Ben-Gurion: A Political Life
- ISBN-10
- 0307906892
- ISBN-13
- 9780307906892
- Series
- Ben-Gurion
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 224
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-10-25
- Publisher
- Schocken
- Authors
- Shimon Peres, David Landau
Description
Part of the Jewish Encounter series Israel’s current president gives us a dramatic and revelatory biography of Israel’s founding father and first prime minister. Shimon Peres was in his early twenties when he first met David Ben-Gurion. Although the state that Ben-Gurion would lead through war and peace had not yet declared its precarious independence, the “Old Man,” as he was called even then, was already a mythic figure. Peres, who came of age in the cabinets of Ben-Gurion, is uniquely placed to evoke this figure of stirring contradictions—a prophetic visionary and a canny pragmatist who early grasped the necessity of compromise for national survival. Ben-Gurion supported the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, though it meant surrendering a two-thousand-year-old dream of Jewish settlement in the entire land of Israel. He granted the Orthodox their first exemptions from military service despite his own deep secular commitments, and he reached out to Germany in the aftermath of the Holocaust, knowing that Israel would need as many strong alliances as possible within the European community. A protégé of Ben-Gurion and himself a legendary figure on the international political stage, Shimon Peres brings to his account of Ben-Gurion’s life and towering achievements the profound insight of a statesman who shares Ben-Gurion’s dream of a modern, democratic Jewish nation-state that lives in peace and security alongside its Arab neighbors. In Ben-Gurion, Peres sees a neglected model of leadership that Israel and the world desperately need in the twenty-first century.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2016-05-12
- 283 pages
- Paperback
- Rowman & Littlefield
Similar books
-
A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion
By Tom Segev2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist "[A] fascinating biography . . . a masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man . . . this is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power." —The Economist As the founder of Israel, ...
-
Ben-Gurion: A Biography
By Michael Bar-ZoharCondensation and translation of Ben-Guryon. Includes index.
-
David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State
By Allon GalThis book traces the evolution of the demand for a Jewish state into a central and specific aim of Zionist policy and the interrelated process by which Ben-Gurion became increasingly oriented toward the United States and American Jewry at ...
-
David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy
By Nir KedarIn David Ben-Gurion and the Foundation of Israeli Democracy, Nir Kedar offers a poignant study of the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first prime minister of Israel.
-
David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Renaissance
By Shlomo AronsonThis book offers a reappraisal of David Ben-Gurion's role in Jewish-Israeli history from the perspective of the twenty-first century, in the larger context of the Zionist 'renaissance', of which he was a major and unique exponent.
-
Ben-Gurion: Builder of Israel
By Robert St. JohnBen-Gurion: Builder of Israel
-
Ben-Gurion, Prophet of Fire
By Dan KurzmanBen-Gurion, Prophet of Fire
-
Ben-Gurion and the Birth of Israel
By Joan ComayA biography of the first Prime Minister of Israel who's life and activities parallel the establishment and history of Israel.
-
David Ben-Gurion, the State of Israel and the Arab World, 1949-1956
By Zaki ShalomA specialist in the Arab-Israeli conflict and Israel's defense policy, Shalom (Ben-Gurion U.) looks at the first prime minister's views on politics and security and the forces that shaped his...
-
David Ben-Gurion: Politics and Leadership in Israel
By Ronald W ZweigFirst published in 2004. It may well be that genius begins where fear ends: not to be afraid to question what is known, not to be afraid to be original. David Ben-Gurion did not try to imitate anyone.