Gurion oversaw the nascent state's military operations. During the first weeks of Israel's independence, he ordered all militias to be replaced by one national army, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). To that end, Ben-Gurion used a firm hand during the Altalena Affair, a ship carrying arms purchased by the Irgun led by Menachem Begin. He insisted that all weapons be handed over to the IDF. When fighting broke out on the Tel Aviv beach he ordered it be taken by force and to shell the ship. Sixteen Irgun fighters and three IDF soldiers were killed in this battle. Following the policy of a unified military force, he also ordered that the Palmach headquarters be disbanded and its units be integrated with the rest of the IDF, to the chagrin of many of its members. By absorbing the Irgun force into Israel's IDF, the Israelis eliminated competition and the central government controlled all military forces within the country. His attempts to reduce the number of Mapam members in the senior ranks led to the "Generals' Revolt" in June 1948.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, Ben-Gurion was de facto leader of the Jewish population even before the state was declared. In this position, Ben-Gurion played a major role in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. When the IDF archives and others were opened in the late 1980s, scholars started to reconsider the events and the role of Ben-Gurion.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: On 14 May 1948, on the last day of the British Mandate, Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel. In the Israeli declaration of independence, he stated that the new nation would "uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of religion, race".


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In his War Diaries in February 1948, Ben-Gurion wrote: "The war shall give us the land. The concepts of 'ours' and 'not ours' are peace concepts only, and they lose their meaning during war." Also later he confirmed this by stating that, "In the Negev we shall not buy the land. We shall conquer it. You forget that we are at war." The Arabs, meanwhile, also vied with Israel over the control of territory by means of war, while the Jordanian "Arab Legion" had decided to concentrate its forces in Bethlehem and in Hebron in order to save that district for its Arab inhabitants, and to prevent territorial gains for Israel. Israeli historian Benny Morris has written of the massacres of Palestinian Arabs in 1948, and has stated that Ben-Gurion "covered up for the officers who did the massacres."


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: After leading Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Ben-Gurion was elected Prime Minister of Israel when his Mapai (Labour) party won the largest number of Knesset seats in the first national election, held on 14 February 1949. He remained in that post until 1963, except for a period of nearly two years between 1954 and 1955. As prime minister, he oversaw the establishment of the state's institutions. He presided over various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population: Operation Magic Carpet, the airlift of Jews from Arab countries, the construction of the National Water Carrier, rural development projects and the establishment of new towns and cities. In particular, he called for pioneering settlement in outlying areas, especially in the Negev. Ben-Gurion saw the struggle to make the Negev desert bloom as an area where the Jewish people could make a major contribution to humanity as a whole. He believed that the sparsely populated and barren Negev desert offered a great opportunity for the Jews to settle in Palestine with minimal obstruction of the Arab population, and set a personal example by settling in kibbutz Sde Boker at the center of the Negev.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: During this period, Palestinian fedayeen repeatedly infiltrated into Israel from Arab territory. In 1953, after a handful of unsuccessful retaliatory actions, Ben-Gurion charged Ariel Sharon, then security chief of the northern region, with setting up a new commando unit designed to respond to fedayeen infiltrations. Ben-Gurion told Sharon, "The Palestinians must learn that they will pay a high price for Israeli lives." Sharon formed Unit 101, a small commando unit answerable directly to the IDF General Staff tasked with retaliating for fedayeen raids. During its five months of existence, the unit launched repeated raids against military targets and villages used as bases by the fedayeen. These attacks became known as the reprisal operations.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1953, Ben-Gurion announced his intention to withdraw from government and was replaced by Moshe Sharett, who was elected the second Prime Minister of Israel in January 1954. However, Ben-Gurion temporarily served as acting prime minister when Sharett visited the United States in 1955. During Ben-Gurion's tenure as acting prime minister, the IDF carried out Operation Olive Leaves, a successful attack on fortified Syrian emplacements near the northeastern shores of the Sea of Galilee. The operation was a response to Syrian attacks on Israeli fishermen. Ben-Gurion had ordered the operation without consulting the Israeli cabinet and seeking a vote on the matter, and Sharett would later bitterly complain that Ben-Gurion had exceeded his authority.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion returned to government in 1955. He assumed the post of defence minister and was soon re-elected prime minister. When he returned to government, Israeli forces began responding more aggressively to Egyptian-sponsored Palestinian guerrilla attacks from Gaza, which was under Egyptian rule. Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser signed the Egyptian-Czech arms deal and purchased a large amount of modern arms. The Israelis responded by arming themselves with help from France. Nasser blocked the passage of Israeli ships through the Straits of Tiran and the Suez Canal. In July 1956, the United States and Britain withdrew their offer to fund the Aswan High Dam project on the Nile and a week later, Nasser ordered the nationalisation of the French and British-controlled Suez Canal. In late 1956, the bellicosity of Arab statements prompted Israel to remove the threat of the concentrated Egyptian forces in the Sinai, and Israel invaded the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. Other Israeli aims were elimination of the fedayeen incursions into Israel that made life unbearable for its southern population, and opening the blockaded Straits of Tiran for Israeli ships. Israel occupied much of the peninsula within a few days. As agreed beforehand, within a couple of days, Britain and France invaded too, aiming at regaining Western control of the Suez Canal and removing the Egyptian president Nasser. The United States pressure forced the British and French to back down and Israel to withdraw from Sinai in return for free Israeli navigation through the Red Sea. The United Nations responded by establishing its first peacekeeping force, (UNEF). It was stationed between Egypt and Israel and for the next decade it maintained peace and stopped the fedayeen incursions into Israel.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1959, Ben-Gurion learned from West German officials of reports that the notorious Nazi war criminal, Adolf Eichmann, was likely living in hiding in Argentina. In response, Ben-Gurion ordered the Israel foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, to capture the international fugitive alive for trial in Israel. In 1960, the mission was accomplished and Eichmann was tried and convicted in an internationally publicised trial for various offences including crimes against humanity, and was subsequently executed in 1962.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion is said to have been "nearly obsessed" with Israel's obtaining nuclear weapons, feeling that a nuclear arsenal was the only way to counter the Arabs' superiority in numbers, space, and financial resources, and that it was the only sure guarantee of Israel's survival and the prevention of another Holocaust. During his final months as premier Ben-Gurion was engaged in a, now declassified, diplomatic standoff with the United States.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion stepped down as prime minister on 16 June 1963, According to historian Yechiam Weitz, when he unexpectedly resigned: He was asked to reconsider his decision by the cabinet. The country, however, seemed to have anticipated his move and, unlike the response to his resignation in 1953, no serious efforts were made to dissuade him from resigning... [His reasons include] his political isolation, suspicion of colleagues and rivals, apparent inability to interact with the full spectrum of reality, and belief that his life's work was disintegrating. His resignation was not an act of farewell but another act of his personal struggle and possibly an indication of his mental state.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion chose Levi Eshkol as his successor. A year later a bitter rivalry developed between the two on the issue of the Lavon Affair, a failed 1954 Israeli covert operation in Egypt. Ben-Gurion had insisted that the operation be properly investigated, while Eshkol refused. After failing to unseat Eshkol as Mapai party leader in the 1965 Mapai leadership election, Ben-Gurion subsequently broke with Mapai in June 1965 and formed a new party, Rafi, while Mapai merged with Ahdut HaAvoda to form Alignment, with Eshkol as its head. Alignment defeated Rafi in the November 1965 election, establishing Eshkol as the country's leader.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In May 1967, Egypt began massing forces in the Sinai Peninsula after expelling UN peacekeepers and closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. This, together with the actions of other Arab states, caused Israel to begin preparing for war. The situation lasted until the outbreak of the Six-Day War on 5 June. In Jerusalem, there were calls for a national unity government or an emergency government. During this period, Ben-Gurion met with his old rival Menachem Begin in Sde Boker. Begin asked Ben-Gurion to join Eshkol's national unity government. Although Eshkol's Mapai party initially opposed the widening of its government, it eventually changed its mind. On 23 May, IDF Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin met with Ben-Gurion to ask for reassurance. Ben-Gurion, however, accused Rabin of putting Israel in mortal danger by mobilising the reserves and openly preparing for war with an Arab coalition. Ben-Gurion told Rabin that at the very least, he should have obtained the support of a foreign power, as he had done during the Suez Crisis. Rabin was shaken by the meeting and took to bed for 36 hours.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: After the Israeli government decided to go to war, planning a preemptive strike to destroy the Egyptian Air Force followed by a ground offensive, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan told Ben-Gurion of the impending attack on the night of 4–5 June. Ben-Gurion subsequently wrote in his diary that he was troubled by Israel's impending offensive. On 5 June, the Six-Day War began with Operation Focus, an Israeli air attack that decimated the Egyptian air force. Israel then captured the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria in a series of campaigns. Following the war, Ben-Gurion was in favour of returning all the captured territories apart from East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and Mount Hebron as part of a peace agreement.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: On 11 June, Ben-Gurion met with a small group of supporters in his home. During the meeting, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan proposed autonomy for the West Bank, the transfer of Gazan refugees to Jordan, and a united Jerusalem serving as Israel's capital. Ben-Gurion agreed with him, but foresaw problems in transferring Palestinian refugees from Gaza to Jordan, and recommended that Israel insist on direct talks with Egypt, favouring withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace and free navigation through the Straits of Tiran. The following day, he met with Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in his Knesset office. Despite occupying a lower executive position, Ben-Gurion treated Kollek like a subordinate.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Following the Six-Day War, Ben-Gurion criticised what he saw as the government's apathy towards the construction and development of the city. To ensure that a united Jerusalem remained in Israeli hands, he advocated a massive Jewish settlement program for the Old City and the hills surrounding the city, as well as the establishment of large industries in the Jerusalem area to attract Jewish migrants. He argued that no Arabs would have to be evicted in the process. Ben-Gurion also urged extensive Jewish settlement in Hebron.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: In 1968, when Rafi merged with Mapai to form the Alignment, Ben-Gurion refused to reconcile with his old party. He favoured electoral reforms in which a constituency-based system would replace what he saw as a chaotic proportional representation method. He formed another new party, the National List, which won four seats in the 1969 election.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: Ben-Gurion retired from politics in 1970 and spent his last years living in a modest home on the kibbutz, working on an 11-volume history of Israel's early years. In 1971, he visited Israeli positions along the Suez Canal during the War of Attrition.


title: David Ben-Gurion

text: On 18 November 1973, shortly after the Yom Kippur War, Ben-Gurion suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and was taken to Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer, Ramat Gan. His condition began deteriorating on 23 November and he died a few weeks later. His body lay in state in the Knesset compound before being flown by helicopter to Sde Boker. Sirens sounded across the country to mark his death. He was buried alongside his wife Paula at Midreshet Ben-Gurion.


title: Résumé

text: A résumé, sometimes spelled resume (or alternatively resumé), also called a curriculum vitae (CV), is a document created and used by a person to present their background, skills, and accomplishments. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons, but most often they are used to secure new employment.


title: Résumé

text: A typical résumé contains a "summary" of relevant job experience and education. The résumé is usually one of the first items, along with a cover letter and sometimes an application for employment, which a potential employer sees regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview.


title: Résumé

text: The curriculum vitae used for employment purposes in the UK (and in other European countries) is more akin to the résumé—a shorter, summary version of one's education and experience—than to the longer and more detailed CV that is expected in U.S. academic circles.


title: Résumé

text: In South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, biodata is often used in place of a résumé.


title: Résumé

text: The word "résumé" comes from the French word meaning 'to summarize'. Leonardo da Vinci is credited with the first résumé, though his "résumé" takes the form of a letter written about 1481–1482 to a potential employer, Ludovico Sforza. For the next 450 years, the résumé continued to be a mere description of a person and included their abilities and past employment. In the early 1900s, résumés listed things like weight, height, marital status, and religion. It was not until 1950 that the résumé evolved into something more than words written on scraps of paper. By then, résumés were considered very much mandatory and started to include information like personal interests and hobbies. It was not until the 1970s, the beginning of the Digital Age, that résumés took on a more professional look in terms of presentation and content. The start of the 21st century saw a further evolution for résumés on the internet as social media helped people spread résumés faster. In 2003 LinkedIn was launched, which allowed users to post their resumes and skills online. Other than LinkedIn, several other SaaS companies are now helping job seekers with free résumé builders or résumé templates. These online résumé builders usually provide templates to insert credentials and experience and create a résumé to download or an online portfolio link to share via social media. With the launch of YouTube in 2006, Video résumés pick up, and more and more high school students began to send them to different colleges and universities.


title: Résumé

text: In many contexts, a résumé is typically limited to one or two pages of size A4 or letter-size, highlighting only those experiences and qualifications that the author considers most relevant to the desired position. Many résumés contain keywords or skills that potential employers are looking for via applicant tracking systems, make heavy use of active verbs, and display content in a flattering manner. Acronyms and credentials after the applicant's name should be spelled out fully in the appropriate section of the résumé to increase the likelihood they are found in a computerized keyword scan.


title: Résumé

text: A résumé is a marketing document in which the content should be adapted to suit each individual job application or applications aimed at a particular industry. In late 2002, job seekers and students started making interactive résumés such as résumés having links, clickable phone numbers and email addresses. With the launch of YouTube in 2006, job seekers and students also started to create multimedia and video résumés. Job seekers were able to circumvent the job application process and reach employers through direct email contact and résumé blasting, a term meaning the mass distribution of résumés to increase personal visibility within the job market. However, the mass distribution of résumés to employers can often have a negative effect on the applicant's chances of securing employment as the résumés tend not to be tailored for the specific positions the applicant is applying for. It is usually, therefore, more sensible to optimize the résumé for each position applied for and its keywords. In order to keep track of all experiences, keeping a "master résumé" document is recommended, providing job seekers with the ability to customize a tailored résumé while making sure extraneous information is easily accessible for future use if needed.


title: Résumé

text: The complexity or simplicity of various résumé formats tends to produce results varying from person to person, for the occupation, and the industry. Résumés or CVs used by medical professionals, professors, artists, and people in other specialized fields may be comparatively longer. For example, an artist's résumé, typically excluding any non-art-related employment, may include extensive lists of solo and group exhibitions.


title: Résumé

text: Résumés may be organized in different ways. The following are some of the more common résumé formats:


title: Résumé

text: A reverse chronological résumé lists a candidate's job experiences in chronological order (last thing first), generally covering the previous 10 to 15 years. Positions are listed with starting and ending dates. Current positions on a résumé typically list the starting date to the present. The reverse chronological résumé format is most commonly used by professionals who are making advancements in the same vertical. In using this format, the main body of the document becomes the Professional Experience section, starting from the most recent experience and moving chronologically backward through a succession of previous experience. The reverse chronological résumé works to build credibility through experience gained, while illustrating career growth over time and filling all gaps in a career trajectory. A chronological résumé is not recommended to job seekers with gaps in their career summaries. In the United Kingdom the chronological résumé tends to extend only as far back as the applicant's GCSE/Standard Grade qualifications.