A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion

After the Balfour Declaration, Ben-Gurion switched his allegiance from the Turks to the British. He joined the British Army’s Jewish Legion and fought with the British against the Turks in the Palestine Campaign. Though he continued working with Poalei Zion, he also launched his own political party, Achdut Ha’avoda (“Unity of Labor”), composed most

Ben-Gurion was determined to snuff out any remaining embers of the Irgun and the Lechi, and he convinced the cabinet to give him broad powers to end acts of terrorism, including administrative detention without trial. The era of the Jewish underground,…

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He had autocratic tendencies and probably stayed in politics just a bit too long. But born in Europe, he came to Palestine early, out of pure ideology, and picked oranges, built labor unions, and rose to the top of Yishuv politics. Then, David Ben-Gurion nimbly guided the Yishuv through the turbulent years of British rule, building prestate institu

Israeli life had changed in numerous ways. If in the early years of the state military leaders spoke of their accomplishments with a sense of humility—the pervasive culture insisted that they were merely “doing their duty to serve the nation”—Israel now venerated IDF generals and treated them as heroes. Some of those generals then parlayed their ne