Ben-Gurion

My father provides a sympathetic biography of the founding father of the State of Israel, and in so doing continues to assert his understanding of the difference between Israel and her hostile neighbors.

We can consider it fortunate, indeed, that the State of Israel for most of its brief existence has had as its leader a personality as forceful and as dedicated as David Ben-Gurion. …. Not everyone has agreed with him… but everyone has respected him, and … has been grateful for his leadership.
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A FEW MONTHS AGO A MAN APPLIED TO THE ISRAELI AIR CORPS for training as a parachutist. He was rejected, but it took a lot of convincing before the man would accept the rejection and peaceably go his way. He could not be convinced that it was medically unsound. He could not be convinced that he was overage. He did finally listen to the argument that the time it would take to train was more than he could spare from other important duties he had to fulfill. This man was David Ben-Gurion,[1] Prime Minister of Israel, who just recently celebrated his seventieth birthday.
 
The anecdote illustrates very well how young in spirit this leader of Israel is despite his three score and ten, what energy and enthusiasm he possesses for his task, how anxious he is to set a personal example of courage and hard work before his people. The order had gone out that everyone connected with the parachute outfit had to be able to jump, not only the combatants but the medics and the chaplains and other noncombatants as well. The man who had already given his people a lifetime of effort felt obligated to obey the order himself and show the way.
 
We can consider it fortunate, indeed, that the State of Israel, for most of its brief existence, has had as its leader a personality as forceful and as dedicated as David Ben-Gurion. He has had opposition to be sure. Not everyone has agreed with him politically. He has not always been careful of what he has said from the standpoint of public relations. He has even entered into controversy with American Zionists, but everyone has respected him, and perhaps even though they may have opposed him, has been grateful for his leadership.
 
Ben-Gurion has been above all a man of strong will and action. Hertzl[2] also long before had said, "If you will it, it is no dream." In doing so, however, he was merely expressing optimism about the possibilities of the future. When Ben-Gurion willed something, it was connected with immediate action. There are three crucial decisions in particular when Ben-Gurion’s assertion of will may possibly have changed the whole course of events in Israel. The first of these came in his espousal of a policy to ignore the British decrees to stop emigration into Palestine in the months before the establishment of the state. There were those who, with good reason, warned that all the achievements in Palestine up to that time might be destroyed in the effort to challenge the might of Great Britain, but Ben-Gurion could understand only that Jews who were fleeing the specter of Hitlerism must be admitted to the Jewish homeland whatever the consequences. If there was a risk involved it had to be taken.
 
A second decision of crucial significance was the declaration of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. There was great reluctance on the part of many. There was good reason to fear that the inevitable Arab attack which would follow would swallow up the Jewish community. But Ben-Gurion's philosophy was if you want to be a people, you have to act like a people. If you want to function as a Jewish homeland and must assume complete political authority in order to do so, then it has to be assumed. Others wanted to wait for a more favorable international climate, but Ben-Gurion seized the opportune moment, and who knows whether or not Israel would have come into being at all if he had not done so. His insistence that Israel must be always open to the ingathering of the exiles is another such crucial decision. In a land beset with political and economic problems, in a land dependent for so much upon outside aid, it might have been smarter to limit immigration, to lighten the problem of absorption of so many newcomers, and particularly so many newcomers of cultural backgrounds so different from the Jews already in the land. But an Israel closed to any Jew made no sense to Ben-Gurion, and so the people sacrificed and kept the doors open in spite of the difficulties. If not for Ben-Gurion anyone of these decisions might have been different. His stubborn will has made Israel what it is today.
 
The most dramatic act of Ben-Gurion was perhaps his retirement into the desert as a humble worker. In December 1953 after five and a half years as leader of the Israeli government, Ben-Gurion decided to retire to a collective settlement in the desert of the Negev, Sdeh Boker. There were some rumors that he did so because of political disagreements within his party. He himself denied this firmly and wrote that he retired because of "extreme weariness" and "mental strain" after so many years of working at high tension. Regret was voiced on a nonpartisan basis. Everyone looked upon him as a national leader rather than as a party man, and they knew his counsel and his daring would be missed. It took great courage and character to step out of a position of authority when there was no pressure upon him to do so. It took a great sense of dedication to retire not to a comfortable residence in Jerusalem, but to a hut in an isolated Negev settlement. It was an inspiring example of selfless pioneering which he set before his people when he was already at an age far beyond that associated with pioneering. Ben-Gurion's retirement was not complete. His home became a shrine visited by many. His advice was still sought out. He had time now to think, to read, to write, and he made his influence felt. After fourteen months his successor Moshe Sharett did not handle it to everybody's satisfaction, and so Ben-Gurion returned to the cabinet as the Minister of Defense. A bit later in the summer, after a new election was held, he returned to his old post as the Prime Minister.
 
Israel only a few weeks ago found itself at war with Egypt, and the effects of that war are still being dealt with by the great powers. And yet, even though Ben-Gurion sparked the invasion of the Sinai peninsula, he may nevertheless be labeled a man of peace, a man whose philosophy bears the stamp of the prophets of old, and whose thinking and writing shows deep attachment to the Bible. In this respect he stands in striking contrast to the leader of Egypt[3] whose ideal is Hitler's Mein Kampf, and the guest of our president[4] who said he was willing to sacrifice thousands of Arabs if he could only wipe out Israel.
 
One of the striking quotations of Ben-Gurion, often referred to, comes from the early days, and reads, "It is not that we regard the Mandate[5] as our Bible; it is that the Bible is our Mandate." For Ben-Gurion the ancient past reflected in the Bible and the Messianic future spoken of are directly related to the present. He wrote in 1952:

The State of Israel will be judged not by its wealth or military strength, not by its technology, but by its moral worth and human values … Merely to be like other peoples is not enough. We may aspire to fulfill the words of the prophet, “I the Lord give thee for a covenant of the people to the nations.” … We shall be untrue to our national purpose if we do not hand on to our youth the great vision of the prophets…. The People of the Book, which today is renewing its national independence, will be required for a long time to come to concentrate its utmost efforts on the building of the Land, the fostering of its economy, its security and international status. Security and economy, however, are only the means not the end. We are building the state with prophetic vision and messianic longings, to be an example and guide to all men. The words of the prophet remain true for us: "I will give thee for a light unto the nations, that thou mayest be my salvation onto the end of the earth.[6]

​We said he was a man of peace. On his seventieth birthday, just a short time before the invasion of Egypt, Ben-Gurion told a newspaperman, "As long as it is for me to decide, we shall have no war." He always spoke out against those who advocated a preventive war against the Arabs. Why then the invasion? One of his own speeches in the summer of 1956 to a labor convention gives the answer, and explains the decision he so regretfully had to take to invade.

Our will to peace does not in itself guarantee peace, and we shall endanger our very existence if we fall prey to vain delusions and false imaginings. We must not ignore the bitter truth that our neighbors, headed by the Egyptian dictator, are preparing for the second round, and they are now being assisted by Soviet arms, after previously receiving British and American arms, which some of the Arab countries still continue to receive. … There is perhaps no other people in the world so deeply interested as ourselves both for moral reasons and for the sake of their own survival in increasing the authority of the U.N. to maintain world peace. But in the Security Council and the General Assembly, there is a struggle for influence and power between rival and competing forces and blocs. We must realize therefore that Israel's security depends first and foremost — if not solely — on her own power and her capacity to deter aggressors and defeat them if they try to attack us.

Events have proved Ben-Gurion correct. He is a lover of peace, but not a pacifist. When the survival of Israel is at stake he is a man of action. He knew the risk of alienating world opinion in the attack on Egypt, but he knew that if he did not run that risk, Israel would be doomed by an invasion for which Egyptians were amassing their military strength in the desert. Ben-Gurion by his action saved Israel at that moment, but unfortunately his problems are not at an end. The United Nations and the United States unfortunately cherish the disciples of Hitler and the slaveholding Arab princes above a man whose sincere desire is peace and democracy. They think nothing of asking Ben-Gurion to put his head again into an Arab noose. But he can refuse their immoral demands with a clear conscience. Ben-Gurion is the symbol of peace and justice, and it is the diplomats with oil on their hands who must search their hearts.
 
The people of Israel have faith in their leader. Even in stress and sorrow they honor his judgment. Just recently it was reported that an Israeli writer who lost his only son in the war of independence sent a volume of memoirs about the boy to Ben-Gurion with the inscription: “At your command he went; at your command he fell. Blessed be your name.” He spoke for the people of Israel and we, too, pray for the continued health of Israel's leader. May he be spared with full vigor for many additional years to guide his people in these crucial times.

[1] David Ben-Gurion (1886 –1973) was the primary founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel. He was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. He led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Posthumously, Ben-Gurion was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th century.

[2] Theodor Herzl (1860 –1904), was an Austro-Hungarian journalist, playwright, political activist, and writer. He was one of the fathers of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish migration to Palestine in an effort to form a Jewish state.
 
[3] Gamal Abdel Nasser

[4] US President Eisenhower had been conducting meetings that week with His Majesty Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz Al-Saud, King of Saudi Arabia.

[5] Mandatory Palestine was a geopolitical entity under British administration, carved out of Ottoman Southern Syria after World War I. British civil administration in Palestine operated from 1920 until 1948. During its existence it was known simply as Palestine, but, in retrospect, as distinguishers, a variety of other names and descriptors including Mandatory or Mandate Palestine, also British Palestine and the British Mandate of Palestine, have been used to refer to it.

​[6] Isaiah 49:6