David Ben-Gurion - My Jewish Learning David Ben-Gurion The Balfour Declaration David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), Israel’s first prime minister, was one of the most important Zionist leaders of the 20th century. His uncompromising vision of Jewish unity and statehood, together with a genius for pragmatic political and military tactics, enabled him to establish the State of Israel and guide it through the social, economic, and military challenges of its early years. But Ben-Gurion’s career was marked by a series of intense conflicts, and he remains one of the most debated figures in Israeli politics. An Early Zionist David Ben-Gurion (born Gruen) was born in Plonsk, in Russian Poland, and grew up in a family committed to the Zionist cause. He immigrated to Palestine in 1906 and worked as a laborer and watchman in the Jewish settlements of Rishon Letzion and Petah Tikvah. Almost immediately he took up positions of leadership in the socialist Zionist Poalei Tzion party.

He published articles under the name Ben-Gurion, in which he argued for the settlement of the land and the centrality of Hebrew as the only true expressions of Zionism. With the outbreak of World War I he advocated loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled Palestine, but later joined the Jewish Legion of the British army, with the hope of fighting for Jewish independence. After the war, Ben-Gurion returned to Palestine, where he quickly rose to prominence in the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community). He was instrumental in founding a mass political party–Ahdut ha-Avodah, the forerunner of the modern Labor party–and, in 1920, the Histadrut Labor Federation, perhaps the most important instrument for the realization of Zionist goals. Ben-Gurion believed that socialism and Zionism were two sides of the same ideological coin. Jewish nationalism sought not only to achieve Jewish economic self-sufficiency, but also to create a new kind of Jew: proud, independent, and living off the fruits of manual labor.

Ben-Gurion saw the Jewish working class as the carriers of this revolutionary spirit, and, in line with his slogan, “From class to nation,” saw the interests of workers and the Jewish people as a whole as the same. The role of the Histadrut, as he saw it, was to build a Jewish economy under the leadership of the Jewish working class. Please consider making a donation today. Matt Plen is the Chief Executive of Masorti Judaism in the UK. He has taught and trained educators in diverse institutions in Israel, the UK and the USA and is currently researching his doctorate on Critical Pedagogy and Jewish Ideologies of Social Justice. By Matt Plen | July 11, 2008 David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), Israel’s first prime minister, was one of the most important Zionist leaders of the 20th century. His uncompromising vision of Jewish unity and statehood, together with a genius for pragmatic political and military tactics, enabled him to establish the State of Israel and guide it through the social, economic, and military challenges of its early years.

But Ben-Gurion’s career was marked by a series of intense conflicts, and he remains one of the most debated figures in Israeli politics. An Early Zionist David Ben-Gurion (born Gruen) was born in Plonsk, in Russian Poland, and grew up in a family committed to the Zionist cause. He immigrated to Palestine in 1906 and worked as a laborer and watchman in the Jewish settlements of Rishon Letzion and Petah Tikvah. Almost immediately he took up positions of leadership in the socialist Zionist Poalei Tzion party. He published articles under the name Ben-Gurion, in which he argued for the settlement of the land and the centrality of Hebrew as the only true expressions of Zionism. With the outbreak of World War I he advocated loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled Palestine, but later joined the Jewish Legion of the British army, with the hope of fighting for Jewish independence. After the war, Ben-Gurion returned to Palestine, where he quickly rose to prominence in the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community).

He was instrumental in founding a mass political party–Ahdut ha-Avodah, the forerunner of the modern Labor party–and, in 1920, the Histadrut Labor Federation, perhaps the most important instrument for the realization of Zionist goals. Ben-Gurion believed that socialism and Zionism were two sides of the same ideological coin. Jewish nationalism sought not only to achieve Jewish economic self-sufficiency, but also to create a new kind of Jew: proud, independent, and living off the fruits of manual labor. Ben-Gurion saw the Jewish working class as the carriers of this revolutionary spirit, and, in line with his slogan, “From class to nation,” saw the interests of workers and the Jewish people as a whole as the same. The role of the Histadrut, as he saw it, was to build a Jewish economy under the leadership of the Jewish working class. Using Violence Beginning in the 1920s, Ben-Gurion led the Zionist labor movement’s struggle against the right-wing Revisionist party, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Ben-Gurion believed that the establishment of socialist workers’ hegemony was a crucial step in the attainment of Jewish independence.

The arrival in the mid-1920s of tens of thousands of lower-middle class immigrants to Palestine, fleeing anti-Semitism in Poland, was a significant obstacle in the pursuit of this goal. Most of the new arrivals had no interest in socialism or in adopting a new, proletarian identity. Ben-Gurion’s response, inspired by his sensitivity to the growth of fascism in Europe and his affinity for the Bolsheviks’ use of violence to overcome opposition, was uncompromising. He argued for the use of controlled, disciplined, violence against right-wing strike-breakers and demonstrators, and proposed denying immigration certificates to members of the Revisionist movement. By the mid-1930s, however, Ben-Gurion had softened his position. He began to oppose the use of violence, and, in negotiations with Jabotinsky, went so far as to propose an agreement on labor relations between Histadrut and Revisionist workers. Conflict with Arabs Like most Israeli politicians, Ben-Gurion dealt intimately with the conflict between the Zionists and the Arab national movement in Palestine. Ben-Gurion first became aware of the potential for conflict with the Arabs during the 1920s.

Initially he assumed that as the Arabs began to benefit from the economic growth stimulated by Jewish settlement activity, they would realize that cooperation with Zionism was in their interest. On this basis, Ben-Gurion tried–and failed–to reach peace agreements with various Arab leaders. In 1930 Ben-Gurion oversaw the creation of Mapai, the Land of Israel Workers’ Party, a coalition of the main labor Zionist movements. In 1933 Mapai took control of the Zionist Organization (ZO), the Jewish national movement’s worldwide organizational structure. Two years later Ben-Gurion became Chairman of the Zionist Actions Committee, the ZO’s main decision making body, and of the Jewish Agency, the de facto government of the Jewish community in Palestine. From 1936-1939 he mobilized the Jewish community’s economic and military response to the Arab Revolt, the armed uprising against the Jews and the British that aimed to break the will of the Yishuv and force the British to withdraw from Palestine. Proposed Partition The clash with the Revisionists was renewed in 1937. In the wake of the Arab revolt, the British Peel Commission proposed the partition of Palestine between Jews and Arabs.

The Jews were to receive the northern coastal plain and the Galilee and Britain would retain control of the Jerusalem enclave and a corridor to the coast. The Arabs would get the rest. For all the plan’s shortcomings, Ben-Gurion and the majority of his Mapai party believed that the opportunity to create a Jewish state should not be passed up, particularly in view of the desperate situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany. This position was opposed by the Revisionists, who feared partition would set a dangerous precedent for compromising Jewish national rights, and by the Zionist Left, who believed the plan endangered the future of Jewish settlement activity and threatened their ultimate vision of Jewish-Arab coexistence. Ben- Gurion pushed through support for the plan, only to see it dropped by the British in response to implacable Arab opposition. Hostility & Restraint At the same time, conflict erupted on a different front. Beginning with the Arab revolt of 1936-39, and continuing with the struggle for the Jewish state in the 1940s, the Jewish community of Palestine was bitterly divided over the use of armed force.

The position of Ben-Gurion and the Hagana–the official Jewish self-defense force–was that Arab hostility should be met with restraint–havlaga. This was needed both in order to prevent the escalation of violence and to preserve good relations with the British, whose support was crucial for the fulfillment of Zionist aims. This position changed with the publication of the 1939 White Paper, in which the British government declared its support for the creation of an Arab Palestinian state and effectively froze Jewish immigration. During World War II, Ben-Gurion declared that the Zionists would fight with Britain against the Nazis as if there was no White Paper, and would fight the White Paper as if there were no war. In 1942, he was instrumental in drafting the Biltmore Program, which called for open Jewish immigration and the creation of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Following the United Nations’ 1947 decision to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and with the departure of the British in May 1948, he made the momentous decision to declare the establishment of the State of Israel. He became the first prime minister of the State of Israel and guided the country during the War of Independence.

Forced Expulsion? Since the 1990s, post-Zionist “new historians” such as Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris have alleged that during the war Ben-Gurion was aware of–or even initiated–a policy of transfer, the forced expulsion of Arabs. These claims have been hotly contested by historians such as biographer Shabtai Teveth, who assert that Israel’s first prime minister was resigned to the continuing presence of a large Arab minority enjoying equal rights in the future Jewish state. Yet Ben- Gurion argued against the conciliatory, diplomatic orientation of foreign minister Moshe Sharett. He took a hard line against the return of Arab refugees and pursued an activist foreign policy of military deterrence and retaliatory raids against neighboring Arab states, coming out of retirement in 1955 to lead Israel in the Sinai War against Egypt. The Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s tenure as prime minister (1948-53 and again from 1955-63) was governed by the principle of mamlachtiut, or statism–the belief that sectarian ideologies and interests must be replaced by loyalty to the state as a whole.

Ben-Gurion set aliyah and immigrant absorption as Israel’s top priorities, established the Israel Defense Force, dispersing militias such as the Palmach and the Etzel, and sought to abolish ideological distinctions in education, replacing party-run schools with one all-encompassing state education system. More controversially, Ben-Gurion presided over the shilumim or reparations agreement, in which West Germany agreed to pay $715 million to the State of Israel in compensation for taking in refugees from the Holocaust. The deal provoked savage public debate: the government was accused of taking blood money from the Germans. Yet without the financial settlement, Israel’s economic development and very survival would have been in question. On resigning from the premiership in 1953, Ben-Gurion retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker. In 1970, after a period in parliamentary opposition in the Knesset, his retirement became permanent. In the last years of his life Ben-Gurion was a solitary figure, but he continued to advocate aliyah, the ingathering of the exiles, and the settlement of the land, particularly the Negev desert.

David Ben-Gurion | Jewish Virtual Library Tweet David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of Israel and widely hailed as the State's main founder. David Ben-Gurion was born in Plonsk, Poland in 1886 and educated in a Hebrew school established by his father, an ardent Zionist . By his mid-teens, Ben-Gurion led a Zionist youth group, "Ezra," whose members spoke only Hebrew among themselves. At the age of 18 he became a teacher in a Warsaw Jewish school and joined the Socialist-Zionist group "Poalei Zion" (Workers of Zion). Arriving in the Land of Israel in 1906, he became involved in the creation of the first agricultural workers' commune (which evolved into the Kvutzah and finally the Kibbutz ), and helped establish the Jewish self-defense group,  Hashomer  (The Watchman). Following the outbreak of World War I he was deported by the Ottoman authorities with Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (later, Israel's second President).

Ben-Gurion traveled on behalf of the Socialist-Zionist cause to New York, where he met and married Paula Monbesz, a fellow Poalei Zion activist. He returned to Israel in the uniform of the Jewish Legion , created as a unit in the British Army by Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky . Ben-Gurion was a founder of the trade unions, and, in particular, the national federation, the Histadrut , which he dominated from the early 1920's. He also served as the Histadrut's representative in the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, and was elected chairman of both organizations in 1935. Having led the struggle to establish the State of Israel in May 1948, Ben-Gurion became Prime Minister and Defense Minister . As Premier, 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 .

In late 1953, Ben-Gurion left the government and retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev. He returned to political life, after the Knesset elections in 1955, assuming the post of Defense Minister and later the premiership. Continuing as Prime Minister, Ben-Gurion supported the establishment of relations with West Germany , despite bitter opposition. He also led the country during the 1956 Sinai campaign , in which Israeli forces temporarily secured the Sinai peninsula. In June 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned as Prime Minister, citing personal reasons. Levi Eshkol took over the posts of Prime Minister and Defense Minister. But Ben-Gurion remained active politically, with a rivalry developing between him and Eshkol. In June 1965, the Mapai Party split, with Ben-Gurion establishing Rafi (List of Israeli Workers), which won ten Knesset seats in the following election.

In 1968, Rafi rejoined Mapai and Ahdut Ha'avoda , to form the Israel Labor Party , while Ben-Gurion formed a new party, Hareshima Hamamlachtit (The State List), which won four Knesset seats in the 1969 elections. In June 1970, Ben-Gurion retired from political life and returned to Sde Boker where he passed away in 1973. David Ben-Gurion | prime minister of Israel | Britannica.com prime minister of Israel Levi Eshkol David Ben-Gurion, original name David Gruen (born Oct. 16, 1886, Płońsk, Pol., Russian Empire [now in Poland]—died Dec. 1, 1973, Tel Aviv–Yafo , Israel ), Zionist statesman and political leader, the first prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63) and defense minister (1948–53; 1955–63) of Israel.

It was Ben-Gurion who, on May 14, 1948, at Tel Aviv, delivered Israel’s declaration of independence. His charismatic personality won him the adoration of the masses, and, after his retirement from the government and, later, from the Knesset (the Israeli house of representatives), he was revered as the “Father of the Nation.” David Ben-Gurion with Golda Meir at the Knesset in Jerusalem, 1962. Fritz Cohen/© The State Govenment of Israel Ben-Gurion, born David Gruen, was the son of Victor Gruen , one of the leaders in Płońsk of the “Lovers of Zion,” a movement that was disseminating among the oppressed Jews of eastern Europe the idea of the return to their original homeland of Israel. Zionism fascinated the young David Gruen, and he became convinced that the first step for the Jews who wanted to revive Israel as a nation was to immigrate to Palestine and settle there as farmers.

In 1906 the 20-year-old Gruen arrived in Palestine and for several years worked as a farmer in the Jewish agricultural settlements in the coastal plain and in Galilee , the northern region of Palestine. There he adopted the ancient Hebrew name Ben-Gurion. Suffering the hardships of the early pioneers, including malaria and hunger, he never lost sight of his goal. It was owing to his efforts that the 1907 convention of his Zionist socialist party, Poale Zion (“Workers of Zion”), included the following declaration in its platform: “The party aspires to the political independence of the Jewish people in this land.” With the outbreak of World War I , the Turkish governors of Palestine, their suspicions aroused by his Zionist activity, arrested Ben-Gurion and expelled him from the Ottoman Empire . During the height of the war, he traveled to New York , where he met and eventually married the Russian-born Pauline Munweis. In the last stages of World War I, the British supplanted Turkish rule in the Middle East; and with this change the Jewish settlers and their friends and supporters abroad began to realize that Zionism could rely for future assistance on Britain as well as on the wealthy and influential segments of American Jewry.

Following the British government’s publication on Nov. 2, 1917, of the Balfour Declaration , which promised the Jews a “national home” in Palestine, Ben-Gurion enlisted in the British army’s Jewish Legion and sailed back to the Middle East to join the war for the liberation of Palestine from Ottoman rule. Britannica Stories Scientists Ponder Menopause in Killer Whales The British had already defeated the Turks when the Jewish Legion reached the battlefield, and, when Britain received the mandate over Palestine, the work of realizing the “Jewish national home” had begun. For Ben-Gurion, the “national home” was a step toward political independence. To implement it, he called for accelerated Jewish immigration to Palestine in the effort to create a Jewish nucleus that would serve as the foundation for the establishment of a Jewish state . That nucleus was the Histadrut —the confederation of Jewish workers in Palestine founded in 1920 by Ben-Gurion (who was elected its first secretary-general) and his colleagues.

The Histadrut rapidly became a central force in social, economic, and even security affairs, attaining the position of a “state within a state.” Ten years later, in 1930, a number of labour factions united and founded Mapai , the Israeli Workers Party, with Ben-Gurion at its head. In 1935 he was elected chairman of the Zionist Executive, the highest directing body of world Zionism, and head of the Jewish Agency , the movement’s executive branch. Structures of Government: Fact or Fiction? As the Jewish settlement strengthened and deepened its roots in Palestine, anxiety mounted among the Palestinian Arabs, resulting in violent clashes between the two communities . In 1939 Britain changed its Middle East policy, abandoning its sympathetic stand toward the Jews and adopting a sympathetic attitude toward the Arabs, leading to severe restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Ben-Gurion reacted by calling upon the Jewish community to rise against England, thus heralding the decade of “fighting Zionism.” On May 12, 1942, he assembled an emergency conference of American Zionists in New York City; the convention decided upon the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine after the war.

At the end of World War II , Ben-Gurion again led the Jewish community in its successful struggle against the British mandate; and in May 1948, in accordance with a decision of the United Nations General Assembly , with the support of the United States and the Soviet Union , the State of Israel was established. Britannica Lists & Quizzes Editor Picks: Exploring 10 Types of Basketball Movies David Ben-Gurion became prime minister and minister of defense. Through internal political struggles that incensed both the right and the left, he succeeded in breaking up the underground armies that had fought the British and in fusing them into a national army, which became a model and symbol of the maturing Israeli nation and an effective force against the invading Arab armies from Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt . Although the fighting ended with an Israeli victory, the Arab leaders refused to enter into formal peace negotiations with the Jewish state. Ben-Gurion viewed the newborn state as the direct continuation of Jewish history that, in his opinion, had been interrupted 2,000 years earlier when the Roman legions had crushed the Hebrew freedom fighters and banished the Jews from Palestine.

He saw the Jews’ period of exile as a prolonged interlude in the history of Israel and declared that they had now regained their rightful home. In order to strengthen and develop the young nation, Ben-Gurion presented the people of Israel with a series of challenges: the absorption of mass immigration from all over the world; the assimilation of newcomers of diverse communities and backgrounds; the creation of a unified public education system; the settlement of the desert lands. In his foreign policy , he adopted an independent and pragmatic course. He used to say: “What matters is not what the Gentiles will say, but what the Jews will do.” His defense policy was firm, and he answered violations of the cease-fire agreements by neighbouring Arab states with military reprisals. His stronghanded policy inspired little sympathy for him from the governments of the United States and Britain. They preferred more moderate leaders such as Chaim Weizmann , first president of Israel, and Moshe Sharett , who was elected prime minister for a brief term (1953–55) when Ben-Gurion temporarily retired from office. Striving to gain a foothold in the Middle East, the U.S.S.R.

alienated Israel by providing the Arabs with vast quantities of arms. At that time, Ben-Gurion found an ally in France. During the war in Algeria, France encountered the opposition of the united Arab front, led by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser , and consequently drew closer to Israel, supplying it with considerable amounts of military equipment; when Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956, French initiative brought Israel to join the Franco-British military campaign against Egypt. On Oct. 29, 1956, following a secret visit to France and a meeting with French and British leaders, Ben-Gurion ordered the army to take over the Sinai Peninsula , while France and Britain were making an abortive attempt to seize the canal. Israel subsequently withdrew from Sinai after having been assured freedom of navigation in the Strait of Tiran and de facto peace along the Egyptian-Israeli border, which was to be supervised by a special United Nations force. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Following the Sinai campaign, Israel entered a period of diplomatic and economic prosperity. Ben-Gurion was head of government until 1963.

During his last years of office, he initiated several plans (which proved fruitless) for secret talks with Arab leaders with a view to establishing peace in the Middle East. In June 1963 Ben-Gurion unexpectedly resigned from the government for unnamed “personal reasons.” His move apparently resulted in part from the bitter internal controversy between his supporters and his rivals in the party, who rose against him for the first time because of the political implications of the 1954 “ Lavon Affair ,” involving Israeli-inspired sabotage of U.S. and British property in Egypt. The affair led Ben-Gurion in 1965 to leave Mapai with a number of his supporters and to found a small opposition party, Rafi , at the head of which he fought, with little success, against his successor, Levi Eshkol . David Ben-Gurion (centre) walking with Shimon Peres (left), 1969. © The State of Israel Government Press Office In 1970 Ben-Gurion retired from the Knesset and from all political activity, devoting himself to the writing of his memoirs in Sde-Boqer, a kibbutz in the Negev .

He published a number of books, mostly collections of speeches and essays. Through most of his life he had also engaged in researches into the history of the Jewish community in Palestine and in the study of the Bible. David Ben-Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel First Prime Minister of Israel Early Life David Gruen was born in Plonsk, Russia (now in Poland), on October 16, 1886. Educated in a Hebrew school established by his father, an ardent Zionist, he was by age 14 a leader of Ezra, a Zionist youth group whose members spoke only Hebrew among themselves. At 18 he joined Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion). To Palestine, Exile, and Return In 1906 Gruen moved to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, where he became an agricultural worker. In that capacity he became involved in the creation of the first agricultural workers' commune (which evolved into the Kvutzah and finally the Kibbutz). He also became involved with the Jewish self-defense group Hashomer (The Watchman). It was during this time that he adopted the Hebrew name Ben-Gurion.

Ben-Gurion was living in Jerusalem when World War I broke out. Despite helping to recruit Jews to serve in the Ottoman Army, Ben-Gurion was deported to Egypt by the Ottoman authorities. From Egypt he made his way to New York City, New York, where he met and married (in 1917) Paula Monbesz, a fellow Poalei Zion activist. The couple subsequently had three children -- Amos, Geula Ben-Eliezer, and Renana Leshem. Left: David and Paula Ben-Gurion in June 1918. Right: Ben-Gurion family portrait, 1929. From left, David, Renana, Paula, Geula, Avigdor Gruen (David's father), Amos. Following the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, which promised the Jews a "homeland" in Palestine, Ben-Gurion enlisted in the British Army's Jewish Legion and sailed back to the Middle East to join the war for the liberation of Palestine from Ottoman rule. The British had already defeated the Turks in Palestine by the time the Jewish Legion reached the battlefield, however.

Right: Ben-Gurion as a member of the Jewish Legion. Creation of Israel Ben-Gurion helped found Histadrut (General Federation of Jewish Labor) in 1920. He subsequently served as its first secretary-general (until 1935) and as its representative in both the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. In 1930 he helped found the United Labor Party (now the Mapai Party), and was elected its leader. In 1935 he became chairman of the Jewish Agency, in which capacity he directed all Jewish affairs in Palestine, including land development and the settlement of immigrants. In 1939 Britain changed its Middle East policy, abandoning its sympathetic stand toward the Jews and shifting it toward the Arabs, leading to severe restrictions on Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine. Ben-Gurion reacted by calling upon the Jewish community to rise against the British, while also encouraging them to volunteer for service in the British Army. While World War II raged in Europe, Ben-Gurion publicly proclaimed support for the British war effort, while secretly helping Jewish refugees get to Palestine.

On May 12, 1942, Ben-Gurion assembled an emergency conference of American Zionists in New York City, and that convention decided upon the establishment of a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine after the war. At the end of World War II, Ben-Gurion again led the Jewish community in its struggle against the British mandate. In May 1948, in accordance with a decision of the United Nations General Assembly, and with the support of the United States and the Soviet Union, the State of Israel was established. It was Ben-Gurion who, on May 14, 1948, at Tel Aviv, delivered Israel's declaration of independence. Left: Ben-Gurion proclaiming the independence of Israel. Prime Minister After leading Israel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Ben-Gurion was elected the first Prime Minister of Israel. In this capacity, he oversaw various national projects aimed at the rapid development of the country and its population. One of his "pet projects" was the establishment of new towns and cities, with emphasis on settlement in the Negev and other outlying areas.

In 1953, Ben-Gurion suddenly announced that he was stepping down as Prime Minister and retiring to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev; he was succeeded by Moshe Sharett . His retirement was short-lived, however, as he was again elected Prime Minister in 1955. On October 29, 1956, following a secret visit to France and a meeting with French and British leaders, he ordered the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, while the French and British focused on gaining control of the Suez Canal . All three nations withdrew their forces after the United Nations sent a peacekeeping force. Ben-Gurion again resigned as Prime Minister of July 5, 1959, following a cabinet dispute over the sale of arms to West Germany, which had been approved by the Knesset and supported by Ben-Gurion. On July 7 he appointed Finance Minister Levi Eshkol Acting Premier of a caretaker cabinet. Unable to form a new cabinet, Ben-Gurion resumed the Prime Ministership of July 21 until general elections, slated for the fall.

In February 1960, Ben-Gurion announced that he had accepted an invitation to receive in person an honorary doctorate from Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He also said that he would then go to Washington, London, and Paris for talks with the respective heads of goverrnment. He met with President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Washington on March 10, with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in New York City on March 14, and with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd in London on March 17. He had to postpone his visit to Paris until June, when he then met with President Charles De Gaulle ; that meeting led to a more emphatically neutral Israeli policy in Africa. Left: Ben-Gurion (left) and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in New York City on March 14, 1960. On May 23, 1960, Ben-Gurion announced to the Knesset the capture of Nazi extermination program leader Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina.

Ben-Gurion again stepped down as Prime Minister in 1965, as was succeeded by Levi Eshkol . He did not retire from political life, however. When the Mapai Party split in June 1965 he established Rafi (List of Israeli Workers), which won ten Knesset seats in the following election. In 1968 Rafi rejoined Mapai and Ahdut Ha'avoda to form the Labor Party, while Ben-Gurion formed a new party, Hareshima Hamamlachtit (The State List), which won four Knesset seats in 1969. He retired from politics for good in June 1970. David Ben-Gurion died in Sde Boker on December 1, 1973. Jewish Virtual Library David Ben-Gurion | JSource David Ben-Gurion David Ben Gurion (16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973), Israel ’s first prime minister, was one of the most important Jewish and Zionist leaders of the 20th century.

His uncompromising vision of Jewish unity and statehood, together with a genius for pragmatic political and military tactics, enabled him to establish the State of Israel and guide it through the social, economic, and military challenges of its early years. He was a fiercely combative, stubborn figure, and the feuds he conducted continue to simmer decades after his death. Still, more than any other individual, he is regarded as the father of the modern Jewish nation. An Early Zionist He was born David Gruen (pronounced Green) in Plonsk, in Russian Poland, and grew up in a family committed to the Zionist cause. In 1905, as a student at the University of Warsaw, he joined the Social-Democratic Jewish Workers’ Party – Poalei Zion. Active in revolutionary politics and in Jewish self-defense units, he was arrested twice during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He emigrated to Ottoman Palestine in 1906 and worked as a laborer and watchman in the Jewish settlements of Rishon Letzion and Petah Tikvah. Almost immediately he took up positions of leadership in the Palestine section of Poalei Zion.

In 1909 he volunteered with Hashomer (The Watchman), the early Zionist self-defense force. On 7 November 1911, Ben-Gurion arrived in Thessaloniki (Salonika), planning to learn Turkish in preparation for studying law. The city, which had a large Jewish community, impressed Ben-Gurion. He called it “a Jewish city that has no equal in the world”. He also realized there that “the Jews were capable of all types of work,” from rich businessmen and professors, to merchants, craftsmen and porters. In 1912, he moved to Istanbul, the Ottoman capital, to study law at Istanbul University together with his close friend Yitzhak Ben-Zvi (Shimshelevich), with whom he had left Poland in 1906. He adopted the Hebrew name Ben-Gurion, after the medieval historian Joseph ben-Gorion. He also worked as a journalist. Ben-Gurion saw the future of Zionism as dependent on the behavior of the Ottoman regime. Living in Jerusalem at the start of the First World War, he and Ben-Zvi recruited 40 Jews into a Jewish militia to assist the Ottoman Army.

Despite this he was deported to Egypt in March 1915. From there he and Ben-Zvi made their way to the United States. On arrival the pair went on a tour of 35 cities in an attempt to raise a pioneer army of 10,000 men to fight on Turkey’s side. In 1915 Ben-Gurion settled in Brooklyn, where he met and married a Russian-born nurse, Paula Munweis. Ben-Zvi settled in Washington, and the two cooperated on a history of the decade-old Zionist pioneer movement in Palestine, titled Hechalutz (The Pioneer). Although the book was published in Yiddish in 1918, disputes over the writing caused a rift between the two that never fully healed. Ben-Zvi left politics for academia until he was invited to return as Israel’s second ceremonial president in 1952, after the death of Chaim Weizmann. In 1918 Ben-Gurion joined the British Army as a member of the 38th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, known as the Jewish Legion, part of Chaytor’s Force, formed following the Balfour Declaration in November 1917.

He and his family returned to Palestine after World War I following its capture by the British from the Ottoman Empire. In 1919, following the death of socialist-Zionist theorist Ber Borochov in Russia, the left and right wings of Poalei Zion split. Ben-Gurion and his friend Berl Katznelson led the right faction. The Right Poalei Zion joined with some smaller, independent groups to form Ahdut HaAvoda (Labor Unity) with Ben-Gurion as leader. In 1920 he led in the formation and subsequently became general secretary of the Histadrut, the Zionist Labor Federation in Palestine. Ben-Gurion believed that socialism and Zionism were two sides of the same ideological coin. Jewish nationalism sought not only to achieve Jewish economic self-sufficiency, but also to create a new kind of Jew: proud, independent, and living off the fruits of manual labor. He saw the Jewish working class as the carriers of this revolutionary spirit, and, in line with his slogan, “From class to nation,” saw the interests of workers and the Jewish people as a whole as the same.

The role of the Histadrut, as he saw it, was to build a Jewish economy under the leadership of the Jewish working class. In 1930, Ahdut HaAvoda joined with Hapoel Hatzair, the utopian-agrarian party founded in 1905 by A. D. Gordon, to create the moderately social-democratic Mapai . Under Ben-Gurion’s leadership Mapai became the dominant political force in Jewish Palestine and in the world Zionist movement. In 1935 Ben-Gurion became chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency, the Palestine operating office of the World Zionist Organization and the semi-official government of the Yishuv. He kept the role until Israeli independence in 1948, when the Jewish Agency executive committee effectively became the Israeli cabinet and Ben-Gurion became prime minister. Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky Beginning in the 1920s, Ben-Gurion faced a fierce challenge from the right-wing Zionist Revisionist movement, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky.

In the early 1920s Jabotinsky began opposing the people’s army-style structure of the Haganah, the main Jewish self-defense force, arguing that 2,000 uniformed Jewish soldiers marching down the main street of Jaffa under a banner would be more effective than 10,000 workers with rifles under their beds. Later on Jabotinsky began arguing against the hegemony of the labor movement in the Yishuv, claiming that the Jewish nation should have a single political structure and not be divided by ideologies. He was particularly opposed to the Histadrut’s domination of employment in Jewish workplaces, an argument he carried to an extreme in a 1932 article about the Histadrut that he titled “Yes, Break It!” Relations were pushed to the breaking point by the antics of Abba Ahimeir, the leader of the Revisionists in Palestine, who formed an organization in 1930 called Brit HaBiryonim (Union of Zealots or Thugs) and openly called himself a fascist.

Jabotinsky ordered him to stop using the term fascist, but Ben-Gurion never forgave either of them and took to referring to Jabotinsky as “Vladimir Hitler.” At the same time, relations were deteriorating badly over approaches to the use of force in responding to Arab violence. Jabotinsky’s followers believed the Haganah, the quasi-official armed force of the Jewish Agency, was not responding forcefully enough to attacks during the 1929 Arab uprising. Ben-Gurion had imposed a policy on the Haganah known as Restrain or Havlagah, under which the force would not retaliate for Arab attacks but restrict itself to self-defense. Jabotinsky’s followers wanted to go on the attack. In 1931 the Revisionists formed a force within the Haganah, initially known as Haganah Bet, to take a more aggressive approach. During the course of the 1930s the unit gradually became more independent, ultimately establishing itself as a separate militia, the National Military Organization or Irgun Tzva’i Le’umi. Relations between the Haganah and Irgun ranged from tense to violently hostile.

Jabotinsky suffered a dual defeat at the 1935 the World Zionist Congress when Ben-Gurion was elected chairman of the executive committee and the congress turned down Jabotinsky’s demand that it call for the immediate creation of a Jewish state in all of Palestine. Jabotinsky then led his followers out of the WZO and formed the New Zionist Organization. Proposed Partition In 1937, a year into the three-year Arab revolt in Palestine, the British government created the Palestine Royal Commission under Lord Peel to reexamine future options for the territory. The Peel Commission recommended partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas. The Jews were to receive the northern coastal plain and the Galilee and Britain would retain control of the Jerusalem enclave and a corridor to the coast. The Arabs would get the rest. For all the plan’s shortcomings, Ben-Gurion and the majority of his Mapai party believed the opportunity to create a Jewish state should not be passed up, particularly in view of the desperate situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany.

This position was opposed by the Revisionists, who feared partition would set a dangerous precedent for compromising Jewish national rights, and by parts of the Zionist Left, some of whom believed the plan endangered the future of Jewish settlement activity, while others saw it threatening their ultimate vision of Jewish-Arab coexistence. Ben-Gurion pushed through support for the plan, only to see it dropped by the British in response to implacable Arab opposition. Hostility & Restraint During World War II , Ben-Gurion declared that the Zionists would fight with Britain against the Nazis as if there was no White Paper, and would fight the White Paper as if there were no war. In 1942, he was instrumental in drafting the Biltmore Program, which called for open Jewish immigration and formally called for the first time for a sovereign Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. Following the United Nations ’ 1947 decision to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and with the departure of the British in May 1948, he made the momentous decision to declare the establishment of the State of Israel, over the furious opposition of the right, which objected to the partition of Palestine and ceding parts of it to Arab sovereignty.

He became the first prime minister of the State of Israel and guided the country during the War of Independence. Palestinian Refugees Since the 1990s, post-Zionist “new historians” such as Ilan Pappe and Benny Morris have alleged that during the war Ben-Gurion was aware of—or even initiated—a policy of transfer, the forced expulsion of Arabs. These claims have been hotly contested by historians such as biographer Shabtai Teveth, who assert that Israel’s first prime minister was resigned to the continuing presence of a large Arab minority enjoying equal rights in the future Jewish state. Most historians now concede that the Palestinian refugees of 1948 were partly driven out by Zionist forces and partly fled to escape the bloodshed. Between the U.N. decision in November 1947 and the departure of British forces in May 1948, Ben-Gurion’s efforts were focused on encouraging Palestinians to say in order to demonstrate that the Jewish state could live at peace with its neighbors.

After the declaration of the state and the invasion by five Arab armies on May 15, 1948, efforts were focused on securing territory and removing any potentially hostile forces, which often included civilian populations. After the war ended with the armistice agreements of November 1949, however, Ben-Gurion argued against the conciliatory, diplomatic orientation of foreign minister Moshe Sharett. He took a hard line against any return of Arab refugees and pursued an activist foreign policy of military deterrence and retaliatory raids against neighboring Arab states. In 1954 he resigned as prime minister and retired to his desert retreat at Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev. He returned in 1955, first as defense minister and then as prime minister, and he led Israel in alliance with Britain and France in the Sinai War against Egypt. As Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s tenure as prime minister (1948-53 and again from 1955-63) was governed by the principle of mamlachtiut, or statism — the belief that the state overrode sectarian ideologies and interests in matters such as education and armed force.

In a country where many of the basic institutions—from school systems to health care to sports leagues to armed forces—had been created at the outset by political factions, imposing the supremacy of the state seemed to crucial to establishing sovereign legitimacy. Ben-Gurion set aliyah and immigrant absorption as Israel’s top priorities, established the Israel Defense Force, dissolving the independent, political pre-state militias, the left-wing Palmach and right-wing Irgun, and sought to abolish ideological distinctions in education , replacing party-run schools with one all-encompassing state education system. (In the end he had to settle for three school systems, state-secular, state-religious and ultra-Orthodox “independent” along with a separate Arabic-language school system.) The left went along, at times reluctantly, but the right resisted. On June 20, 1948, midway through a 30-day cease-fire in the war of independence declared by the U.N.

and accepted by Ben-Gurion, the Irgun and its commander, Menachem Begin, attempted to land an arms ship, the Altalena, at Tel Aviv port, with the aim of rearming Irgun units that were being folded into the newly unified Israeli army. After days of negotiations, Ben-Gurion and his allies remained convinced that the Irgun planned to use the weaponry to constitute themselves as an army within an army. After the Altalena refused to surrender it was sunk, and 16 Irgun fighters were killed. More controversially, Ben-Gurion presided over the reparations agreement with West Germany, in which the German government agreed to pay $715 million to the State of Israel in compensation for taking in refugees from the Holocaust. The deal provoked savage public debate: Protesters, led by Begin, accused the government of taking blood money from the Germans. Yet without the financial settlement, Israel’s economic development and very survival would have been in question. Ben-Gurion resigned from the premiership in 1963 and handed the reins to his finance minister, Levi Eshkol. He initially retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker.

However, he returned to the Knesset in 1965 at the head of a tiny splinter, Rafi, which opposed Eshkol over his handling of a decade-old investigation known as the Lavon Affair. The affair involved an Israeli intelligence fiasco in Egypt in 1954, during Ben-Gurion’s first retirement, in which Egyptian Jews were recruited to sabotage American facilities in Egypt in order to stir tension between Washington and the new Egyptian revolutionary regime. The affair enraged Ben-Gurion and drove many of his later political decisions, from his political return in 1955 to his formation of Rafi in 1965. He spent years attempting to force a full investigation and punishing of those responsible, beginning with Pinchas Lavon, the defense minister at the time, whom Ben-Gurion blamed for the fiasco. Finally, in 1970 he left politics altogether. In the last years of his life Ben-Gurion was a solitary figure, but he continued to advocate aliyah, the ingathering of the exiles, and the settlement of the land, particularly the Negev desert.

His last campaign, perhaps continuing his lifelong career as an angry prophet, was speaking out bitterly against Israeli attempts to secure a foothold in the territories it had occupied in 1967. David Ben-Gurion (Author of David Ben-Gurion) edit data David Ben-Gurion (About this sound pronunciation (help·info); Hebrew: דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן, born David Grün; (16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel. 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, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he became the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in 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, wh David Ben-Gurion (About this sound pronunciation (help·info); Hebrew: דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן‎, born David Grün; (16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel. 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, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he became the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in 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". Following the war, Ben-Gurion served as Israel's first Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, he helped build the state institutions, presiding over various 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 very well 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 persecution of the Jews during the Holocaust. In 1954, he resigned and served as Minister of Defense, before returning to office in 1955. Under his leadership, Israel responded aggressively to Arab guerrilla attacks, and in 1956, invaded Egypt along with British and French forces after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal. 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 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. Yeshayahu Leibowitz considered Ben-Gurion "to have hated Judaism more than any other man he had met." On his religious views, Ben-Gurion was an atheist.

Question: David Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister of where?
Answer: Israel