Page :10-Thc Canadian Jewish News. thursday\ October 16. 1986
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The quintessential Zionist
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SHELDON KIRSHNER
One hundred years ago this month. Sheindel Gruen. the wife of Avigdor, gave birth to;a son. David, in the: Polish town ofPionsk.
The boy became a man and the man became the; first Jew.in 2.000 years to head a Jewish state.
Dd>id-Ben-iGurion, the name by which he would be known, was one of the towering figures in Jewish history.
Twice Prime Minister of Israel, BenTGuriori lived a long; fruitful life, dying as the dust of the 1973 Yoni Kippur War settled. The quintessential Zionist, he i.mrnigrated to Palestine in 1906, laboring in the orange groves of Petah Tikvah and in the wine cellars of Rishoh Le Zion; before becoming politically involved in the supreme bat-, lie to secure a Jewish homeland in what is how ■■;Israel,
In this respect, it was not by chance that he chainged his name. Ben-Gurion; which meains son of a lion cub, was one pf the leaders of the Jewish revolt against the Romans in 66 AD. His hamesake fought the Arabs and the British in the bloody attempt to create a place in the sun for Jews.. ■■■ \ . . •
A keen student of Greek and .Eastern . philosophies,, a-practitibnerof yoga, as well as a master of seven languages, Ben-Giirion carved (luf a career whose contours followed the ■ course of Zionist politics.. ,: •
Ben-Gurioh, a gruff man wha.se idealism was tempered by pragniatisni, served as secretary-general, ofthe Hisiadrut labor federation at. a time when Jews sought to create a Jewish workers, society in-Palestine, .
He was a founder of Mapai, the political party that mixed Socialism with capitalism and ruled Israel front 1949 until its defeat at the hands of.. the Likud bloc in. 1977.
He was chairman of the Jewish Agency executive for 13years, preparing-the.groundwork forthe e.stablishment of Israel in 1948.
When the War of Independence broke out, Ben-Gurioh, as Prime Minister, of the provisional government, headed the defence effort and took charge of raising fund.s' for the beleaguered Jewish state.; ,■
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he wielded power
as Israel grew
from childhood
to adulthood
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In the 1949 general election. Ben-Gurion, having failed to obtain an overall majority, formed a coalition government arid thus set the pattern for future govemrhents. He retired in 1953, joining a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. But within two years, Ben-Gurion emerged, from the wilderness, first becoming minister of defence under Prime Minister Moshe Sharett and then winning back the premiership.
; For the next eight years, Beh-Gurion.— a short, bulky' man whose snoW white hair framed a pudgy face — wielded power as Israel made the gradual transition frorh childhood to aduhhood.
He retired in 1963, designating Levi Eshkol as his successor. The infamous Lavon Affair, which rumbled across the IsraeU political landscape like a menacing earthquake, led to his resignation!^ The controversy, which revolved around a bungled espionage operation iii Egypt in the mid-1950s, eiffectiyely spelled finis to B«n-Guri6n*s spectacular career. When he attempted a third comeback, Mapai thwarted his ambition. He formed ah independent list for the 1965 election, Rafi, and acolytes like Moshe Day an and Shimon Peres joined him. But Rafi perfoi-med poorly at the polls and any hope Ben-GuHon may have had about being a kingmaker vanished.
In 1969, he tried once again to usie his past to appeal to the Israeli electorate, but he failed. His
state list flpundered. and the '^old man"' resigned froth the Knesset just a year later; , \yheTi he died, m a year when Israel's self-confidence was badly shaken by a war which claimed more than 2,000 Israeli lives, Ben-Gurion was effectively in political exile, a lonely, embittered figure who had been overtaken by the rush of events. Nevertheless, Ben-Gurion's Gohtributions to Israel's rebirth and consolidation were never forgotten, not.even by his mo.st tor-
' iliidable enernics.
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•Ben-Gurion, despite enormous pressure froni the U.S. and the doubts of many of his colleagues, proclaimed the Sate of Israel. A lesser leader might have hesitated and postponed a decision, biit he charged ahead: In declaring statehood, Beh-Gurion had come a long way;
Before the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, he had urged Jews to support the Turks in World Wai" I so as to win from them the pror mise of autonomy in Palestine. But.when the Turkish authorities cracked down on Zionism, he svyitched sides and championed the British cause; In the 1930s, when Palestinian Arabs were ri.sing up in revolt against Jewish settlement and the British maiidate, Ben-Gurion favored a Jewish homeland but felt that statehood should be deferred until the country was sufficiently populated with Jews. By the early 1940s, he had come around to favoring the creation of a Jewi.sh com-, monwealth. By 1948. he was prepared to declare .statehood. \
•Ben-Gurion fathered the modern Israeli ar-. niy and considered it a tool of national unity. .As . the War of Independence raged, he disbanded all Jewish militias, including the Paimach. the Haganah arid the Irgun. and moulded them into the new Israel Defence Forces^ the IDF.";..1 sec in it (IDF) hot only the fortress of our seeuri-: . ty... but also an educational force for national unification^ and a loyal instrument for welding together the dispersed ethnic groups, "he said.
. •Ben-Gurion viewed aliya as one of his chief nation-building tasks. He pi-omulgated the Law of Return, which enabled Jews to claim immediate Israeli citizen.ship; and he diverted scarce financial resources to ensure that the new arrivals from "allcomers of the woridwouldbe properly integrated.' ; ■
• "Aliya precedes everything el.se,"' he was fond \ of saying; "For in aliya there is security, in aliya there is renaissance.!;'';-
' •Beii-Giirion, in opposition to the United Na^ tions,; declared Jerusalem as Israel's capital. ■ 'Jewish Jerusalem is ah organic and inseparable
; part (of Israel), just as it is an,inseparable part of Jewish history, Jewish religion and the Jewish soul," he wrote. .
•Ben-Gurion, though totally secular, signed an historic agreement with Jewish Orthodox par- .' ties granting them certain concessions in return for their acceptance of a Jewish state. The so-, called "status quo'' in religion has frayed at the edges and alienated many' Israelis, but. it has helped preserve Israel's national unity. ■
•Ben-Guriqn turned Israeli foreign policy westward.away from neutrality, and sowed the seeds of Israel's alliance with the U.S. He laid the foundation forlsrael's relationship with West Germany, and he cultivated African and Asian
'nations. •■;
. •Ben-Guripn opened up the Negev; the sandy, desolate w-asteland; which comprises twor thirds of Israel's land area: But for all his efforts, the Negev still remains sparsely populated and, in comparison to the: West Bank, a financial, stepchild.
Despite all his successes, Ben-Gurion failed at peacemaking. He wanted to come to terms with Israel's Arab neighbors, but could not dp so. In general, he adopted a. hard-^lirie approach to the Afabs, permitting the IDF to retaliate for each blow delivered by the enemy.
According to some historians, Ben-Gurion relied too heavily on retaliatory raids. They claim that if he been less provocative, that if he had not ordered the assault on Egyptian positiohs in the Gaza Strip in February of 1955, Israel may have had a chance to enter into meaningful talks with Egypt, the leader of the Arab; worid.
In retrospect^ Ben-Gurion's fateful decision to collude with Fraiice and Britain in the 1956; Arab-Israeli war was probably a strategic error, for it branded Israel with the stamp as a collaborator of colonial European powers.
After his retirement, and particularly in the wake of the 1967 Sbc Day War, Ben-Gurion's attitude mellowed. A hawk during much of his . tenure as Prime Minlstier, he turned into something of a dove in his declining years. ■'...we niust return to the pre-1967 borders," he told an interviewer several yiears before his death. liPeace is more important than real estate."-,■ ' ■
David Ben-Gurion usually knew what Was gocxl for IsraeL..... .
David Beh-Gurion — Israeli nation-builder.
■■■■ --BV ,.■ carl alpert
■.Jerusalem-r
There is ho assurance that readers' views as expressed in the letterbox of daily papers do indeed represent the voice of the peoiJle, firstly because only the articulate members of the populatioh express themselves through this ''medium, and secondly because most papers are highly selective oi the letters they publish, Stljl, such missives do illustrate an interesting aspect of public, opinion. We select and digest the following from recent issues of daily papers in Israel. .,
Advice for Refonn Jews: Reform Jews in America have taken up the cudgels for religious pluralism in Israel,: and: seek to abojish the . monopoly on religious affairs now held by the Orthodox. My advice to all these good people is to come settle in Israel and carry on your battle from here. When there are a millioh Reform Jews here, they will haye no problem in their confrontation with the rabbinate. Solorig as they live in the U.S., however, let them enjoy the religious pluralism of that country v and be satisfied with ■tjiat..:-; ," :■■ .:; ■
— Miriam Bar-Yosef, in Maariv
Only one Holocaust: Too coifimon use is being made of the yvord "holocaust," as people speak of an economic holocaust, in reference to the collapse of Israel's bank shares, a political, holocaust, etc. In this way we are minimizing the significance of the word, which should beappHed :only to what happened to the Jew.s under Hitler, and to nothing else. No possible comparison can be made between other tragedies and catastrophes, and the fateof the Jews, which was an historic phenomenon which we hope may never be repeated.
— Yael Slavin, in Bamahane
To break the. habit: I call upon all my salaried colleagues to destroy their credit cards, yes, this moment; take a pair of scissors and cut them up. The increasing use of credit cards here is artificially inflating our purchasing power, and giving their users the feeling that thdr.earnings have increased. It is an illusion, and when theliime-^
comes to pay the bills they won't have the wherewithal. The use of credit cards isas tempting as die first dose of ahabit-fortning drug, and then it becomes impossible to break the habit . Unless we do something about it, we shall again. find ourselves in a dizzying «pell of ihnation.
— Zvi BenTMordecai, in Yediot Aharbnpt
How to treat violent Arab agitators: Perhaps we are making a mistake in the way we react to Arabs who throw stones or Molotov cocktails.. bum fires, and attack police and soldiers. We ought to ascertain how such actions are handled by the police pf Egypt, Jordan^. Syria and other Arab lands. There should be ho problem finding out how the police of those countries put down violent demonstrations. And if we are hot able to provide the Arabs of Judea, Samaria and Gaza with their own rule, for our own good reasons, then we can at least provide them with a measure of Arab justice and proper law enforcement (when required) according to the custom of their own people. .
— Peretz Tura, in Maariv
Back to which roots: There are those who call lipon us to return to our Jew:ish roots. If they mean refusing to serve in the Israel army, the burning of bus shelters and the Israeli flag, refusing to recognize the state; infusing the youth with hatred for other nations as well as for other Jevys, then 1 for one, w^ho loves Jewish traditiori.s, refiase ; to recognize this as a return to our roots. Those. so-called torah Jews who tear out pf the siddur all prayers for the welfare of the State of Israel are preaching a false messianism. Those who see danger in this trend are called upon to raise their .voices in protest, and not to cite a false authority whose roots are diseased.^
' — Eliezer Palnizki, in Davar
Leave it to God: As a member of a traditional; family, I cannot understand why the religious zealots picket piitsidethe movies on Friday night, disturbing their own Sabbath, and compelling the police to violate the Sabbath as well. Why not leave the job of enforcement of Jewish law.s; to . the Holy One, blessed be He, who demonstrated his ability to take care ofthe violators asTar back as the days of Noah ^hd the_Ark?
— Miriam Greenberg, in Maariv;