Ben-Gurion, David

(formerly Gruen)

(1886-1973)

   Born in Plonsk, Poland, on 16 October 1886, he became a committed Zionist in childhood under the influence of his father and grandfather. He arrived in Jaffa in September 1906, was elected to the central committee of the Poalei Zion (Workers of Zion) Movement, and began organizing workers into unions. In 1910, he joined the editorial staff of a new Poalei Zion paper, Ahdut (Unity), in Jerusalem and began publishing articles under the name Ben-Gurion. He joined a group of young socialist Zionists who went to study at Turkish universities and moved in 1912 to the University of Constantinople, where he earned a law degree with highest honors. In 1914, he returned to Palestine and resumed his work as a union organizer but in 1915 was exiled by Ottoman authorities. In May 1918, he enlisted in a Jewish Battalion of the British Royal Fusiliers and sailed to Egypt to join the Expeditionary Force. From 1921 to 1935, Ben-Gurion was the secretary general of the Histadrut and was instrumental in the founding of the United Labor Party, which eventually became Mapai. In the 1920s and 1930s, Chaim Weizmann, the head of the World Zionist Organization and chief diplomat of the Zionist Movement, ran overall Zionist affairs while Ben-Gurion headed Zionist activities in Palestine, where his major rival was Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky. Convinced that Revisionist Zionists under Jabotinsky were endangering the drive toward eventual statehood, Ben-Gurion sought to undermine and discredit Revisionism. When Menachem Begin became the leader of Revisionism in the 1940s and increased militant actions against the British, Ben-Gurion intensified his efforts to discredit Revisionism and its leader. In 1935, he defeated the forces of Weizmann and was elected chairman of the Jewish Agency executive, a post in which he served from 1935 to 1948. Recognized as the founder of Israel, Ben-Gurion served as prime minister from 1948 to 1963, except for two years from December 1953, when he voluntarily retired to Sde Boker in the Negev to seek respite from the rigors of his long political career and to dramatize the significance of pioneering and reclaiming the desert. In 1955, when Pinhas Lavon was forced to resign as minister of defense, Ben-Gurion left Sde Boker to become minister of defense in the government headed by Moshe Sharett. After the election (see KNESSET ELECTIONS) of 1955, Ben-Gurion undertook to form a new government. However, the eruption of the Lavon Affair in 1960 brought disarray to Mapai, and Ben-Gurion's political strength eroded. He resigned as prime minister in June 1963. In 1965, he founded a new political party, Rafi, and remained in the Knesset until his resignation in 1970. He died on 1 December 1973.