Award-Winner Tom Segev on Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben-Gurion

[00:00:00] Albert Cheng: Alright, well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I’m one of your hosts this week, Dr. Albert Chang, professor at the University of Arkansas, and co hosting with me this week is Andrea Silbert. Andrea Silbert. It’s a pleasure to have you on. It’s been a while.

[00:00:37] Andrea Silbert: Yes, it’s been a while, and I’m so delighted to be here to talk about our topic for today with Tom Segev.

[00:00:43] Albert Cheng: That’s right. That’s right. David Ben Gurion, one of the founding fathers of modern day Israel. And actually, Andrea, since it’s been a while since you’ve been on, I think, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself to our listeners.

[00:00:53] Andrea Silbert: Sure, yeah. I started off my career in business and used business at the Center for Women in Enterprise to help women start and grow their own businesses.

[00:01:02] So, entrepreneurship as a path to economic self sufficiency and prosperity. Worked a lot in gender and racial justice. I’m now doing some work around anti Semitism and I ran for lieutenant governor after I started the center and now I’m in philanthropy.

[00:01:20] Albert Cheng: Great. I mean, I guess you gave a little bit of a nod to some politics. I mean, we want to talk about some news, and I think you have a news story on an important measure coming up in Massachusetts.

[00:01:31] Andrea Silbert: Yes, this is so important. The MCAS, which is a graduation requirement and also an annual test, is The only standard that we have to keep our schools in Massachusetts on the same page, we have been at the top nationally with our education and our outcomes, but now there’s a ballot initiative to get rid of the MCAS, and Secretary Tutwiler, Secretary of Education, Governor Maura Healey, and most leaders of Massachusetts.

[00:02:01] are united in saying we must have standards. And I am a parent. My children went through the schools and I had very different learners. Those that learned quickly, and my youngest was dyslexic. And all I can say is MCAS was absolutely essential. It is an equity issue. It is absolutely essential to have some test, as a report card to parents.

[00:02:39] Albert Cheng: Reform efforts that have been around for the past 30 years. So take a look at that episode to learn more and follow what’s going on in Massachusetts. Well, just really quickly to mention, I caught an interesting story from the economist and the headline is polarization by education is remaking American politics.

[00:02:56] And I think that, well, first of all, the, the headline remaking American politics, that struck me just says a lot of political lines and demographic groups that we typically associate with one party or the other are shifting of light. But this article provided some data about how the college educated, you know, have a predilection for the Democratic Party by a ratio of two to one now, which is a historical change.

[00:03:20] And, you know, it’s been something that’s been developing over recent history, but it used to be, as the article is pointing out, that if you were college educated, you could almost, That you’d identify more with the Republican party, but things are changing. And of course it’s flipping in the Republican party too.

[00:03:36] Non college educated workers are kind of identifying with, with that party again, by a ratio of two to one. So fascinating change. And, and really what I think struck me speaking about. Education reform and education policies, you know, a lot of the coalition of Democrats and Republicans that really helped spur, you know, MCAS and, and the reform laws in Massachusetts the past several decades, but also similar policies across the United States, those coalitions have been long gone.

[00:04:04] And, you know, it made this article made me wonder what it’s going to take to build another kind of coalition, not just with what we used to think of as, as Democrat and Republican, but now with an ever changing, you know. Changing demographic groups identifying with each party. So anyway, it gave me a lot of food for thought. I have no good answer, but that’s what struck my eye. Um,

[00:04:23] Andrea Silbert: it’s really, really fascinating.

[00:04:25] Albert Cheng: We do want to leave some time, a lot of time here for our guests. I’ve got an exciting guest, Tom Segev, a historian and journalist who’s going to He’s going to talk to us about his biography of David Ben Gurion, so that’s going to be coming up on the flip side of this break, so stick around.

[00:04:52] Tom Segev is one of Israel’s best known historians and a columnist for Haaretz, Israel’s leading newspaper. His books have been published in 14 languages and include 1949, The Other Israelis, 1 Palestine Complete, Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, The 7 Million Israelis on the Holocaust, 1967, Israel, the war, and the year that transformed the Middle East, and A State at Any Cost, The Life of David Ben Gurion.

[00:05:22] Segev earned a BA in History and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD in History from Boston University. He lives in Jerusalem. Dr. Segev, welcome to the show. It’s a pleasure to have you on.

[00:05:37] Tom Segev: Thank you for having me.

[00:05:39] Albert Cheng: Let’s start talking about David Ben Gurion. You’re among Israel’s most accomplished historians and journalists.

[00:05:46] And let’s start from the beginning, uh, about you, really. Would you briefly share with us some of your background, your formative educational experiences, and really how you got interested in studying David Ben Gurion?

[00:06:00] Tom Segev: I was born in Jerusalem. My parents came from, uh, Nazi Germany as refugees. My father was killed in the War of Independence in 1948 when I was three years old, which means that by now I’m almost 80, and I’ve been living the Arab Israeli conflict throughout my life at the Hebrew University.

[00:06:21] I studied history. I edited the student newspaper, and in April, 1986, I went with two friends to interview David Ion, and that was one of the. The deepest experiences I ever had in life, and I had many, I felt as if I’m looking at history itself, sitting in the company of history itself. Later, I wrote my Ph.

[00:06:50] D. dissertation at Boston University. At that time, in the 1970s, everybody I was interested in something called psychohistory. There were scholarships available. And since I was always interested in Nazis, I wrote a biographical dissertation on the commanders of Nazi concentration camps. And over the years, I developed the view that the best journalism is historical journalism, and the best historiography is journalistic historiography.

[00:07:29] I was once invited to the School of Journalism at Berkeley University to develop this in a seminar. My books have come out in 16 languages. The biography of Ben Gurion has just come out in China. Of course, I don’t know what they added or left out.

[00:07:49] Albert Cheng: That’s fascinating. I really appreciate hearing how you, you had that experience early on to even just interview David Ben Gurion.

[00:07:56] So let’s start talking about his life. Tell us about his Polish Jewish family and his background growing up in Poland. Part of the Russian empire. And then he eventually got involved in Zionist politics and joined the Social Democratic Jewish Workers Party. Tell us about his early life.

[00:08:15] Tom Segev: Ben Gurion was born in a little town called Plonsk, which is about an hour’s drive away from Warsaw in 1886.

[00:08:24] Most of the population was Jewish. There were several towns like that in Poland with a majority, or at least over half of them, were Jewish. Most of them were Jewish. were not Zionists. Most of them stayed in their country. Many of them emigrated to America, or if they stayed, they were killed by the Nazis.

[00:08:46] When we talked to him, to Ben Gurion, he told us that even at the age of three years, he knew that he was a Zionist. Now, we still have the tape of that conversation, and you’ll hear the most daring one of us three, which was me, asking Mr. Ben Gurion, this is something you knew at the age of three? And he said, yes, yes, of course, of course, everybody, all the children, we were all Zionists, and he got very excited about that.

[00:09:19] He actually went to a Jewish school as a little boy, a non Jewish and Orthodox Jewish school, but when he first said it, when we heard it, it sounded really absurd to me, but later when I worked on his biography, It sounded a little bit more plausible because, okay, not three, but maybe 13. Anyway, at the age of 14, he already organized a group of kids in Plonsk, aiming to convince everybody to use Hebrew as an everyday language.

[00:09:50] And they began to speak everyday language, Hebrew, with each other. Kevin Plonsk, 14 years old, that’s quite, quite amazing. He learned a little bit of Hebrew from his grandfather. He also read books in, in Hebrew. One of them, was Uncle Tom’s cabin. Quite amazing that so early it was translated into Hebrew, and I think it really shows you how rich the Jewish cultural activity was.

[00:10:17] But what you can say is that classical Zionist ideology was really bedded in him from the beginning. Very early on, he accepted it also from his father, who was an admirer of Herzl, and for all his life, he never deviated from classical Zionism, never had any doubts about it. And I think the best definition I can give you of Ben Gurion’s Zionism would be aiming at an independent Jewish state in Palestine.

[00:10:50] Not necessarily all of it, but as soon as possible, with a large Jewish majority as possible, and as few Arabs as possible. So that is about him. Now, at the age of 20, about 20, he He went to live in Palestine together with his love, a woman who loved at that time, a girl who loved at that time. This was 1906 and he decided to make the Zionist dream a reality.

[00:11:22] And that was when he started to be active in public life. Interestingly enough, he had no other profession. That being a politician, other than other Israeli or Jewish Zionist leaders, there was one who was a doctor, and one was a scientist, and one was a lawyer, and one was this, and one was that. And going on, he did go for a while to Istanbul, you know, the Palestine was then under the Ottoman Empire, and so he went to Istanbul to study law for a while.

[00:11:54] But, he did that aiming at becoming the representative of the Jewish community in Palestine, in Turkey. Perhaps even, he had this dream of perhaps becoming a minister in the Turkish cabinet. But this did not become reality, and in fact the Turkish authorities were not happy with his Zionist activity. And so they expelled him to America in 1915, and at that time, he was not yet a Zionist leader, but they came to America and made lots of speeches and wrote articles and spent some time at the public library in New York, where he put together a book.

[00:12:43] The idea that the Bedouins in Palestine had actually been descendants of the Jews or all the others. You know, aiming at the idea that the Jews did not really leave Palestine. But all these are really things which he did in his youth and what really changed his whole life was the fact the British Empire occupied Palestine in 1917 and then the British Mandate was set up and Ben Gurion’s main political activity happened under, under the British.

[00:13:19] Albert Cheng: Mm hmm. Well, let’s talk about that a little bit. In 1909, that’s when he adopted the name Ben Gurion and became a preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British ruled Mandatory Palestine. Can you talk more about his life during those years around the First World War and the 1917 Balfour Declaration?

[00:13:40] Sure.

[00:13:41] Tom Segev: World War I, he was still in America, and when he read in the New York Times about the Balfour Declaration, he did not really quite understand it immediately. It had been Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of Israel, who had been able to extract it from the British. Also Ze’ev Jabotinsky. But it took a while before Ben Gurion really understood it.

[00:14:08] Actually, for the rest of his life, he would prefer activity in America while Weizmann believed in the British. And Weizmann was right at the beginning, because the Balfour Declaration stating that the British Empire views with favor the establishment of a Home for the Jewish people in Palestine was an amazing victory for Zionism, and for the next 30 years, the Zionist movement was able to lay the infrastructure for independence.

[00:14:40] Hundreds of new settlements were built. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were allowed to settle in Palestine. The political, cultural, economic, military infrastructures were all laid under the British and under the leadership of Ben Gurion. I forgot to tell you at the beginning that even before he went to America, the very first activity of Ben Gurion was the effort to replace Arab workers with Jewish workers.

[00:15:12] This was not so much an economic thing, not because the Jewish workers didn’t have enough to do, but this was clearly a political, you know, ideological approach, believing that a nation who requires some rights anywhere has to work the land. If you work the land in agriculture, that establishes your right, or at least proves that you belong there.

[00:15:39] And so we very much encouraged agricultural work by Jews. And that also caused some tension between Jews and Arabs, because Arabs were often fired. Ben Gurion himself worked for a while as an agricultural worker on some farm in the Galilee. The farm was attacked by Arabs, and two of Ben Gurion’s friends were killed right near him.

[00:16:08] He, he, he actually saw, saw his friends being shot, shot dead, and that led him to say for the first time that this is what Arab hatred really means. From that point on, he believed that there cannot be peace between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. This is something he Actually said, in 1919, imagine how early, 1919, a group of people got together to discuss, so what do we do in order to live peacefully with the Arabs?

[00:16:44] And everybody had some ideas. Eventually Ben Gurion gets up and says, you all have nice ideas, and nobody of you realizes. That there is no solution to this problem. There is a gap between us, and there’s no way to build a bridge over that. So that was actually what he believed throughout the struggle for the establishment of Israel, and during his days as Prime Minister.

[00:17:11] And what he meant is that although the conflict cannot be solved, it can be managed. And that is something which today is very popular. People say, yeah, we cannot, we cannot solve it, but we can manage it. And then we don’t actually try to manage it, and sometimes better, sometimes worse. My feeling is that the problem has never been managed more catastrophically than under Netanyahu and the present Prime Minister.

[00:17:36] And I think that most Israelis today Agree. And probably also most Palestinians agree that this is a conflict that cannot be solved. And the interesting thing is how early Ben Gurion actually stated that.

[00:17:52] Albert Cheng: I’m curious to hear more about what shaped him and influenced him politically to arrive at some of these calculations and strategies.

[00:18:01] So talk about other things that were going on in the world, the Soviet Revolution. You know, after World War I, the League of Nations, power of the British Empire, how did these things in history influence him politically and shape him?

[00:18:14] Tom Segev: It shaped the situation in Palestine, as I said, because it came under British rule.

[00:18:21] Never formally under the British Empire, because this was some kind, something called the Mandate, which the League of Nations gave them, but both Ben Gurion and Weizmann and everybody else was very much aware of the need to gain support from other nations. They, they knew that they cannot manage it alone.

[00:18:44] And so many decisions and particularly many. Declarations were made in order to convince the world, as we still say today, meaning the New York Times or CNN or something, but Ben Gurion and Weizmann. And Weizmann really managed to convince Lord Balfour, who was the foreign minister at that time of Britain, to support Zionism.

[00:19:14] And it’s really interesting to analyze. This is not Part of Ben Gurion’s story, but it’s really interesting to analyze how the British government believed both in the unlimited power of the Jewish people, which is why it is good to have them as allies, and at the same time despise them as, you know, the ones who control the banks and the press, and it’s really a combination of philo Semitism and anti Semitism, and it made no sense.

[00:19:46] The British had nothing to lost in Palestine, which had no reason to come, no strategic reason. In fact, the archives abound with letters and statements of military personnel, generals, British generals, who tried to warn the government, told them, don’t enter Palestine. Palestine means trouble. Stay out of Palestine.

[00:20:11] And we can do without it. We can get to India without Palestine, and we can defend the Suez Canal without that. Do nothing. And so, as I say, I think basically for irrational reasons, the Jews, where everybody could realize that the Jews don’t control the world, definitely after 1933 when the Nazis came to power, still, they very much believed in Zionism, they were Christian Zionists, actually, Balfour and George and many others.

[00:20:43] There’s a beautiful scene which When Weizmann was invited to dinner at Balfour’s home, and at the end of the dinner, Balfour accompanies him to his hotel, to Weizmann’s hotel. When they get there, they go back to Balfour’s house, and when they go to Balfour’s house, they go back to the, to the hotel, and all the time they are discussing Zionism, the moon is shining above, and the next day, you can read in the minutes of the British government, Lord Balfour saying, I am a Zionist.

[00:21:14] Why are you a Zionist? I am a Zionist. So it’s so much about belief and religion and the wish to be remembered as the one who returned the Jewish people from exile to its homeland, historic homeland. So all these, this is to the present day, one of the problems of the conflict that so much All of it is irrational.

[00:21:38] It’s all mythology. It’s all fantasy. Even today, these very days, the war that’s going on today is very difficult to understand. And so, this is all the background of Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion himself was active mostly in, in Palestine. He was very instrumental in setting up the trade union, the Histadrut, which is quite powerful even today, and less powerful than it was.

[00:22:05] But under Ben Gurion, it was, it was really a replacement of, of government, and that was part of his socialism. He had believed in socialism, almost in communism, but he realized that socialism and Zionism cannot be combined, really, and so it became some form of social democracy, but whenever The two were clashing.

[00:22:35] Ben Gurion preferred Zionism and Nationalism, but some social democratic ideas still prevailed under, under Ben Gurion. But more important than the ideas, I think, were the activity of the trade union, the Yisra’ut, including an old nationwide system of education. The Arabs did not have that, and the British did not force them to have it.

[00:23:01] There was no compulsory education among the Arabs. And so the Istitut really did that. And perhaps even more important was a national health program. All you need to do was to join the Istitut, and hopefully vote for Ben Gurion. And then you really get a very good health program, which is still active today.

[00:23:22] Israel actually has a very good national health program even today. It still bears names, you know, historical names, which is a really strange thing to, even to translate. Which come from Ben Gurion. So Ben Gurion was definitely active in laying the infrastructures which were needed for independence, and yes, it worked.

[00:23:46] Israeli independence was almost, almost effective even before the British left, and the British realized quite soon. That it was not a good place to be for them in Palestine, and they were looking for all kinds of ways to get out. In 1939, they designed a Partition Plan of Palestine, and that is the famous TIP program, which Ben Gurion at the beginning rejected.

[00:24:19] He did not like it, but the same evening he read it again, and there he discovered something which had, which he had not seen before, and that is that the British are actually talking about a transfer of the Arab population to Palestine. from the part of the country that would be the Jewish state. And that was something which he, uh, he got really excited about it.

[00:24:42] In his diary, he wrote the words, compulsory transfer, put a black line underneath. And that was actually his feeling for the rest of his political life. And that was in 1937. Post British stayed on for another 10 years. They were slow and inefficient about making. And so in 1948, this is what happened, the transfer, the Arab tragedy called the Nakba, and that is very much, I mention this because there is so much historical argumentation about whose fault it is that the Arabs had to go.

[00:25:24] I think it’s very important to remember that it had always been part of Ben Gurion’s basic idea of life in Palestine. Palestine should be divided and the Arabs should go elsewhere. And this is what happened under, under the war. And interestingly enough, during the war of 1948, the war, as we call it, the War of Independence, Ben Gurion very, very purposefully Refrained from having the West Bank and Gaza occupied, and this is why for the next 20 years they were not under Israeli control.

[00:26:04] Until the Six Day War of 1967, which Ben Gurion then, old and no longer in office, but he objected to that war. And during that war, these territories were occupied by Israel, and that’s when the bad management begins. I, for me, and I think Ben Gurion would probably agree with that. Agree with me, I think this was the worst mistake which Israel ever made.

[00:26:31] They didn’t occupy these territories in six days. Give them back on the seventh day. Don’t keep them. That’s what they did. And that was, again, something irrational, you know? Look at the minutes of the government in which they decide to take East Jerusalem, for example. I think when you, I definitely buy a new apartment, I ask a lawyer.

[00:26:54] And here are these cabinet ministers without position papers, without alternatives, without any legal expert to tell them, dear friends, you are occupying a territory which is holy to you. A hundred million, a hundred million people all over the world. What does it mean from a legal point of view? Never came up.

[00:27:16] The question never comes up. And not one minister asks his friends, tell me, dear colleagues, why is it good for us to occupy the old city? Because it all comes from the hearts, from the guts. It was an irrational decision. Irrational thing.

[00:27:33] Andrea Silbert: What I was very taken by, and I’ve read quite a bit of Ben Gurion, but I was really taken by how you made it so clear that he was very single minded in his pursuit, Zionism at all.

[00:27:45] But to do that, he had to be a pragmatist and he had to compromise. And so going back to the 1936 39 Arab revolt in Palestine,

[00:27:57] Ben Gurion

[00:27:58] Andrea Silbert: promoted a policy of restraint. Telling Jewish groups not to retaliate for Arab attacks against Jewish civilians. So I’d love to understand this more. How did he come to that as a pragmatic, uh, solution?

[00:28:13] You talk about being irrational. That seemed to be

[00:28:16] Tom Segev: very rational. He could be very, yes, he could be very pragmatic. on other issues also, but in this case, the British did the job for us. Why, why get involved when the British bring in so much military and actually try to put down the Arab revolt, which, which eventually they did.

[00:28:37] And some Jews fought under British flag also. He had very clear ideas about the future, but at times he could restrain himself. And I thought when you said single minded, meaning that he doesn’t like anybody to say no to him. And that’s, I think, one of the major characteristics. You know that Israel doesn’t have a constitution, even today.

[00:29:03] And Ben Gurion hated lawyers. More than anything else, he hated lawyers. He hated everybody who could say no to him. Sometimes he was pragmatic, and very often he He got himself into issues which are completely absurd and led all kinds of weird struggles in Israeli politics, which are very difficult to understand today.

[00:29:32] He was a fascinating man also in terms of having this tendency to move very fast from very deep depression to Uncontrolled happiness, elation, you know, this is a psychological thing. And the interesting thing about it is, is that he knew that he has this tendency. It’s in his diary. He actually says, if anybody reads my diary, By the way, the diary is a fantastic document, but he says if anybody reads my diary, they might think that it has been written by two different people.

[00:30:03] Yes, because he had this tendency.

[00:30:07] Andrea Silbert: That might take us back to, I think, one of the most interesting and important periods, which is the second part of your book. It’s entitled The Limits of Power. And in 46, Ben Gurion became executive of the World Zionist Organization. And then, on May 14th, 1948, he officially proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel and was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, which he’d helped write.

[00:30:35] Could you tell us about this period? I mean, so much happened in such a short period. And the consequences, of course, After with the Arab Israeli War?

[00:30:48] Tom Segev: Well, first of all, you have to remember that 48 is very soon after World War II and the World War II is the Holocaust. So ion really was still under the terrible accusation that the Jewish Agency hadn’t done enough to save the Jews and what Zionism all about if you don’t save the Jews.

[00:31:05] My own feeling is that there was nothing more to do, but this was a big issue. The other big issue was whether or not to declare independence. And he was not quite sure about it, because he knew, which other people did not, that the Israeli army is not ready for war. And that’s a very strange thing in itself, because for the last 15 years previously, he was responsible for the security issues.

[00:31:32] And all of a sudden, in 1947, he realizes that the army is not ready. And then he did a very strange thing. He went to London and tried to convince the British to stay on for a while until the Israeli army gets ready. But eventually, when the decision was, was on the table, yes or no, declare independence, he opted for yes.

[00:31:53] And that’s how it was.

[00:31:56] Andrea Silbert: There were multiple militias. Before the war and he brought them together to create the Israeli Defense Forces. That was no small feat. Would you talk to us about how he did that, and how that was critical in declaring and winning the war, if you will?

[00:32:20] Tom Segev: He did not really do that. Even after the state already existed, there were some militias, both on the left and on the right.

[00:32:28] On the right, the one led by Menachem Begin, and on the left was the Palmach. And it was very difficult to Actually forced them to give up their independence, and these are things which he was able to do by force, you know, but the major army was the Haganah. That was the major Zionist Israeli Palestinian army.

[00:32:53] And Ben Gurion constantly, constantly could not hold himself, not playing politics, he constantly was afraid that these were encouraging opposition or, you know, he was also a politician, so it’s really Only, let’s say, during the war that he was actually able to, but even after the war, there was still some militias, some terrorist underground, Jewish underground groups who made all kinds of terror actions, like killing the Swedish mediator, Count Bernadotte, and other things, in order to force their political views.

[00:33:38] And there were some decisions which Ben Gurion made also at the beginning of the 50s, which were very, very controversial politically. Most important, perhaps, the decision to create relations with West Germany, the reparations agreement, and the overall decision that we belong to the West. There were many, there was quite a strong segment of the Israeli society which had adored Stalin and Russia, and it was not quite clear where do we belong.

[00:34:14] And I think that both Ben Gurion’s German and his policy and his decision that Israel belongs to the West. These are very good, very far sighted decisions.

[00:34:26] Andrea Silbert: Yeah, incredible, really so far sighted.

[00:34:28] Tom Segev: But, but, but, but particularly the German one is so interesting because it was so painful and emotional and that was when demonstrators threw stones at the Israeli parliament and, and Begin was there and they called each other Nazi and this was terrible.

[00:34:47] And he was just able to ignore the emotional thing and just said, we need the German money and we need to be close to NATO. And there’s a cold war going on and no small country can remain neutral. And I am not supporting Stalin in spite of the fact that Stalin had supported the establishment of, of Israel, but no, we belong.

[00:35:11] I

[00:35:13] Andrea Silbert: think it gets back to this pragmatism that Germany has the money. And we need, you know, we need to have a secure state. So I found that such a theme in the book. I’m wondering, do you talk a little bit about the war of 1948, Arab Israeli, or the War of Independence, or the Nakba, as the Arabs call it, and what are the long term implications for Arab Israeli relations, given the transfer, as you said, some fled and some were expelled of the Arabs.

[00:35:45] From, you know, what is now Israel proper, though, of course, there are two million still Arabs in Israel,

[00:35:53] Tom Segev: but the

[00:35:54] Andrea Silbert: transfer after the war.

[00:35:56] Tom Segev: Yes, the war had two parts. One started immediately after the war. UN partition decision in October of 1947. And in the month between that decision and the establishment of Israel in May of 1948, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had been forced to leave.

[00:36:18] What is important for me at this point is to say that Palestinians Left, Palestinians escaped, Palestinians were forced to escape, and Palestinians were driven out. All this is true, and it all happened at different points in time, on different places. So it’s not whether or not they left because their leaders told them to leave, or whether we expelled them all.

[00:36:46] It’s a very complicated story, but at the end, they were gone. And then the second half of the war was more like normal military wars. And Arab countries invaded Israel, and more Palestinians were gone at the end. Now, there always is a question, did David Ben Gurion himself order the Nakba, or the expulsion of the Arabs?

[00:37:14] And this is difficult to answer. I think that there are only two specific points in time where he was asked about it and said yes. For two towns, Ramleh and Lod. And before that, for two little villages. So, we don’t really have a piece of paper signed by Ben Gurion saying, throw them out. What we do have is something which we call in Hebrew, the spirit of the commander.

[00:37:43] You know, the high commander is Ben Gurion, and everybody knows That he feels that the Jewish state should have a Jewish majority, and these Arabs have to go for many reasons, strategic reasons, other reasons, and so we don’t have a specific order, but there’s no doubt that this is what he meant.

[00:38:03] Andrea Silbert: The other part of that, of course, is following the war, he was the first prime minister and also the minister of defense, and the key, one of the keys to building the state, So, the idea was to oversee the absorption of millions of Jewish immigrants, some of whom were also expelled from their Middle Eastern countries when Israel declared a state.

[00:38:28] So, there was transfer all over the Middle East, Jewish people transferring out of Israel. Arab countries and into Israel, and how did he balance this politically, militarily? It’s just an incredible, an incredible feat, especially with so many refugees who are also in so much need.

[00:38:51] Tom Segev: Right, and since we are talking about Ben Gurion, Ben Gurion was not happy, neither about the Holocaust survivors.

[00:38:59] Nor about the Jews from Arab countries, because it tells that these people are too weak, and they are not really helpful for what Israel needs. And his dream, the Zionist dream, had been a European country. And this is why the Holocaust for Ben Gurion was not first and foremost a crime against humanity, not first and foremost a crime against the Jewish people, but first and foremost a crime against Israel.

[00:39:29] Because the Nazis had killed the population which, for Ben Gurion and other Zionists, these are the ones who were supposed to come and build the country. And so, he was, I think, to the rest of his life, disappointed with the fact that so many Israelis were not Israelis, which he had hoped to be. The image of the Israeli Sabra is mostly, uh, an image.

[00:39:57] Most people who came in the 1950s, Holocaust survivors and refugees from Arab countries were weak people. ill educated people, and not necessarily Zionists. This is an interesting thing about Zionism, that most Jews were never Zionists, and most Jews who came to Israel did not come as Zionists. They came as refugees.

[00:40:25] It took many years before some kind of Israeli Identity was forged, and Ben Gurion was still able to sum up very optimistic statistics in 1958, like the 10th anniversary of Israel. One of them is really interesting, where he says that letters written by soldiers, 9 1, are now written in Hebrew. While in 1951, only three out of ten were written in Hebrew.

[00:40:57] So he regarded this kind of thing as, rightfully, I think, as a sign of establishing a Jewish identity, Israeli identity, but as you know, until today, we are a very, very close knit Colourful mosaic, and we are a very deeply divided society, also among religious and non religious. Ben Gurion was a secular man, he worked on Yom Kippur and ate pork, but he was very good, I think, today everybody hates him for this, but I think he was very good in working for that the Orthodox.

[00:41:38] Religious and Orthodox Jews would feel at home in Israel, and that required lots of compromises, which were scandalous then and are still central Israeli politics today. For example, that many young Orthodox guys don’t go to the army, and because supposedly they, they study Judaism. And things like that.

[00:42:01] All these are, are incredibly difficult problems, and I think that Ben Gurion was really very, very good in dealing with it. Yeah,

[00:42:12] Andrea Silbert: I mean, it, it, he really followed, he He followed that path and he made his choices and they did, they did, they have been successful.

[00:42:22] Tom Segev: I think that people, Ben Gurion believed in himself and identified himself with Jewish history as many leaders do.

[00:42:30] I think that so many Israelis believed him and believed in him because they were convinced that he believes in himself, which is true. And I think that this is a very important key to The understanding of Ion’s position and also historical role.

[00:42:50] Andrea Silbert: Yes. He was, as you said, extremely confident at times Egocentric one might say, and that was what was necessary for him to do the work he did.

[00:43:02] I’m gonna just sum up with, it was written about you in your book, Sege Ion is neither a saint nor a villain, but rather a historical character. Who belongs in the company of Lennon or Churchill, a 20th century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.

[00:43:27] So could you close by giving us an overview of Ben Gurion in his final years and this towering legacy? Akin to that of Lenin or Churchill.

[00:43:40] Tom Segev: I will read a sentence to you which Ben Gurion wrote in 1923, following a visit to Soviet Union. He was guest of the government, he had hoped to see Lenin, Lenin was still alive, but he did not see him.

[00:43:54] He was very impressed with the Zionists, with the Soviet system, and upon returning, he wrote a theoretical definition of Leninism. of what a leader is not necessarily a Zionist leader or something, but who is a leader? And it says a man who disdains all obstacles, faithful to his goal, a man of iron will, who does not spare human life.

[00:44:20] And the blood of innocent children for the sake of the revolution is not afraid of rejecting today what he required yesterday and requiring tomorrow what he rejected today. 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.

[00:44:46] So, I think that he wanted to be a Zionist Lenin, he wanted to be a Zionist Churchill, and since he left us millions of written words, I think Ben Gurion, nobody was able to describe his personality and his leadership as well as he did himself.

[00:45:06] Andrea Silbert: Such a gift that we have your book, and Even your book summarizes there’s so much more, but it’s just such a gift that we have all of his words and this history to help us, and particularly, you know, in this moment today.

[00:45:24] Well, thank you, and we’re just so honored to have you with us.

[00:45:29] Tom Segev: Thank you very much.

[00:45:43] Albert Cheng: Wow, Andrew, I really enjoyed listening to him. You know, it was striking to me that essentially he grew up witnessing everything that he was talking about. So that’s a fascinating perspective.

[00:45:54] Andrea Silbert: Living history. It’s incredible.

[00:45:57] Albert Cheng: Andrew, I do want to thank you for co hosting with me. It’s a pleasure to do this with you.

[00:46:02] Andrea Silbert: It was such an honor for me. Thank you for asking.

[00:46:05] Albert Cheng: That’s going to bring us to the end of our show, but before we close out, I do want to leave you with the Tweet of the Week. And this week’s tweet comes from Education Next. What it takes to be a genius. A leaked transcript illuminates how the MacArthur Foundation picked its celebrated winners.

[00:46:22] And just as a heads up, it’s actually a satirical piece. by our friend Rick Haas, I laughed out loud reading it, and I’ll just leave it for you listeners to go check out. Before we sign off today, I do also want to plug next week’s episode, we’re going to have Katherine Clinton, who is the Denman Professor of American History at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and author of Harriet Tubman, The Road to Freedom, so that should be a fascinating discussion on the life of Harriet Tubman, so please join us next week for another exciting episode.

[00:46:54] Till then, be well.