DAVID BEN-GURION
1886-1973
David Ben-Gurion, main architect and founder of the State of Israel, was Israel’s first and longest serving Prime Minister (1948-1953 and 1955-1963). He was a secular Jewish nationalist who combined the biblical vision for a Jewish homeland in Zion with Russian socialist ideals.
He was born David Grun (Green) on October 16, 1886 in Plonsk, Poland. His father, Avigdor, was a Zionist and a Hebrew teacher. Ben-Gurion learned to speak and read Hebrew from his grandfather and father. As a teenager; he formed a youth group, “Ezra”, whose members only spoke Hebrew. His mother, Sheindel, died when he was eleven.
The pogroms in Russia were the catalyst for his move to Palestine in 1906. He started working on small collective farms in Petach Tikva and in Rishon Le’Zion. Ben-Gurion then moved to Segra, in the Lower Galilee, as this moshav did not rely on Arab labor. 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).
In 1912, he went to Istanbul to study law. While on vacation in the Galilee in 1914, World War I broke out and he couldn’t return to university. In 1915, the government of the Ottoman Empire expelled Ben-Gurion from Palestine and sent him to Egypt. From there, he moved to New York and met his future wife, Paula Munweis. He had been an admirer of Lenin’s teachings (see Lenin), but the system of democracy in the United States turned him against Communism.
Ben-Gurion joined the Jewish Legion of the British army and fought in Egypt against the Turks. After the war he and Paula returned to Palestine in 1920. They had three children: Geula, Amos and Renana. 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 became the Secretary of the Histadrut in 1921 and was their representative to the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. He was elected Chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive in 1935. As such, he was head of the “almost government” of the Jews in Palestine and molded the character of the Jewish State.
Ben-Gurion was always politically active and as the noose of Nazi Germany tightened around European Jewry he looked for ways to bring as many Jews to Palestine as possible.
During World War II he encouraged Jewish participation in the British armed forces but also supported resistance against the British Mandate in Palestine and British restrictions on Jewish immigration. After the war, he was instrumental in supporting mass “illegal” immigrations of survivors from Europe and in creating potential borders for a Jewish state by establishing Jewish settlements in all parts of the country. He also pushed for the purchase of heavy armaments and pressed for a strong Jewish defense system.