Person1886 – 1973

David Ben-Gurion

Zionist leader who proclaimed the State of Israel on 14 May 1948 and became its first prime minister

Born in Płońsk, in Russian-ruled Poland, he emigrated in 1906 to Ottoman Palestine. He led the Histadrut labour federation and from 1935 represented the Jewish community as chairman of the Jewish Agency. After proclaiming the state in 1948 he led the war as prime minister and defence minister and built the army and state institutions. Serving as prime minister in two spells until 1963, he spent his last years at Kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev desert.

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1948 – 1949Founding of Israel and the First Arab–Israeli Warleader
On the day the British Mandate ended, the Jewish leadership declared the State of Israel and neighbouring Arab states invaded. Israel calls it the "War of Independence"; Palestinians, some 700,000 of whom lost their homes, call it the "Nakba" (catastrophe).

Themes this person appears in

National Movements in Asia and Africa1915 – 1948
From the Hussein–McMahon correspondence to the founding of Israel — three decades in which India, West Asia, Southeast Asia and Africa, swept up in the tide of self-determination after the First World War, pressed toward independence and modernization