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

“According to my moral outlook, we do not have the right to discriminate against even one Arab child, even if such discrimination would obtain for us all that we seek,”

“I fully understand your concern about the Kinneret operation. I must confess that I, too, began to have my doubts about the wisdom of it. But when I read the full text of your brilliant defense of our action in the Security Council, all my doubts were set at rest. You have convinced me that we were right, after all.”

His article cited a theory that Spinoza’s ideas derived from Buddhism; he was inclined to agree.

His broad-mindedness was limited to the bounds of the Zionist discourse, as he once demonstrated when Martin Buber skeptically remarked: “We said we would redeem the land, and we meant to make it Jewish land. Why does it have to be Jewish land?” Ben-Gurion interrupted. “To bring forth bread from the earth!” Buber retorted: “Why?” “To eat!” Ben-Guri

“It is easier to swim in the sea than in a bathtub.”

Jibli recalled that Ben-Gurion loved her traditional Yemenite jahnun, served with a tomato sauce.

“If we must offend one side,” Chamberlain told his Cabinet, “let us offend the Jews rather than the Arabs.”

“And you feel totally helpless, you can’t even get furious, and the sun is shining in all its glory,”

“We must stress the positive,” he said. “It is not good for us to stand in the light of ‘the whole world is against us.’”

Jabotinsky identified with liberal democratic ideas, and the free market, but did not reject state-sponsored development and settlement projects; Ben-Gurion called himself a socialist but did not reject private enterprise. He was really a social democrat. Jabotinsky’s movement attracted many workers, and many members of the middle class supported B