David Ben Gurion

The first prime minister of the Jewish state.

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David Ben Gurion (1886-1973), Israel's first prime minister, was one of the most important Zionist leaders of the 20th century. His uncompromising vision of Jewish unity and statehood, together with a genius for pragmatic political and military tactics, enabled him to establish the State of Israel and guide it through the social, economic, and military challenges of its early years. But Ben Gurion's career was marked by a series of intense conflicts, and he remains one of the most debated figures in Israeli politics. 

An Early Zionist

David Ben Gurion (born Gruen) was born in Plonsk, in Russian Poland, and grew up in a family committed to the Zionist cause. He immigrated to Palestine in 1906 and worked as a laborer and watchman in the Jewish settlements of Rishon Letzion and Petah Tikvah. Almost immediately he took up positions of leadership in the socialist Zionist Poalei Tzion party.

He published articles under the name Ben Gurion, in which he argued for the settlement of the land and the centrality of Hebrew as the only true expressions of Zionism. With the outbreak of World War I he advocated loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, which then ruled Palestine, but later joined the Jewish Legion of the British army, with the hope of fighting for Jewish independence.

After the war, Ben Gurion returned to Palestine, where he quickly rose to prominence in the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community).  He was instrumental in founding a mass political party--Ahdut ha-Avodah, the forerunner of the modern Labor party--and, in 1920, the Histadrut Labor Federation, perhaps the most important instrument for the realization of Zionist goals. Ben Gurion believed that socialism and Zionism were two sides of the same ideological coin. Jewish nationalism sought not only to achieve Jewish economic self-sufficiency, but also to create a new kind of Jew: proud, independent, and living off the fruits of manual labor.

Ben Gurion saw the Jewish working class as the carriers of this revolutionary spirit, and, in line with his slogan, "From class to nation," saw the interests of workers and the Jewish people as a whole as the same. The role of the Histadrut, as he saw it, was to build a Jewish economy under the leadership of the Jewish working class.

Using Violence

Beginning in the 1920s, Ben Gurion led the Zionist labor movement's struggle against the right-wing Revisionist party, led by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Ben Gurion believed that the establishment of socialist workers' hegemony was a crucial step in the attainment of Jewish independence. The arrival in the mid-1920s of tens of thousands of lower-middle class immigrants to Palestine, fleeing anti-Semitism in Poland, was a significant obstacle in the pursuit of this goal. Most of the new arrivals had no interest in socialism or in adopting a new, proletarian identity.

Matt Plen is the Chief Executive of Masorti Judaism in the UK. He has taught and trained educators in diverse institutions in Israel, the UK and the USA and is currently researching his doctorate on Critical Pedagogy and Jewish Ideologies of Social Justice.