Ben-Gurion, David

Ben-Gurion, David (1886-1973), Israeli statesman and the first prime minister of Israel (1948-1953 and 1955-1963), who dedicated his life to establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine and was regarded as the father of his country.

Ben-Gurion, whose original surname was Gruen, was born in Plonsk, Russia (now part of Poland), on October 16, 1886, the son of a lawyer who was an active Zionist. By the age of 14 he had himself established a Zionist youth society. He left Poland in 1906 to work on a farm in a Jewish settlement in Palestine, which was then under Turkish control. In 1910 he gave up farming to edit the Zionist workers' Hebrew-language newspaper Achdut (Unity). By this time, he had adopted the surname Ben-Gurion, Hebrew for "son of the young lion". Expelled by the Turks early in World War I, Ben-Gurion left Palestine, and in 1915 he arrived in New York.

In 1917 Great Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, which revived Zionist hopes by its support of a "national home" for Jews in Palestine. Ben-Gurion helped to organize a Jewish Legion for the British forces, in which he himself enlisted in Canada in April 1918. By the time he reached Palestine, however, the war was over, and the British were in control. In 1922 the British mandate to govern Palestine became official. For nearly two decades the British generally supported the Jewish cause, in which Ben-Gurion remained active. In 1921 he became the general secretary of the Histadrut, a confederation of Jewish workers that was in effect a Jewish state within a state. In 1930 he formed the Mapai, the Zionist labour party, and by 1935 he was chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, official overseer of the Jews in the Holy Land.

In 1939, following clashes between Jewish and Arab communities in Palestine, Great Britain made a major change in policy; Jewish immigration was to be severely limited. Ben-Gurion responded with calls for insurrection. During World War II Ben-Gurion supported cooperation with Britain, but after the war's end he authorized Zionist sabotage and terror attacks. The republic of Israel was proclaimed on May 14, 1948, with Ben-Gurion as prime minister. He welded the disparate underground forces into an army that defeated the invading Arabs, and for 15 years (except for the period 1953-1955) he continued to lead his country, promoting immigration, education, and the development of desert lands. In 1963 Ben-Gurion resigned, as he said, to study and write; he had also lost favour with his party. He did remain in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, until his retirement from politics in 1970. For the last ten years of his life he lived at Sede Boqer, a kibbutz in the Negev area; he died there on December 1, 1973. Ben-Gurion wrote extensively; among his works are Israel: A Personal History (1970) and The Jews in Their Land (1974).