Word: ben-gurion
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...Ben-Gurion's right lurks the Irgun, which calls him a dictator because he wants to prevent Irgun from operating a private army. The Irgunists are intense nationalists and "revisionists," which in practical present terms means they are gangsters and expansionists, itching to carry the fight into Arab territory...
...peculiar socialism of the Histadrut and the collective farms does not lead Israel toward Communist sympathies. Quite the contrary. Ben-Gurion's Labor party, which dominates the present coalition government, is consciously but cautiously antiCommunist. To its left stands the United Workers party; in the left wing of this group is a sinister opportunist named Moshe Sneh, who plays the Kremlin's game. As one Israeli punned: "If the Russians ever come to Israel, it will be with Sneh [Yiddish for snow] on their boots...
...constitution to be written next fall will make a point of separating church and state. Ben-Gurion and other leaders rarely turn up at synagogues. Jews are not supposed to travel in vehicles on the Sabbath but they do today in Israel. Foreign Minister Moshe Shertok, a brisk, urbane statesman, did not even wait for a reporter to ask him about it. Said Shertok: "And if you're going to ask whether the trains and buses are going to run on the Sabbath, I can tell you right now-they...
Victims of History. If not religion, what will hold Israel together? Today fear of the Arabs performs for the Israelis the same unifying function that Gentile persecution and discrimination performed during the Dispersion. The Arabs, as Ben-Gurion noted, are 40 to one Israeli. But the Jewish superiority over the Arabs is not just a figment of Israeli imagination; it is a fact. Israel has probably the highest percentage of skilled labor and executive experience of any people in the world; by comparison, the Arabs are near the bottom of the scale...
...only in peace between Jews and Arabs is there much hope for either. If the Israelis are forced into many years of war they may indeed become "an ugly little Spartan state." Their wiser leaders know this. Such men as Ben-Gurion see the Israel of tomorrow as an industrial, trading and organizing nation leading the whole Middle East to new levels of productivity...