Word: ben-gurion
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...staff, Israeli citizens are really soldiers on eleven months' leave. Israel, moreover, has carefully tried to avoid glamorizing the military; only in recent years, for example, have medals been awarded-and then sparingly. But credit is also due in large part to the foresight of the late David Ben-Gurion. Conscious that Israel would have to remain a fortress state, the first Premier insisted that it not become a militaristic one. Ben-Gurion was so determined to keep the army out of politics that it was not until after he left office that officers (including even the chief...
...that to his numerous antagonists. To the British in the 1940s, he was Public Enemy No. 1 in Palestine, with a $30,000 price on his head. To the Arabs, he was a ruthless terrorist responsible for the massacre of innocent Palestinian villagers. To Israel's first Premier, David Ben-Gurion, he was a dangerous fascist who threatened to overthrow the newborn nation's fledgling government...
...recent years Begin's virulence has largely been confined to the opposition benches of the Knesset, where he has been a caustic gadfly to several Labor governments. He can be a fierce debater: when Ben-Gurion's government supported German war reparations for Jewish property, Begin's rhetoric grew so rabid that he was suspended from the Knesset for three months. In 1974, after Yitzhak Rabin became Premier, Begin remarked, "We haven't seen a dovecot like Rabin's Cabinet since Noah's ark. I consider it a national duty to bring this government down...
Begin soon became commander of Irgun, which was diametrically opposed to the methods of the Jewish Agency, headed by Ben-Gurion and other Zionist socialists. The agency sought a Jewish homeland through negotiation with the British and was willing to settle for a Jewish state coexisting with an Arab one in Palestine. The Irgun demanded all of Palestine and Transjordan; its motto: "Judea collapsed in fire and blood...
Later elected to the Knesset under Ben-Gurion's patronage, Peres built a political power base that reinforced his strong position among the military. Still, in 1965 he made enemies by joining Ben-Gurion in a group opposing the government of then Premier Levi Eshkol. Not until 1968 was Peres' faction reintegrated into the Labor Party. Subsequently Peres began broadening his expertise. He held such diverse jobs as Minister for Economic Development of Occupied Territories, Immigration, Transport and Communications and Information. When he lost a close race to Rabin for the premiership in 1974, Peres accepted the post...