Word: gurion
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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...
When Peres, at 29, returned to Israel in 1952, Premier Ben-Gurion appointed him to top posts in the Defense Ministry. For the next 13 years, he played the key role in organizing the Israeli Defense Forces, developed the nation's arms industry and nuclear-research program. He traveled abroad constantly to purchase arms and conduct delicate military negotiations. Peres quickly acquired a reputation as a canny, effective and realistic bargainer. His great coup came in 1955, when he brought off the Franco-Israeli military alliance, involving more than $1 billion in arms purchases from France that made possible...
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...