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David Ben-Gurion

Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel (1886–1973)

David Ben-Gurion (16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the first Prime Minister of Israel. He was an active Zionist campaigner before the establishment of the Jewish state, and played an instrumental role in Israel when the British Mandate in Palestine ended. He carried Israel through the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and led the country in its first years of existence, not leaving office for the last time until 1963.

With us, anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.

Quotes

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We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland...
 
Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question.
 
Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them.
 
There is enough room in the country for ourselves and the Arabs.
 
The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
 
We consider that the United Nations' ideal is a Jewish ideal.
 
To maintain the status quo will not do. We have set up a dynamic State, bent upon creation and reform, building and expansion.
 
We need to anticipate the character of the times, discern embryonic forms emergent or renewed, and clear the path for circumstantial change.
 
We kept to our dedication and our missions. By these will the State be judged, by the moral character it imparts to its citizens, by the human values determining its inner and outward relations, and by its fidelity, in thought and act, to the supreme behest: "and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is crystallized the eternal law of Judaism, and all the written ethics in the world can say no more.
 
Unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.
 
The most dangerous enemy to Israel’s security is the intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security.
 
If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert.

1917–1939

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  • The agricultural community that the Arabs found in Eretz Israel in the 7th century was none other than the Hebrew farmers that remained on their land despite all the persecution and oppression of the Roman and Byzantine emperors.
    • “Leverur Motsa Ha’Falahim,” Luach Achiezer, New York, 1917, pp. 118-27, reprinted in Anachnu U’Shcheneinu (Tel Aviv: Davar. 1931), pp. 13-25
  • The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab conquerors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement
    • Eretz Israel in the Past and Present (Yiddish, New York, 1918)
    • A fellah or fellahin in Arabic means a "ploughman" or "tiller".
  • The greater majority and main structures of the Muslim falahin in western Eretz Israel present to us one racial strand and a whole ethnic unit, and there is no doubt that much Jewish blood flows in their veins — the blood of those Jewish farmers, “lay persons,” who chose in the travesty of times to abandon their faith in order to remain on their land.
    • “Leverur Motsa Ha’Falahim,” Luach Achiezer, New York, 1917, pp. 118-27, reprinted in Anachnu U’Shcheneinu (Tel Aviv: Davar. 1931), pp. 13-25
  • Everybody sees a difficulty in the question of relations between Arabs and Jews. But not everybody sees that there is no solution to this question. No solution! There is a gulf, and nothing can bridge it... We, as a nation, want this country to be ours; the Arabs, as a nation, want this country to be theirs.
    • Written statement (June 1919), as quoted in Time magazine (24 July 2006)
  • Under no circumstances must we touch land belonging to fellahs or worked by them. Only if a fellah leaves his place of settlement, should we offer to buy his land, at an appropriate price.
    • Written statement (1920), as quoted in Teveth, Shabtai (1985), Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs: From Peace to War, Oxford University Press .
  • The acceptance of partition does not commit us to renounce Transjordan: one does not demand from anybody to give up his vision. We shall accept a state in the boundaries fixed today, but the boundaries of Zionist aspirations are the concern of the Jewish people and no external factor will be able to limit them.
    • Speech in 1937, accepting a British proposal for partition of Palestine which created a potential Jewish majority state, as quoted in New Outlook (April 1977)
  • In our political argument abroad, we minimize Arab opposition to us. But let us not ignore the truth among ourselves. I insist on the truth, not out of respect for scientific but political realities. The acknowledgement of this truth leads to inevitable and serious conclusions regarding our work in Palestine... let us not build on the hope the terrorist gangs will get tired. If some get tired, others will replace them.
    A people which fights against the usurpation of its land will not tire so easily... it is easier for them to continue the war and not get tired than it is for us... The Palestinian Arabs are not alone. The Syrians are coming to help. From our point of view, they are strangers; in the point of law they are foreigners; but to the Arabs, they are not foreigners at all ... The centre of the war is in Palestine, but its dimensions are much wider. When we say that the Arabs are the aggressors and we defend ourselves — this is only half the truth. As regards our security and life we defend ourselves and our moral and physical position is not bad. We can face the gangs... and were we allowed to mobilize all our forces we would have no doubts about the outcome... But the fighting is only one aspect of the conflict which is in its essence a political one. And politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves. Militarily, it is we who are on the defensive who have the upper hand ... but in the political sphere they are superior. The land, the villages, the mountains, the roads are in their hands. The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country, while we are still outside. They defend bases which are theirs, which is easier than conquering new bases... let us not think that the terror is a result of Hitler's or Mussolini's propaganda — this helps but the source of opposition is there among the Arabs.
    • Address at the Mapai Political Committee (7 June 1938) as quoted in Flapan, Simha, Zionism and the Palestinians .
  • Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us.
    • "On three fronts" (3 August 1938) as quoted in Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, New York: Philosophical Library, 1954, p. 91 .
  • From Jewish terrorism against Arabs it is a short step to Jewish terrorism against Jews.
    • "On three fronts" (3 August 1938) as quoted in Rebirth and Destiny of Israel, New York: Philosophical Library, 1954, p. 91 .
  • If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.
    • Address at the Mapai's Central Committee (December 1938) as quoted in Shabtai, Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886-1948 .
  • We must support the army as though there were no White Paper, and fight the White Paper as though there were no war.
    • Statement (12 September 1939), quoted in Shabtai Teveth, p. 717 (1987), Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground, 1886–1948 .
    • Variants:
    • Fight the war as if there was no White Paper, and the White Paper as if there was no war.
      • As quoted in A History of Palestine from 135 A.D. to Modern Times (1949) by James William Parkes, p. 342
    • "We shall fight the War as if there was no White Paper, and the White Paper, as if there was no War."
      • As quoted in Pioneer (1968) by Deborah Dayan, p. 83

1948–1970

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  • We accepted the UN resolution, but the Arabs did not. They are preparing to make war on us. If we defeat them and capture western Galilee or territory on both sides of the road to Jerusalem, these areas will become part of the state. Why should we obligate ourselves to accept boundaries that in any case the Arabs don't accept?
  • We extend the hand of peace and good-neighborliness to all the States around us and to their people, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
    • Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on (14 May 1948)
  • Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent.
    • Israel's Proclamation of Independence, read on (14 May 1948)
  • Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive.
    • Advice reportedly given by Ben-Gurion to Ariel Sharon after the Qibya massacre in 1953. Quoted by Sharon in the documentary The 50 Years War : Israel & The Arabs (1999).
  • I have just come back from the internment camps of Europe where I looked on the survivors of the Nazi charnel houses. I was in Dachau and Belsen. I saw chambers where hundreds of Jews were throttled every day. They were brought naked, as if to bathe, and the Nazis would peer through peepholes and watch them writhing in their death agonies.
  • Our code must be framed to speed the absorption of immigrants into our economy, culture and society; to fuse the returning tribes into a homogeneous national and cultural unit; to forward our physical and moral healing and the cleansing of our lives from the trivia and dross which gathered upon us in dependence and exile. To maintain the status quo will not do. We have set up a dynamic State, bent upon creation and reform, building and expansion. Laws which lag behind development, merely a digest of experience and the lessons of the past, are useless to us. We need to anticipate the character of the times, discern embryonic forms emergent or renewed, and clear the path for circumstantial change.
    • Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (1954), p. 419; a portion of this paragraph has sometimes been misquoted as: "To maintain the status quo will not do. We have to set up a dynamic state bent upon expansion."
  • We have rebelled against all controls and religions, all laws and judgments which the mighty sought to foist upon us. We kept to our dedication and our missions. By these will the State be judged, by the moral character it imparts to its citizens, by the human values determining its inner and outward relations, and by its fidelity, in thought and act, to the supreme behest: "and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is crystallized the eternal law of Judaism, and all the written ethics in the world can say no more. The State will be worthy of its name only if its systems, social and economic, political and legal, are based upon these imperishable words. They are more than a formal precept which can be construed as passive or negative: not to deprive, not to rob, not to oppress, not to hurt.
    • Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (1954), p. 419.
  • With us, anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.
    • Attributed to Ben-Gurion in Israel : Years of Crisis Years of Hope (1973) by Roman Frister, p. 45
      • Variant: In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles. (Interview on CBS, (5 October 1956)[not in citation given])
  • We shall be a free and self-sufficing nation, honouring Arab rights in an accord of equality, and living in peace with neighbour countries.
    • page 36 of Israel: Opposing Viewpoints (1994) by Charles P. Cozic
  • In Jerusalem, the United Nations (a truly United Nations) will build a Shrine of the Prophets to serve the federated union of all continents; this will be the seat of the Supreme Court of Mankind, to settle all controversies among the federated continents, as prophesied by Isaiah.
  • I was in Dachau and Belsen. I saw chambers where hundreds of Jews were put to death every day. ... I saw the gallows in Belsen where Jews were hanged each Jewish holy day, while the rest were paraded to witness the ghastly punishments of men who had perhaps come a few minutes late to their daily grind. ... It is beyond mortal power to bring back to life six million who were burned, asphyxiated and buried alive by the Nazis. But our six million brothers and sisters who went to their deaths have bequeathed us a sacred injunction: to prevent such a disaster overtaking the Jewish peoples in the future and to do so by the Jewish people being an independent people in its own land, capable of resisting any foe or enemy by its own strength.
    • Letter to an unnamed American friend, as quoted in David Ben-Gurion, in His Own Words (1969) edited by Amram M. Ducovny, p. 57 - 60; similar remarks appeared in an address at Hebrew University (28 November 1945)
  • We will make a great and awful mistake if we fail to settle Hebron, neighbor and predecessor of Jerusalem, with a large Jewish settlement, constantly growing and expanding, very soon. This will also be a blessing to the Arab neighbors. Hebron is worthy to be Jerusalem's sister.
  • For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk [Ben-Gurion's hometown] was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant.
    • Memoirs (1970), p. 36.

Undated

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  • "The debate has not been for or against the indivisibility of Eretz Israel. No Zionist can forgo the smallest portion of Eretz Israel. The Debate was over which of two routes would lead quicker to the common goal.
    • As quoted in Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (Updated Edition) (South End Press Classics Series) .
  • A partial Jewish State is not the end, but only the beginning. … I am certain that we well not be prevented from settling in the other parts of the country, either by mutual agreements with our Arab neighbors or by some other means. . . [If the Arabs refuse] we shall have to speak to them in another language. But we shall only have another language if we have a state.
    • As quoted in Noam Chomsky, Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians (Updated Edition) (South End Press Classics Series) .
  • What matters is not what the goyim say, but what the Jews do.
    • An "oft-repeated credo" according to the "Windsor Star - Dec 3, 1973 and repeated in various newspapers (with minor variations) including the Jerusalem post (May 22,2009) "It doesn't matter what the goyim say, but what the Jews do."
  • The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.
    • As quoted in Ben-Gurion and the Palestinian Arabs : From Peace to War (1985) by Shabtai Teveth, p. 66
  • Regarding the Galilee, Mr. [Moshe] Sharett already told you that about 100,000 Arabs still now live in the pocket of Galilee. Let us assume that a war breaks out. Then we will be able to cleanse the entire area of Central Galilee, including all its refugees, in one stroke. In this context let me mention some mediators who offered to give us the Galilee without war. What they meant was the populated Galilee. They didn't offer us the empty Galilee, which we could have only by means of a war. Therefore if a war is extended to cover the whole of Palestine, our greatest gain will be the Galilee. It is because without any special military effort which might imperil other fronts, only by using the troops already assigned for the task, we could accomplish our aim of cleansing the Galilee.
  • Um-Shmoom.
    • Transliteration of Hebrew statement meaning "The UN—Blah!", quoted in Israel : From War to Peace?: The First Hundred Years (2000) by Efraim Karsh, p. 40
  • The most dangerous enemy to Israel's security is the intellectual inertia of those who are responsible for security.
    • Quoted in Supreme Command : Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (2002) by Eliot A. Cohen, p. 172
  • If an expert says it can't be done, get another expert.
    • As quoted in Words from the Wise : Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said (2007) by Rosemarie Jarski, p. 170


Disputed

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  • Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.
    • Attributed to Ben-Gurion in A Call to Action : The Handbook to Unite and Ignite America's Betrayed and Imperiled Public (2004) by A. T. Theodore, p. 6, but earlier published as a saying of unknown authorship in Uncommon Sense : The World's Fullest Compendium of Wisdom (1987) by Joseph Telushkin, p. 204



Misattributed

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  • I fight, therefore I exist.
    • No clear citations of this to Ben-Gurion have been located. A very early variant of this idea (which plays upon the statement of René Descartes "Cogito ergo sum" — "I think, therefore I exist") is found in Die Weimarer Reichsverfassung (1922) by Leo Wittmayer, p. 255, a work about the Weimar Constitution, where Wittmayer speaks against the attitude, while stating it in Latin: "bello ergo sum".
  • In our state there will be non-Jews as well — and all of them will be equal citizens; equal in everything without any exception; that is: the state will be their state as well. ...The attitude of the Jewish State to its Arab citizens will be an important factor—though not the only one—in building good neighbourly relations with the Arab States. If the Arab citizen will feel at home in our state, and if his status will not be the least different from that of the Jew, and perhaps better than the status of the Arab in an Arab state, and if the state will help him in a truthful and dedicated way to reach the economic, social, and cultural level of the Jewish community, then Arab distrust will accordingly subside and a bridge to a Semitic, Jewish-Arab alliance, will be built...
    • Ba-Ma'Araha Vol IV, Part 2, pp. 260, 265, quoted in Fabricating Israeli History, Efraim Karsh, p.67 (1947)

Quotes about Ben-Gurion

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  • Statements attributed to your Government to the effect that Israel does not intend to withdraw from Egyptian territory, as requested by the United Nations, have been called to my attention. I must say frankly, Mr. Prime Minister, that the United States views these reports, if true, with deep concern. Any such decision by the Government of Israel would seriously undermine the urgent efforts being made by the United Nations to restore peace in the Middle East, and could not but bring about the condemnation of Israel as a violator of the principles as well as the directives of the United Nations.
  • When we spoke together in May 1961 you said that we might make whatever use we wished of the information resulting from the first visit of American scientists to Dimona and that you would agree to further visits by neutrals as well. I had assumed from Mrs. Meir's comment that there would be no problem between us on this.
    We are concerned with the disturbing effects on world stability which would accompany the development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel. I cannot imagine that the Arabs would refrain from turning to the Soviet Union for assistance if Israel were to develop a nuclear weapons capability—with all the consequences this would hold. But the problem is much larger than its impact on the Middle East. Development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel would almost certainly lead other larger countries, that have so far refrained from such development, to feel that they must follow suit.
    I can well appreciate your concern for developments in the UAR. But I see no present or imminent nuclear threat to Israel from there. I am assured that our intelligence on this question is good and that the Egyptians do not presently have any installation comparable to Dimona, nor any facilities potentially capable of nuclear weapons production. But, of course, if you have information that would support a contrary conclusion, I should like to receive it from you through Ambassador Barbour. We have the capacity to check it.
  • After 1905 thousands of Bundists and other revolutionaries (from socialist-Zionists to Bolsheviks) made their way to New York and infused the existing Jewish labor movement with new energy and ideas. Party emissaries came to raise money or seek refuge during difficult times. Visiting dignitaries such as "the grandmother of the Russian revolution," Katerina Breshko-Breshkovskaia, and Israel's future prime minister David Ben-Gurion found warm welcomes from New York's immigrant Jews...
    • Tony Michels A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York (2005)
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