Books in Brief: Ben-Gurion: A Biography

Ben-Gurion: A Biography, by Michael Bar-Zohar (Delacorte, 334 pp., $12.95). The Ben-Gurion that emerges from BarZohar’s work is a towering figure driven by Zionist dreams—stiff and impersonal in private, canny and resolute politically. The book merely skims over his difficulties with the British and the deadly struggle with Menahem Begin’s Irgun. Instead, it provides a fascinating description of BenGurion’s takeover of the Zionist movement, the result of a decade of rivalry with Chaim Weizman. Such feuding did not end with Israeli independence: BenGurion tussled with almost every leader of his own Mapai Party—Moshe Starrett, Golda Meir, Pinchas Lavon—and he repeatedly threatened to resign unless his ultimatums were met. Chief among his concerns were the fostering of a new generation of leaders, like Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, and the development of a hard-line foreign policy—which most Mapai chieftains would not accept. (His own feelings about Israel’s “manifest destiny” were in fact reasonably close to those of his oft-denounced rival, Begin.) Bar-Zohar’s prose is crisp and clean and his scholarship is detailed. The work should emerge as the standard biography.

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David Pietrusza

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Ben-Gurion: A Biography, by Michael Bar-Zohar (Delacorte, 334 pp., $12.95). The Ben-Gurion that emerges from BarZohar’s work is a towering figure driven by Zionist dreams—stiff and impersonal in private, canny and resolute politically. The book merely skims over his difficulties with the British and the deadly struggle with Menahem Begin’s Irgun. Instead, it provides a fascinating description of BenGurion’s takeover of the Zionist movement, the result of a decade of rivalry with Chaim Weizman. Such feuding did not end with Israeli independence: BenGurion tussled with almost every leader of his own Mapai Party—Moshe Starrett, Golda Meir, Pinchas Lavon—and he repeatedly threatened to resign unless his ultimatums were met. Chief among his concerns were the fostering of a new generation of leaders, like Moshe Dayan and Shimon Peres, and the development of a hard-line foreign policy—which most Mapai chieftains would not accept. (His own feelings about Israel’s “manifest destiny” were in fact reasonably close to those of his oft-denounced rival, Begin.) Bar-Zohar’s prose is crisp and clean and his scholarship is detailed. The work should emerge as the standard biography.