What would Ben-Gurion have done?

Secret deals with terrorist organizations would have never been an option for Israel’s first PM; For the Old Man who spoke his mind, measures of justice and deterrence meant making neighbors pay for acts of terror using Israel’s strength.

By MICHAEL BAR-ZOHAR
ben gurion 311 (photo credit: R.M. Kneller)
ben gurion 311
(photo credit: R.M. Kneller)
This month, a modest exhibit of cartoons depicting Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion was inaugurated at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Not many people showed up to view the satirical images of a bygone era, but for the few that did they were a reminder that Israel was once a very different place.
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It had a smaller, weaker, and infinitely poorer society, but one that fervently embraced Zionism and was devoted to fighting for its survival and protecting its tiny piece of land. Israel was a proud, brave nation of people that did not doubt its place on the right side of justice but that still dreamed of peace with its neighbors.
The Israel of yesteryear also believed in social justice. If a member of the Mapai party would have dared to build a private home in Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion would soon have him excluded from his party. When Ben-Gurion himself retired to Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, it was not to a farm or a ranch surrounded with acres of land, but rather to a modest hut.
”The fate of Israel,” the former prime minister opined, ”depends on two things: its strength and its righteousness.”
And the most tangible expression of that righteousness emerged through the building a just society that was based not on imported socialism, but on the profound Jewish values preached by the prophets of Israel.
The strength of Israel was a major component in Ben-Gurion’s political vision. He did not believe that Israel’s existence was due to some decision that took place at the UN, but that it came about as a result of the courage and devotion of its people.
Ben-Gurion’s attitude also extended to his military theory: He believed that Israel should retaliate for every provocation and every murder committed by terrorists from neighboring countries. In 1955-6, following terrorist incursions into Israel, the prime minister ordered reprisal raids against Egypt and Jordan. These reprisals culminated in the Sinai campaign of 1956 – a campaign that secured peace on Israel’s borders for 11 years.
Ben-Gurion never opted to go down the road of clandestine negotiations with terrorist organizations, invariably interpreted – as indeed they are today – as signs of weakness or acquiescence. Instead, he felt that it was Israel’s strength that provided the optimal deterrent for acts of terrorism.
He also knew that the Third World Nations - together with the Arab states and the Soviet bloc - would always form an automatic majority against Israel, and he therefore shunned any pretense of “nations uniting for peace.” For this reason Ben-Gurion despised the UN, often referring to it as “UM-Shmum” (UM being the Israeli initials for UN).

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The Old Man harbored no intimidations about what the world might think. “Our future,” he famously said, “depends not on what the gentiles will say, but on what the Jews will do.” Had he been alive today, Ben-Gurion would never have allowed himself to get in a panic over September’s UN vote – in contrast to so many of Israel’s contemporary leaders.
He was a leader that withstood external criticism – even if it came from superpowers. Today’s politicians and analysts, on the other hand, have a penchant for singing odes to those superpowers, waxing sycophancy about, say, the unshakable friendship between the US and Israel since the day of the latter’s birth.
But that is a blatant lie.
Israel was disliked - to say the least - by several American administrations. Former president Harry S. Truman may have been a friend, but his cabinet and his advisers were anything but. Former president Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a friend, and John Foster Dulles, then-secretary of state, was even worse –going as far as to support a plan that would make Israel give parts of the Negev to Egypt and Jordan in exchange for a dubious peace deal.
John F. Kennedy - another president who was not a friend of the Jewish State’s - made every possible attempt to stop Israel’s nuclear project, which included blunt threats in his letters to Ben-Gurion. (It was only after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War when Lyndon B. Johnson was president that any changes took place).
The Old Man saw the naiveté in the US’s courting of the Arab world for what it was, and understood that Washington considered Israel to be a liability. Therefore, whenever he felt it was necessary, he had no qualms about saying a resolute “No” to Washington.
Even after he was out of office Ben-Gurion had no issues confronting the citizens of Israel with his opinions. After the Six Day War, when most Israelis were drunk with victory and talking about “Greater Israel,” “biblical boundaries,” and “retaining every inch of the new empire,” the Old Man made the following controversial statement:
“For real peace we must give back all the territories, with the exception of Jerusalem and the Golan heights.” 
Predictably, Ben-Gurion’s statement elicited attacks from all sides, with many protesting that such a vision was not in keeping with “what the people want.” Yet Ben-Gurion stuck to his guns, and it was in response to this outcry that he uttered one of his most-quoted lines: “I don’t know what the people want, but I do know what the people need.”
Not surprisingly, many of the cartoons in the Cinematheque’s exhibition portray David Ben-Gurion in the notorious position taught to him by his physician and therapist, Dr. Feldenkreis, i.e. standing on his head. But in an ironic twist, one of the cartoons depicts Ben-Gurion with his feet on the ground in an upright position, and this time it is the State of Israel that stands on its head as the prime minister looks on sadly. 
The cartoon is a poignant echo of the prevailing attitude in the Israel of today. It is a testimony to all of our current internal and external errors and hesitations, of our diminishing belief in the justice of our cause, and of our loss of self-confidence – especially at a time when we are stronger and more prosperous than ever before.
The poet Nathan Alterman, who Ben-Gurion himself deeply admired, echoed the latter’s worries when he penned his last poem:
Then Satan said: This beleaguered soul - [Israel]How can I subdue him?He has courage and skillAnd weapons and ingenuity and judgment.And he said: I will not take his strength.Nor fetter nor restrain himI will not weaken his willNor dampen his spirit. This will I do: Dull his brainUntil he forgets that justice is his.
Let us take Alterman’s immortal words as a reminder - and as a warning.
The writer is a former Labor Party MK and the official biographer of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres.