biography
| name: |
Ben-Gurion, David
|
| |
originally David Gruen
|
pronunciation:
[ben gurion]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1886–1973)
|
| biography:
| Israeli statesman and prime minister (1948–53, 1955–63), born in Plonsk, C Poland. Attracted to the Zionist Socialist movement, he emigrated to Palestine in 1906, working as a farm labourer and forming the first Jewish trade union in 1915. Expelled by the Ottomans for pro-Allied sympathies, he helped to raise the Jewish Legion in America and served in it in the Palestine campaign against Turkey in World War 1. He was general secretary of the General Federation of Jewish Labour (1921–33), and in 1930 became leader of the Mapai (Labour) Party, which became the ruling party in the state of Israel, whose birth he announced in May 1948. He played the chief role in establishing the young state and came to symbolize its new-found authority and power. |
|
|
