Very proud and happy to welcome Tom
Segev on behalf of the Center for Israel
Studies. He is of course known I think to
all of you here as the author of many
books on Israeli history and related
topics I would say. Tom Segev started his
studies of history in Israel at the
Hebrew University. He got his PhD at
Boston University, and I think one of the
reasons we really like his book so much
is that he knows how to write and as a
history professor myself I would say it
is because it's not just a historian but
also a journalist one of the best known
journalists in Israel who has worked in
the 1970s first for my leave as a
correspondent in Germany and later until
today of course is connected with her
Abbot's but he's also written so many
aspects of the history of Israel and the
priest state history of Israel as well. I
just would like to mention the books of
ninth the books in 1949 the first
Israelis the book on 1967 in a way the
second founding of the State of Israel
and maybe his most his best-known and
perhaps also most controversial book The
Seventh Million a book which was written
in a time when the so-called new
historians as they were called, I don't
know if you call yourself one, were
established in Israel and it deals with
Israel's pre-state issues
dealing with the especially political
government towards the Holocaust and was
also critical about
the way the political leadership of the
issue data did not deal with in with
regard to the victims of the Holocaust.
The last book he wrote before this one
was another biography, biography this
time not of an Israeli but of somebody
who were said impact also on Israeli
history, Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi
hunter and now today the book we will
discuss is a biography of the founder
and first Prime Minister of Israel David
Ben-Gurion
"A State at any Cost" the title which also
tells something and without much further
ado I think I will pass on to Tom Segev and I hope you all join me in
welcoming Tom Segev.
I'll try to speak loudly and hopefully
you will all hear me why I am talking
about Ben Gurion instead of talking
about Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact in
preparing this meeting tonight I had a
feeling sometimes that Netanyahu is
stealing the show not only for me but
also from Ben Gurion. In July the
election campaign was still going on
Netanyahu arranged a little celebration
for himself. On that day July 21st it was
one day longer in office than Guro going
on the longest Israeli Prime Minister
in office and Netanyahu celebrated that. Now
it is of course possible that this was
the last happy occasion in his political
career, but was very important to him
because the longer when Netanyahu was in
office the more popular the Gurion
became in Israel. It's very curious
during the last the six years I spent
writing this book I noticed that not a
day passes without Ben Gurion being
mentioned in one of these Israeli
newspapers. Four other biographies were
written while I was writing mine,
and a very popular movie was made on
Ben-Gurion based on a face-to-face interview
with him. So I imagine people
ordering a babysitter, going out looking
for parking, buying a ticket, all for an
interview with a politician. This is
curious, and I try to understand why this
is and I thought that perhaps
the longer people follow Billy's
politics the more they come to
appreciate BG's statesmanship and vision
and integrity. Now there were some good
reasons to support Netanyahu, but I don't
really know anyone who associates him
with integrity and statesmanship and vision. Although there is to be a generation of
Israelis to whom the term Prime Minister is
identical with the name Netanyahu
justice for people of my age who grew up
under Ben Gurion. The whole early
life is associated somehow with Ben Gurion. About 50 years ago I went with two
friends to Kibbutz in the Negev southern Israeli
desert to interview Ben-Gurion for the
student weekly of the Hebrew University.
It was one of the deepest
experiences of my life.
He looked the way we know him in the
pictures. Small, stocky with huge white
lines made and very very impressive.
We were he was almost 83. I felt that I was
sitting face to face with Jewish history.
We found him in a pensive mood,
preoccupied with the past. He spoke to us
mainly about achievements of Zionism.
This was the eve of Israel's 20th
anniversary. You also talk to us
about his own life in his hometown
Płońsk which is about 40 miles north of Warsaw, Poland. I
remember said men disappointed and very
very lonely. He talked to us about his
wife Paula who died just a few months
before. I should never forget how all of
a sudden he almost whispered- I wanted
another child
Paula didn't want to - we were so shocked
he's taking us into the most intimate
chambers of his life. He told us
something else which we found very
surprising at the time. He said that at
the age of 3 he knew that he would not
remain in Płońsk because even then as a
toddler of 3 he knew that he was an
ardent Zionist. You are smiling
because at the age of 23 you were not
facing Jewish history wondering how to
continue the conversation.
The date of that conversation we had with him still exists. You'll hear one of us - the most daring one -
saying "Mr. Ben-Gurion this is something you knew at the age of 3? And he gets very excited and says
"yes, yes, of course at 3 all the children we were zionist of course"  We felt at the time that it was
rather odd he would say that. Indeed at
that time he was often no longer fully
connected with reality.  But in recent
years when I worked on this biography
it occurred to me that maybe it wasn't
that absurd after all.
Okay -not three but
at the age of 13 he already founded a
Zionist club in this town trying to
promote the use of the Hebrew language. He and his friends started to speak Hebrew  with each other.
First they taught each other they taught themselves Hebrew. Reading, writing, speaking by the way writing
very nicely. We have letters from that time and they are in rich nice Hebrew. They
began to speak Hebrew with each other in hopes to convince all other Jewish people that
wanted to do the same thing. Which was
perhaps naive, romantic, a little bit
eccentric just as it was because
obviously most people of Płońsk
spoke Yiddish and Folish
some spoke Russian. They were
not Zionists. They did not at all think of moving. So Ben-Gurion is a difficult subject for biography
among other reasons because very often
it's difficult to decide how to relate
to things which he did and said. It's
difficult to distinguish between vision
and fantasy. And Ben-Gurion was a man of
both.
What's important is that classical Zionism in the sense of
Classical Zionism was
everything to him beginning at a very
early age. Was the core of his
personality, the essence of his whole
identity. He never has any doubt about Zionism. He never deviated from the central line of Zionism.
When it came to Palestine in 1906 at the
age of 20 he brought his Zionist
ideology with him. And he tended to
understand his Zionist ideology as a modern
version of the humanistic teachings of
the prophets of the Bible- including
peace and freedom and justice. The best
definition I can give you for Ben-Gurion
Zionism is a Jewish state in Palestine
as early as possible at any cost.
And more specific- as many Jews as
possible a solid Jewish majority on as
much land as possible,
not necessarily the whole country but
much land as possible, and as few Arabs
as possible. And that is something he was
able to achieve and the price was quite
high and in my book I concentrated on
the price. The political price and also
the moral price. This is a some somewhat
troubling subject I hope that we have an
opportunity to say more about it later.
And before you troubleshoot me or
something let me tell you that at the
end of 71 years of it's independence
Israel stands for one of the most
dramatic success stories of the 20th
century. If you compare international
statistics such as the UN, UNESCO the
World Health Organization, The World Bank,
and others there are usually about 170
countries on the list. And Israel usually
comes among the top sixteen. Which means that most Israelis live better lives
than most other people in the world. And
they live in a democracy. Most people of
the world do not live in democracies.
Israel is strong enough to defend itself
and it is a high-tech superpower. And all of this is based on infrastructure which Ben-Gurion
lays, and therefore you can say that Ben-Gurion's historical contribution is not
limited to the fact that he led the
struggle for the establishment of Israel,
but also for his first years as Prime
Minister and for the foundations which
he laid which made the future
development of Israel
possible to what it is today. At the same
time we are facing two very big problems
which Ben-Gurion himself also faced and
they remain without solution until today.
First of all their life in Israel is
life without peace. The second one is
the inability to agree on a common
national Israeli Jewish Zionist identity.
Ben-Gurion did not believe that it
will be possible to reach peace, and most
Israelis and most Palestinians today
share that view. And he was unable to
define the meaning of a Jewish state. He
was unable to define who is a Jew. Was
unable to define who is an Israeli. Who is a Zionist. What does Israeli
identity mean. Not that they didn't try,
he spent his whole life looking for
answers to these questions, but he
couldn't find them. And so until today
our future seems rather bleak, and work
on this book let me to the conclusion
that we are in fact living through an
historical experience which has not
failed yet but it has also not succeeded
yet. I have a grandson who would be three
years old next week, and he has not yet
told me whether he's a Zionist or not
but I think a lot about him and about
this future.
I wonder where in the world will he ever
find his happiness. But work on this book
also let me obviously to deal a lot with
questions of power and the solitude of
power. I thought a lot about the
difficulty to define who is a great
leader and Ben-Gurion offered an answer
to that question. And I was not bored even
once while working on this book
because I found myself in the company of
an amazingly complex character. In recent
years new documents will be classified
before were declassify, including
cabinet papers, and they make it possible
to reach a deeper understanding, a
tri-dimensional kind of picture of the
man who was full of contradictions and
conflicts with a very clear tendency to
move very fast and rapidly and suddenly
from deep deep depressions to almost
uncontrollable moments of euphoria and
an endless row of irrational outbursts.
And the interesting thing is that he was
aware of that mental construction and he
very often described it in his diary. The
diary by the way is an amazingly
interesting document. He started writing
his diary at the age of 14 and wrote
something almost every day until the end
of his life. And he wrote in real time
why he talked to people and some people
like I said that they only saw this
part of his head because he's writing
all the time, leading to the question
when did you have time to create the
state if you are writing all the time?
He left us millions of written words
and they make it possible to come closer
to a man who until not many years ago seemed to be carved in stone or cast in steel
standing on a high piller. So I
discovered a man who could also be
romantic and poetic nature lover.
His diaries filled with very beautiful
descriptions of labor very surprising
of nature I'm sorry. You wouldn't
expect that.
Description of sunsets in Palestine, the
Niagara Falls, Swiss Alps. Very beautiful
descriptions and and what I liked most
is that he also had a journalistic
tendency to describe things that happen
to him and deduct the right conclusions
from very concrete things that happen to
him. And I sometimes felt like they like
a television camera. I'll give you two
examples. He had a meeting in 1947 in
February of 1947 at the Dorchester Hotel
in London. February of 1947 was the
coldest February in the history of Great
Britain. He reaches the hotel with a meeting
with a leader of the Conservative
Party -
Oliver Stanley - and when he reaches hotel
the hotel is unheated. The heating is not
on and he meets Stanley in the lobby
Stanley immediately tells him don't take
off your coat
and they sit, both of them in the lobby
their coats on discussing what whatever
they discussed and Ben-Gurion understands
what does it mean that the British
Empire doesn't have enough fuel to heat
the most prestigious hotel in Europe and
the most expensive hotel in Europe. The
British Empire is obviously seeking
consequently they won't stay long in
Palestine
and the question is of course it's true
and that's a question which every
biographer constantly has to ask himself. My
test for that question is usually did he
have any reason to invent it? Ben-Gurion had no
reason to invent such a story just as
he had no reason to invent another
story that took place in a hotel in
Paris after World War Two. He sits in
Paris in his hotel, somebody
knocks on the door I guess from the
upper floor he opens the door he finds
himself facing Ho Chi Minh, he invites him in
Ho Chi Minh talks about his national
movement he talks about his national
movement. Ho Chi Minh makes a
suggestion why don't you Mr. Ben-Gurion
create a Zionist government-in-exile
with headquarters in Hanoi?
The reason that you laugh is why I
decided to leave it in. I swear to you
that there is not one Ho Chi Minh
biographer in the world whom I didn't
trouble with the question: Have you ever heard anything like that?
Nothing. But again Ben-Gurion doesn't invent he
invent he has no reason to invent such a thing
also one of the major problems writing
about Ben-Gurion is that he had
absolutely no sense of humor. So that
makes it a little bit difficult. Now some people, especially
admirers of Ben-Gurion, tend to forget
how deep and how painful some of the
controversies were which Ben-Gurion
created and I would just remind those of
you the
party that Ben-Gurion led, Matai - never received
more than 47 seats in the Knesset which
has a hundred and twenty seats. Meaning
that every time, every election at least
two or three voters did not support
Ben-Gurion.
So it was very controversial even at the
time in almost every every sphere of
life.
Some of them we may be able to discuss
tonight - Ben-Gurion and the Arabs, Ben-Gurion and the Holocaust,  Ben-Gurion
and the conflict between religious and
the secular, Ben-Gurion and women,
Ben-Gurion and God. We obviously asked him not for the first time, but for us it was
a natural thing to ask, Ben-Gurion by that
time we had already referred to him Ben-Gurion
we spent three hours with and so by
that time we just saw. So one of us,
not me, one of us asked: Ben-Gurion do you believe in God?
And if we have time I will I will I will
tell you what his answer was. So don't
run away.
When we were there, he, it was very
important to him, that we don't describe
him as the founder of the state, or the
father of the state, or something like
that
and indeed the State of Israel was
created as a result of 30 years of the
Zionist project like other national
leaders Ben-Gurion identified himself
with history and many identified history
with him. In almost every situation he
pretended to know what to do. He very
much wanted to be a leader and aspired
to everything leadership has to offer,
the fulfillment of a dream, which in his
case was also self-fulfillment,
responsibility, power, place in history
and I think that people believed him and
believed in him because they were
convinced that he believes in himself.
In the Zionist movement there was no other
man who studied as systematically and
meticulously as Ben-Gurion did the the essence of national
leadership. What is required of a leader
who seeks to reshape the historical
destiny of his people?
In 1923 Ben-Gurion visited the Soviet
Union. And when he came home he summed up
for himself in his diary the essence of
the leadership of Lenin. It is a quite
quite extraordinary sentence, one
sentence with over 200 words. I cut it a little bit for you.
The interesting thing about it is that the
terms Bolshevism and the terms communism
and also the term Zionism are not
included in in this sentence because
what he was formulating was a
theoretical model of the ideal leader.
And this is how to describe him:
a man who disdains all obstacles
faithful to his goal, who knows no
concessions no for discounts the extreme
of extremes who knows how to crawl on
his belly in order to reach his goal, a
man of iron will who does not spare
human life
and the blood of innocent children for
the sake of the revolution, he is not
afraid of rejecting today what we
require yesterday and requiring tomorrow
what he rejected today, he will not be
caught in the net of platitude or in the
trap of dogma, his sharp and clear eyes
see only the naked reality the cruel
truth and the actual power relations
burning with red flame the goal of the
great revolution. Ben-Gurion wanted to be
a Zionist Lenin, sometimes a Zionist
Churchill and I think that no one
decided no one succeeded to define his
leadership better than Ben-Gurion himself. This is what I
thought telling you is by way of
introduction. Michael, okay thank you very much.
Laura Laura (delay, fixing microphone)
okay so I think what we will do is to
expand some of the themes you explored
and in fact I didn't know what you were
going to say but the one quote I copied
from the book was the quote you just
read about the leadership but let me let
anybody here know okay now no there is
no mic it doesn't work it
so that we start with the
obvious question the question you asked
so that we start with the
obvious question the question you asked
Ben Gurion or your fellow reporter from
the Hebrew University and I think one of
the big questions in the book and his
biographies of course his relationship
to not just the Jewish people but to Jewish history, to the Bible, to religion, to God what did he answer you?
Ben-Gurion was a secular man. He ate pork
and he worked on Yom Kippur, documented.
All his life he tried to get an answer
to the question is that such a thing as God?
As a young man he thought the answer
is no. He even found some reference I
think in Yeshiel. I once
talked about this, a sentence from which he deducted that God did not choose the Jewish people.
But the Jewish people selected God from among other gods. 
So what is God? Who is God?
He had a problem with that and and I
think I'm not sure now if it is 1951 or
1953, he did a very strange thing.
He, among other very strange things
they did, but he was on an official visit to
Burma and following the official part
he stayed longer at the house of the
Burmese Ben-Gurion, uno legendary
founding father of modern Burma and he
stayed at his house to study Buddhism. He
started to study Buddhism from scratch
on. He had three Buddhist scholars who
taught him why Buddhism. Because he felt that Buddhism is a religion without God.
And that is something which he tried to
explore coming back he was convinced
that is an expert on Buddhism and
there's a whole cabinet meeting very
long
I think 28 pages or worth of the
minutes of the meeting in which he
describes what Buddhism is and then he
wrote a long article in the New York Times about Buddhism.
They obviously thought it's a nice story, Ben-Gurion
writing about Buddhism. So but then he went
on.  He had many thoughts about the nature of Judaism - about who is a Jew , who is a secular Jew, and he could never could never find an answer
to who is a Jew,  who is a secular Jew.
There's no problem describing a
religious Jew, for Ben-Gurion but who is a secular Jew.
There was a time in 1957 when a big wave
of immigrants came from Poland. Many of
them were married to non-jews, mostly men
with non-jewish women, and the question
is how to register the children of these
people. That caused the government
crisis or two government crises. Then
eventually Ben-Gurion tells the cabinet
about the guest who had visited him the
day before for Shabbat lunch, an American.
Completely 80s
and my wife is not even Jewish and my
son I don't know what he is. So Ben-Gurion
asks him, "did you have your son
circumcised?' and the man says yes and
Ben-Gurion says "Why? You are an atheist.
What for?"
and the man says " You know, its the kind of thing we do
for 2,000 years."
So Ben-Gurion was able to report to the
government that the chief correspondent
of The New York Times, Mr. Suitsburger
is Jewish but the thing about the
circumcision got him to think and
eventually he said he made a suggestion
to the government that all these
children from newcomers from from mixed
marriages the day will be circumcised
and the State of Israel will recognize
them as Jews said the religious
ministers Mr. Ben-Gurion you won't find
real you will do this for you if I don't
find them we will make we will introduce state
circumcision and we will bring them to a hospital. That's where it will be
done. The Israeli government
again these are 12 or 18 pages where
they discuss the nature of circumcision
they are all men Golda Meir is not
present and not one of them raises the
question of hey but what do we do about
girls. So I'm telling you this is a
problem which ben-gurion didn't know how
to how to solve. He was and I praise him
for that that he made a great effort to
limit this whole subject into politics.
He did not go into theological
discussions with rabbis as a rule once
he did but that was a mistake
and once he also couldn't vote himself
and in the discussion in government
official religious Minister yes but I am
a different Jew
than you so the search for different
Judaism this is something that
constantly preoccupied it and so when we
asked him "Ben-Gurion, do you believe
in God?"
he was already 83 and the older he
became, the more he tended to say yes. To
us he said "yes but I need to tell you
what it means."
Hallelujah that's what it meant. So he told
us that sometime before that he had been
invited to Sweden to play through town
called Uppsala. In Uppsala they have a very
famous scientific Institute and they
showed him a machine that can measure
the millionth part of a second. And
Ben-Gurion said they told me that it's
not so difficult they have two wheels
one goes to the right one goes to left,
you stop the wheels and a second. In
million millionths of a second still
hear him say that a millisecond. There
must be a superior power that makes that
possible for human beings to reach that
kind of scientific general genius. Can't
be without some some superior power so
he said "don't misunderstand me, I'm not
saying that God is an old man with a
long beard who sits on the throne and
rules the world, I'm saying that there is
such a thing is a supernatural super
power", and as I said he was 83 then and a
few years, I think one or two years later,
he was again asked for some reason it's
a very thing to do to ask Ben-Gurion, "do
you believe in God?" and so he just said
yes. In later years he just said yes. So
the interesting thing is about the
difficultly
to define who is a Jew. We have this
difficulty still today, but since we are
in America I will tell you that he also
had a great difficulty to define who is
a Zionist. He knew for him Zionism
is you all pack your bags and come to
live in Israel if you don't do that
you're not a Zionist. About the same time
as he said that he believes in God he
also began to say I am NOT a Zionist
anymore. Why are not a Zionist Ben-Gurion?
Because if those Jews in America are
Zionists who say that they're Zionist if this
is Zionism I'm not a Zionist. On the
other hand he knew that Israel cannot
exist without a strong Jewish community
in America. So that poses an almost
theoretical question to Zionism: what are
we interested in? That Jews should be
weak and come to live in Palestine or be
strong and stay there and help us from
the outside? Things which don't really
have an answer and again this is
something he was aware of. This is the
interesting thing that he is a very very self aware
man and and he has somewhere in his
diary a story about a conversation with
an American Jewish leader who brags. He
says wow you don't and you won't believe
what house I have outside Chicago, a
fantastic house and I called it villa
Tarek society. Ben-Gurion says this is very very nice I wish you had the fantastic house in
Israel and called it villachica.
I wonder if he knew that Theodore
Hertzel did not have his son circumcised.
He might not have known it or not cared,
but it was also very personal issue for
him because his son married a non-jewish woman and then it became a
very personal issue what about his
grandchildren. I don't know how much and
then did also something quite unusual
in 1950s where he asked over 50 rabbis and
spiritual leaders, philosophers around in
Israel and around the world, "who is a Jew?" and
of course they couldn't agree. So the key
is what you just said, "around the world."
Imagine a head of state turning to
citizens of other countries ask them
"Excuse me who am I? Who are the Jews?"  Historically this is a curiosity
it has absolutely no significant and was
basically forgotten. He turned to writers
and scholars and rabbis and other
intellectuals most of them outside of
Israel and asked them who is a Jew? He
got about 80% of all of them responded
that there is no such question because
the Jewish religion determines who is
a Jew. A Jew is somebody whose mother is Jewish and that's my answer to you Mr. Prime
Minister. And but the whole story of how
this was orchestrated is also
interesting because there were no long
negotiations whom to ask and there
were negotiations with the people. Are
you willing to receive such a
letter from the Prime Minister of Israel? Will 
you answer? So it's a whole thing
he made a book. Eventually you can 
read all the answers
but there is no solution to the
existential or to this existential
problem of Israel. Let me I mean
connect to this and you talk a little bit
about it, when you think of Israel and
you think of Israel's you know capital and
historical capital, Jerusalem, he didn't
care very much for Jerusalem. In that way
he was also like Hertzl. Maybe you can say
a little bit more about this. It took him 2 years.
Yes Ben-Gurion came to Israel as I
said in 1906 when he was 20 and he did
not visit Jerusalem before 1908. For two
years he lived in the land of his
father's, the the land of his dreams and
did not care to go to Jerusalem and when
he did he hated it for a very simple
reason. Most people in Jerusalem were
either Arabs or orthodox. The ones and
the others anti-Zionist. So that was not
the Land of Israel which he, for him the Land of Israel was the bachetva, the canary. For a
while he worked in agriculture it's not a
very long while but it was for him so
important that in later years he tended
to claim that he did that for three years. In
reality he did it for a year and a half. Nevermind, but this was this was for him the
Zionism and Jerusalem was a
a problem. I remind you that in 1937 when
the British for the first time suggested
partition of Palestine, Jerusalem would
not have been part of the Jewish state
and Ben-Gurion was for it. And of course
in 1947, the partition plan of 1947 the
one that actually led to the creation of
Israel. Left Jerusalem outside of the true state and
Zionism enthusiastically accepted
that. So Zionism had a problem with
Jerusalem. In fact for many 
years the capital of Zionism was in Tel
Aviv. That's where the politics
was, that's where the money was, that's
where those Israelis who were identified
with  Zionism were. Not in
Jerusalem. One last question about this
aspect of the relationship between him
and the State and the religion. I think
you referred indirectly to what's often
called the status quo agreements. Before
the state was founded and also right
after there were a few agreements
between Ben-Gurion as a leader of kind
of a secular party and secular state and
the religious leaders. And often it is said
he agreed to some of the concessions
especially the exemption from military
service for the ultra-orthodox because
he believed ever a marginal group they
would stay margin group and symbolically
they're important. Do you think maybe not
willingly but unwillingly and
unconsciously he that's also contributed
to a huge problem Israeli society faces
today. You have to remember that we are
not talking about the time when the
Orthodox communities in Israel believed
that the Zionist secular state is going
to persecute them and make it impossible
for them to lead their traditional
life. So everything the Orthodox do in
those days is effective. It is not a
struggle for the future character of the
state it is really in self-defense of
their way of living.
And for Ben-Gurion, as I said before, it
is a political problem. He feared very
much that this subject will lead to a
cultural war at the time when the
Israeli society did not even exist and
so they were still making the society
from people who came from, this
is a cliche which is actually true,
they came from 100 countries and spoke
70 languages and there was nothing that
Ben-Gurion feared more than cultural war.
There were also other reasons for it and
he had a very interesting very
calculated cool attitude. First of all it
is a political problem. Secondly there
are some things which the
Orthodox cannot accept. It's not
symmetric the relationship some secular
people in Israel say I don't disturb you
to go to the synagogue why do you
disturb me to open a supermarket on
Shabbat. And Ben-Gurion understand that
it doesn't always work like that.
An Orthodox man cannot accept that
his daughter will be drafted to the army.
In the best that can happen he will
leave the country but he will also go
for jail, he will die for it, he will not let
his daughter be drafted to the army. So Ben-Gurion understood that there were some things like that which you just had to.
Another principle was that the state as
a state owes certain services to the
Orthodox population and citizens with
special needs. Synagogues,
kosher food, things like that we just sold them to them. But the major thing was
that the major belief was that you can
reach compromises with the Orthodox and
the religious. It's possible to
live somehow together. These ought to be
political compromises and this is
interesting this is why this is
something which you believe which he
brought with him from Poland and I think
that he was very much influenced by the
relations between less religious and
more religious people in his town of
Płońsk. Therefore, the first such
compromise was reached in 1920 long
before Ben-Gurion was really very
prominent but very shortly after he
came. The problem was the elections
to be held for the first parliamentary
body, National Assembly or
something. Obviously the Zionist movement was
interested in a very wide participation
in the elections. The Orthodox in
Jerusalem threatened to boycott the
elections and the Orthodox in Jerusalem
were a very large part of the population.
Makes no sense to have elections if they
boycotted. The reason why they boycotted
was because they objected to women
getting the right to vote. Ben-Gurion
conducted a long four months, conducted
negotiations with leaders of the
Orthodox community. He offered this, he
offered that, he offered separate voting
polling stations for men and women
whatever. Eventually the following
compromise was reached- women can vote
they can also be elected but since
presumably Orthodox women won't
participate in the election, the vote of
every Orthodox man will be counted twice.
And that's the way it was done. It's an
historical effect and this is so
interesting because it is the first in
an endless row of similarly absurd or
less absurd compromises. This is what
really marks the 
relationship between religious and
non-religious, the Orthodox. Sometimes it
fit Ben-Gurion's political interests for
example the Orthodox cannot accept. This
is one of the things they cannot accept.
They cannot accept a state Constitution
and we don't have one because by
accepting a state constitution they
would admit that the Constitution we
already, which is the Torah, is secondary. And so this is the
ideological reason why we don't have a
constitution. Of course we also don't
have a constitution because Ben-Gurion
hated everybody who would say no
to him and so a Constitution limits the
government. He hated lawyers by the way
and so this is and this is also why
Ben-Gurion insisted that there won't be
separation between religion and 
state in Israel. We will ask you last
question before we open up. Of course a
very important question and let's keep
it short here maybe we will follow it up.
The relationship between Ben-Gurion and
the Arab Palestinian population when he
was Prime Minister. Of course was also
prime minister of a minority of
non-jewish Arab Israelis and even before
that was in the coming and there was also
a kind of disputed role he played in the
1948-49 war. Maybe you want to say a few
words about his relationship and maybe
also if it changed over time
to the Arab Palestinians. Okay the
key word in your question is before
because it all starts very very early in
1909 when Gurion at that time working as
an agricultural labor in a farm
called Sevilla in the Galilee. Arabs
attacked the farm and two of his
colleagues were killed one of them very
near proximity to him and he wrote a
letter to his father in which he said,
"The Arabs, as soon as they see how weak
we are, the Arabs are beginning to
provoke us so we need not be weak.
This is 1909. Ten years later Ben-Gurion
participated in a discussion in Jaffa
about how to shape the
relationship between Jews and Arabs in
Palestine. What's the proper relationship
to the Arabs? People make all kinds
of suggestions and Ben-Gurion says
everyone sees how difficult the
relations between Jews and Arabs are but
not everyone sees that there is no
solution to that question. There is no
solution there is an abyss and nothing
can fill that abyss. Two nations are
facing off against each other we want
Palestine to be ours as a nation the
Arabs wanted to be theirs as a nation. I
don't know what Arab would agree that
Palestine belongs to the Jews. 1919, a
hundred years ago and this was a basic
policy and security assumption that let
him go out his life during the struggle
for the creation of Israel
as Prime Minister. And what it really
meant was that it is a problem that can
be managed but it can't be solved.
This is what we say today in modern
language and Ben-gurion was really the
inventor of that formula which is today
so common, 1919. Now Ben-Gurion and 
that many stories by the way
shaping his which he
very very often repeated and told,
but how did he reach this conclusion?
He always used two basic stories just in
short life, but I tell you one of them
was a guy whom he had known as a student
at the University of Istanbul an Arab
guy and few years later the Turkish
authorities in Palestine expelled
Ben-Gurion, deported him from Palestine.
Just before he has to leave because of
his Zionist. Just before he leaves
he meets this guy by channel and he
tells him I'm leaving and this Arab
guys of him. This Arab friend 
tells him as your friend I am very sorry
for you, as an Arab I'm very very happy.
This is something which Ben-Gurion
immediately afterwards wrote to his to
his father. A thousand times he repeated
that story but it is something and there
was also a conversation with Musa Alami
who was a prominent palestinian
lawyer in
Palestine. Ben-Gurion tried to, this is
later, Ben-Gurion tried to convince him
that Zionism is good for everybody.
Zionism will develop the country and
Jews and Arabs alike will profit from it
and Musa Alami told him as far as I am
concerned this country can be desolate
for hundred years if it, if it's only to
be us who develop it and not you. A
thousand times Ben-Gurion repeated that
story episode. Now Ben-Gurion and 
1948 is a big subject, as you know
Israel won the war of independence, 1948.
Ben-Gurion was the commander-in-chief of
Israel's war of independence as we call it.
Nakba as the Arabs call it and
the price was, for that war, was quite
high about 6,000 Israelis 1% of the
entire population was killed. One of them
by the way was my father and when the
war ended very few of the 700,000 Arabs
who lived here before were left in Israel.
Remained in Israel, their towns and
villages remained empty. Now the Arabs
left, the Arabs escaped, the Arabs were
forced to escape, and the Arabs were
driven out. In my book I used all
these terms purposefully because they
are all true. Not what happened in one
place not everything that happened
in one place happened the same way
everywhere else and not what happened in
one point in time happened the same way
in other. So it's a kind of
complicated story. It's a story in debate
as you know it is still debated
it's in the center of the 
Arab-Israeli conflict. There is however
one thing which is not in debate and
that is that Israel did not let them
come back. They are very clear and open
decisions about that. In that sense
Israel bears at least part of the
responsibility for the perpetuation of
the problem and I regret that we have
not yet recognized our part in the
Palestinian tragedy. Okay we will start
the conversation with you. As always, if
there are any students who have a
question I would like to start with them.
Yes Josh introduce yourself and your
role at the center. Okay hi I'm Josh I'm
a sophomore here at the SIS and my
role at the center would be as a co
editor-in-chief of student Israelite
which is a student-run blog about all
things Israel. So first of all thank you
for coming to speak my question would be
you spoke early on about Ben-Gurion's- I don't
know if admiration is the right word- of
Lennon's leadership and his commitment
to values and his iron will when it came
to those values. We all know
that he accepted a partition plan in 47
that was not fully the land that maybe
he was expecting and you also mentioned
he wanted to maximize land in the
potential state. So could you speak to
compromises that Ben-Gurion did make
when the time came?
Ben-Gurion read the full text of
the so-called peel plan, the plan which
the British suggest the 1940s 37 to
divide the country partition the country
in two states. He read it one day in the
morning and was not happy with it and
the same evening he read it again and
came across the fact that the British
were actually suggesting to move out
the Palestinian population, the Arab
population from the section which was
designated to the Jewish state. In other
words the Jews will receive part of
the land but it will be basically empty
from Arabs and from that point on
that is something which Ben-Gurion made
me were very enthusiastic. In his diary
he writes the words "forced transfer"
"transfer the force" and underlines it. From
that point on Ben-Gurion was openly
identified with the idea of a population
transfer of moving the Arabs out of that
part of Palestine which would eventually be an
independent Jewish state. Not necessarily
by force but we contemplate all kinds of
of ideas but this is a major
idea that came to him concerning the
the future of the relations. The Arabs
must be gone from that part of the
language will be ours. Based maybe also
in other accepts like India and Pakistan.
Not so much as in Turkey Greece.
This is something which he constantly
repeats. He also believed in perhaps buy
some Arab consent for money
a lot of money from Iraq for example
moving the Arabs out of Iraq. But the
country has to be, there has to be a very
solid Jewish majority and maximum small
Jewish minority can remain. 
This is 1937 and so if he in 1919
determined that part of the price for an
independent state will be life without
peace, in 1937 he is actually talking
about a Palestinian tragedy which he
felt would be inevitable. He very clearly
determined that in 1948 Israel will not
occupy the West Bank not occupy Gaza
and not occupy East Jerusalem. This is
somehow connected to his. He said okay so
we won't have the the Wailing Wall for a
while and because these territories
were by now populated by hundreds and
thousands of refugees. So we've just
gotten rid of them, makes no sense to re-occupy. While he was Prime Minister
he repeatedly discussed and 
thought of maybe considered the
occupation of the West Bank and decided
against it and only for a very short
period of time Israel occupied Gaza and
immediately gave it back during the
Sinai campaign of 56 and immediately. At the eve of the six-day war
he was against Israel opening war
against Egypt for two reasons. A: he
thought the Israeli army is not
ready.
He was very much afraid that the
Egyptians may bomb Tel Aviv
and the atomic reactor in Dimona. But he
also felt that this might lead to the
occupation of the West Bank and this is
something which so for Ben-gurion when
you say land or part of the land empty
or all of the land populated with Arabs
he prefers this is a very very clear thing
and this is what happened in in 67 is a
clear deviation from Ben-Gurion's idea.
Ben-Gurion was already quite old at that
time. At the beginning he was very
strongly advocated compromise with
Jordan and Egypt. His population was if I
have to choose between large Israel
without peace or small Israel with peace
I prefer small Israel with peace. He told
us this very same sentence and we were
there and not for the first time we
thought that we hear it for the first
time we heard it for the first time but he had said it before. And I was so this was
almost the first thing I did as a
journalist so I was so little experience
that it didn't occur to me to ask him,
"Mr. Ben-Gurion and what about Jerusalem?"
We didn't ask that I didn't ask that.
So to the present time I'd I would say
this is the biggest mistake I did this
in in over 50 years of journalism. Okay
and he would have said, no there's
nothing to talk about we don't talk
about Jerusalem, Jerusalem is ours so
peace peace yes, but not Jerusalem and he
then really became the major advocate of
annexing Jerusalem and
and populating Jerusalem with truth. This
is also interesting again I'm telling
you this as a biographer. There is a
personal aspect here. Ben-Gurion had to
defend himself as Prime Minister -to
defend himself constantly- for not having
taken the old city in 48. Especially
Begin constantly attacked him. "You gave
it to the Arabs, Jerusalem the Holy." And
what happened now is that his biggest
political enemy, Levi Eshkol,
is the one who didn't take Jerusalem. So
this is difficult for a
person to live with and so he made
himself the big advocate of the
annexation, the unification of
Jerusalem. One thing which 
he said not in our conversation but
later was that Israel should immediately
tear down the walls of the old city and
when asked. At the beginning everybody
thought that this is just one of those
things which he said sometimes. He
could be very you know spontaneous if you
want or he just said some things without
thinking them through, let's say like
this. So, everybody thought this is
one of those those things but now he
repeated it in writing. He thought that
the right thing to do was to tear down
the walls of the old city. They have
absolutely no historical value. They have
no historical - the Tower of David as we
call it, is really a Muslim mineret.
Be gone with it and make Jerusalem one town.  It was good he wasn't in power
anymore!  He was not in power there anymore.  Actually Eshkol was a very
decent and and responsible and
intelligent man but it was very
difficult to to be Prime Minister after
after Ben-Gurion. In fact I think that
one reason why Eshkol and President
Johnson went on so well was because they
were two people who had the big
shadow over their heads and so I
think that may have been a reason. Let's take a few more
questions I'll try to be shorter now.
I should say we have to leave here unfortunately at 7:30 so well collect a few
questions.
 
So Ben-Gurion was a big driving factor. Do you want to introduce yourself? I'm Alon Berger, I'm a sophomore.
Ben-Gurion was a big proponent of the whole alliance  of the periphery
and Israel's covert of diplomatic relations.
What would you say his biggest success
in this regard is? Sorry I didn't
understand what you said the repeat that
he has a big what? The Alliance of the
periphery and reaching out and making
diplomatic relations covertly was
something that Ben-Gurion was a big
driving factor behind so what do you
think his biggest success diplomatically
in this regard is and what would be a
relationship or an overture that he made
that wasn't recorded that that he would
have wanted to have had happen?
I think that Ben-Gurion's most important diplomatic
achievement was the relationship with
Germany
and this is the other thing which I
praised him for and some of my friends
are angry with me for praising his
relationship with the with the Orthodox
and the other subject of course
which is very very controversial 
still to today.
It's connected with with Ben-Gurion
in the Holocaust it's all this all very
very complicated subject. But Ben-Gurion
realized that the future for Israel lies
in the Western bloc and that was
something in dispute in Israeli politics
at the time it was some very strong
political elements and Israel wanted
Israel to belong to the communist
bloc. And we know what happened to
countries who chose or forced to live
under Stalin and then going on said no
we've long to America, also because of
the Jewish community. His
relationship with Germany was 
part of the decision - that we are not neutral.
Small countries could not remain
neutral after the outbreak of the Korean War.
He had a moral explanation for what
he said bad enough that the
Germans took our our people away they
don't they don't also have to take
our money away, they they should pay. It
was important economically for
Israel to have the German reparations
and it is connected with Ben-Gurion
basic attitude to the Holocaust in
the sense that for Ben-Gurion the
Holocaust was in was first and foremost
not a crime against humanity and not a
crime against Jewish people, but the
crime against the State of Israel.
Because the Germans killed those people
to whom Ben-Gurion expected to come
to the Land of Israel and build a modern
Jewish state. And that did not happen and
as a result of that unwillingly but
without any other alternative the
Zionist movement discovered the Jews
living in the Arab world before that
nobody paid any attention to them they
were mostly if at all some
anthropological interests. Herzl didn't even
know that there exist. But and this is
one of the reasons why basically
Ben-Gurion was quite disappointed these
are not the people with whom he felt
that you can build a modern state. And
space become self is an interesting this
by the way and and and and the Holocaust
survivors and he felt that Holocaust
survivors are rightfully they have
broken people what what what can I do
with them let's and then teachers why
don't you go here in the middle yeah yes
hi Laura thank you I work in the DC area
my question is what do you think
David Ben-Gurion would think of Israeli
society today and the relationship
between the secular and the religious,
the proportion of secular and religious,
the relationship between Ashkenazi
Sparty, what would you think he would
think of the progress or regress of
Israeli society?      I hate that question.
I don't know what he would say I know
that in America I don't know if it's
still still on but there was a time when
Americans like if history at the history
department. I don't know but I think that
a) Israel today really represents a great
deal of Ben-Gurion's dream. We still
have the same problems which he couldn't
solve but it definitely represents a
great deal of his dream. In that sense, I
can answer your new question
and I also think that historically we
are continuing the process which the
Zionist movement started in the 1920s
and the 1930s. It is the same Zionist
project and in that sense I can also say
that I think that Netanyahu in many
respects follows in the footsteps of
Ben-Gurion and I mean it's seriously not
cynically.
I really think that it does
including a great deal of pragmatic
realism every time the people
in Gaza attack Israel some of the
Netanyahu's cabinet ministers demand
that we occupy Gaza and for the last 13
years or so we have not
Netanyahu I think does follow in the
footsteps of Ben-Gurion in many
respects. Hi working yeah, Idina Friedman,
George Mason. Also a follow up and away
on that so from my research and from
reading some of your previous books the
discourse that Ben-Gurion employed Visa
Visa or about the Jews from Arab
countries is very I found it to be in
many in most important ways similar to
the discourse he employed against
Palestinian Arabs or Arabs in general
and to discuss that the state employees
today visa vie Arabs or about Arabs so
so and that has to do with him at no
centric or euro centric or whatever else.
Do you see any parallels? ?No I don't
think that you can compare Ben-Gurion's attitude to the Arabs to the attitude
of he had to do Jews from Arab country.
He did develop any story of philosophical
view which not many people know and that
just as Jews in Europe internalized
some of the European culture and
therefore they are more useful for the
purposes of Zionism in the same way Jews
in Arab countries internalized some of
the primitive ways of life and ideas and
values of the oriental world. This is
something which he did but he did not
compare Jews from our countries to the
Arabs. The Arabs forward to Ben-Gurion
were first and foremost the enemy. There
is a cabinet meeting where he says "an
Arab is first of all an Arab and if you
think that he will ever be a loyal
citizen you understand nothing about
human nature" so it was a national
conflict here. The Jews from Arab
countries
in very much, especially in terms of
security because he got reports that
they are bad soldiers, that they commit
more... they don't obey they, commit
more crimes than than others, and he
felt that Jews from Arab countries are
not the ones who are equipped bring the
abilities which he needed for a modern state for state building. He
was aware of some similarities between
Arabs and Jews from our countries
there's one quite astonishing moment
when in a guy in a cabinet meeting,
he says that there is a danger that an
Arab terrorist will enter a cinema and
leave a bomb and people will let him in
because they think that he's and a Jew
from Iraq and this is years and decades
before such a thing ever happened anywhere.
The terrorists will leave a bomb
somewhere. So we did have these feelings
but there is a tendency among some
Israelis to describe Ben-Gurion's
attitude towards Jews from Arab
countries as racism and I've concluded
that this is not an accurate
description of him because as I
understand racism, racism requires hatred.
Ben Gurion did not hate the Jews from our
lands. He thought that they are not
helpful to what we had in mind to
fulfill the original dream he had but
there is no hatred of them. One last
question, okay we'll
take both, for student Madison
right did I see your hand up and then
professors Zev. (Student)-Hi, as the professor
already said my name is Madison, I'm a
junior in the history department. My
question is that you talked a little bit
about his moral beliefs later on in life,
did he have any moral regrets for the
Zionism that he started and the
catapulting of the different wars that
it's also started as well and those
deaths that came from it and as you said
the death of your father, did he have any
regrets of starting those things and those
events?    He had, no, he was not a post
Zionist, no he had no regrets about
about his original ideology. As I said
before it really was the essence of his
whole identity and that never changed.
What did bother him very much and I find
this extremely interesting but I don't
want to sum it up because it's really
important that you really if you are
interested you read it the way he said
it and the way he thought. He had lots
and lots of thoughts about the tragedy
of the Palestinians, like he would deny
to himself that it ever happened,
like he would on the other hand make a
point of going to the empty villages to
make sure that they are empty. He also
saw crowds of refugees leaving places
like Haifa. He wanted to see on the
other hand he says well if they needed
justification for it if he looked for
all kinds of arguments to justify to
himself it was aware. For example at
one point says "the fact that they left
means that they are not as deeply
connected to the Land of Israel as the
Jews who stayed", which by the way is not
true because tens of thousands of Jews
had to leave their homes.
Whole settlements were evacuated because
when they're shooting people go so it's
very but it's interesting how he how he
how this bothered him constantly. The
numbers bothered him, by the way used
the higher numbers just a compromise
there's a controversy was it five
hundred thousand or seven hundred
thousand, he said 750, somewhere, and but
this is something that constantly
bothered him and there's one point which
I find particularly revealing in a
cabinet meeting where he suddenly talks
to the refugees as if they are there in
the cabinet meeting. He says "you lost the
war you are gone" talking to them.
Why do you need that, why do you
constantly have to have to find
justifications for obviously very tragic
thing? Which comes back to him all
the time so I think this is this is
quite quite interesting as it to Ben
Gurion as a person.
Let's get last question.     I'm Guy Zev, I'm a
professor here at SIS. My question you
concerns domestic Israeli politics and
today in the era of Netanyahu, the vast
majority of Israelis self-identified as
right-wing. You might say that this has
been kind of thing the trend for many
many years. There's been a de-legitimization against the left for under
Netanyahu but he's not the only one
who's done that
and so the left today is very
marginalized. Back in the days of
Ben Gurion there was, one might argue at
delegitimization against the right or
against the revisionist Zionist right
and I'd be interested in kind of
comparison maybe between Ben Gurion and
his successor that you mentioned earlier,
Eshkol, in terms of how they dealt with
political rivals because they had a
dramatically different style and and I'm
specifically interested in whether Eshkol
openness to the right also helped
in some ways to legitimize what up until
then wasn't seen as acceptable among the
mainstream so I'd be interested in your
take on that.   So this is the kind of
question to open evening with, not to
end an evening with but first of all
about today the left in Israel
practically doesn't exist anymore and
what they accuse each other of
being leftist
but they are not really left and it's
interesting historically to try and
analyze why did that happen
it happened a because at one point
Israel gave up its social democratic
social and economic policy and it worked.
The capitalist system which we have
worked there never before did so many
Israelis feel economically
comfortable as they feel under Netanyahu.
We have hardly no inflation no
unemployment; it works. Secondly there is
no chance for peace with the Arabs so you can talk peace up till
tomorrow morning as the leftist but it
doesn't lead anyways and so what we have
today is a kind of what what first and
then standstill between between two
major parties who are not that different
from each other. The code and the
blue white party they are not so
different from each other they are
central right.
Very much in accordance with what also
happens in in Europe. Many democracies
are becoming right-wing and in Israel
has become increasingly right-wing and a
large number of voters for blue whites
are our right wing and what happens
today in Israel is really very much a
personal problem. The problem is
called Netanyahu. If he were wasn't there
or if he for some reason says ok I am
resigning you have a government within
five minutes so that's a real personal
problem and it's very interesting for people who are interested in the
weaknesses of democracy this is the
classical thing where democracy doesn't
have an answer. It's the same figures so
we don't know how to how to form a
government and I don't know what what
will happen it's really about very small
number of of candidates. Each one needs
about two or three or four. In former
days you could buy them like it with
this you would say ok you will be a vice
minister of something and get a Volvo
with the driver
but for some reason until now this
hasn't happen maybe the price is higher
today than it used to be doesn't go with
a Volvo anymore but the story Eshkol is
really really interesting because he had
the courage to introduce a very very
different policy from that of Ben Gurion
in style. Not in again not ideologically
but Menachem Begin by the way Begin
and Ben Gurion used to compare each
other to Hitler.
All the time in writing this is one
letter of Ben Gurion where you really
think this this he completely lost
his mind where he makes the argument
that Begin is is another Hitler but
for Eshkol talks with everybody, looks
for compromises and and does several
things which Ben Gurion, for no
rational reason refused to do in terms
of relationship with with the with the
opposition I just, Eshkol would never compare
anybody to Hitler so it's very much a
matter of of mentality, of different
style. Eshkol believed in in a
different different way of politics much
healthier by the way and it took really
the the hour of almost destruction
almost a second Holocaust for Ben Gurion
to talk with Begin and Begin comes
to him at the eve of the six-day war and
asks him to return to to government also
difficult for Begin because Begin to
go to Ben Gurion but this really needed
Eshkol. I think that the way Eshkol
dealt with the opposition is the proper
democratic way to deal with the
opposition as they say in England His
Majesty's loyal opposition. Okay so this
is very much as a matter of of style and
more democracy. Ben Gurion was not a
democratic leader so that's the no he
was committed to basic values of
liberalism and
and the American system of government
and British system of government but as
long as he feels that it fits the
purposes of what the needs of the
country. If it doesn't then it takes a
whole population of Israeli
Arabs and for 20 years they lived under
under military restrictions or
completely arbitrary and and and corrupt
system to prevent freedom of movement -
Israeli Arabs why because he thinks that
the Arabs is an enemy including Israeli Arabs.
So limited everything is the state comes
first to everything in in Ben Gurion and
I think that that was not the case with
with Eshkol and it's interesting how
completely, almost madly Ben Gurion hated
Eshkol at the end. Again just one one
concluding sentence as a biographer it's
very tragic but some people live too
long and Ben Gurion lived ten years too
long. The last 10 years of Ben Gurion, a
very very sad and tragic and tarnish 
his historical reputation.
Well, it's a sad ending, but it's an ending.
