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120-694: According to the website of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, or Claims Conference , "In response to calls from Jewish organizations and the State of Israel, in September 1951 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of West Germany addressed his Parliament: "... unspeakable crimes have been committed in the name of the German people, calling for moral and material indemnity ... The Federal Government are prepared, jointly with representatives of Jewry and

240-505: A Zionist group called Beni Zion —Children of Zion. In 1900 it had a membership of 200. David was the youngest of three boys with an older and younger sister. His mother, Scheindel (Broitman), died of sepsis following a stillbirth in 1897. It was her eleventh pregnancy. Two years later his father remarried. Ben-Gurion's birth certificate, found in Poland in 2003, indicated that he had a twin brother who died shortly after birth. Between

360-715: A British decision to establish a Jewish state. However, it became clear that the British had no intention of immediately establishing a Jewish state and that limits on Jewish immigration would remain for the time being. As a result, with Ben-Gurion's approval the Haganah entered into a secret alliance with the Irgun and Lehi called the Jewish Resistance Movement in October 1945 and participated in attacks against

480-529: A Jewish home-in-exile in Vietnam. Ben-Gurion declined, telling Ho Chi Minh: "I am certain we shall be able to establish a Jewish Government in Palestine." According to his biographer Tom Segev , Ben-Gurion deeply admired Lenin and intended to be a 'Zionist Lenin'. In Ben-Gurion: A Political Life by Shimon Peres and David Landau , Peres recalls his first meeting with Ben-Gurion as a young activist in

600-410: A Mapam MK, stated, "I am not assuming that there are people who believe that Germany will pay a total of three billion marks, over a period of 12 years, and that this is no empty promise ... The Israeli government will obtain nothing but a piece of paper referring to three billion marks. And all this is only intended to mislead the public and claim the government has attained ...". Anticipating

720-579: A Warsaw heder. Inspired by Tolstoy he had become a vegetarian. He became involved in Zionist politics and in October 1905 he joined the clandestine Social-Democratic Jewish Workers' Party— Poalei Zion . Two months later he was the delegate from Płońsk at a local conference. While in Warsaw the Russian Revolution of 1905 broke out and he was in the city during the clamp down that followed; he

840-547: A bitter controversy in Israel, as the coalition government, headed by David Ben-Gurion , claimed that reparations were necessary to restore what was stolen from the victims of the Holocaust. The agreement was signed by Adenauer and Moshe Sharett on September 10, 1952, at Luxembourg City Hall . The German Parliament (Bundestag) passed the agreement on March 18, 1953, by a large majority, 239 for and 35 against, though only 106 of

960-413: A cannon, I gave the order: 'No!' Today I will give the order, 'Yes!'" The demonstration turned violent as protesters began throwing stones at the building's windows while the police used force to disperse them. After five hours of rioting, the police took control of the situation using hoses and tear gas . Hundreds were arrested; about 200 protesters and 140 policemen were injured. The decision did not end

1080-469: A claim to the four powers occupying post-war Germany regarding compensation and reimbursement, based on the fact that Israel had absorbed and resettled 500,000 Holocaust survivors. They calculated that since absorption had cost 3,000 dollars per person (equivalent to $ 35,200 in 2023), they were owed 1.5 billion dollars (equivalent to $ 17.6 billion in 2023) by Germany. They also figured that six billion dollars worth of Jewish property had been pillaged by

1200-434: A community of around 200 Jews. It was one of the most remote colonies in the foothills of north-eastern Galilee . It took the two young men three days to walk there. Coincidentally at the same time Bar Giora, now with about 20 members and calling themselves 'the collective' but still led by Shochat, took on the operating of the training farm. Ben-Gurion found work in the farm but, excluded from 'the collective', he later became

1320-423: A day-labourer at Kfar Saba , moved to Rishon Lezion where he remained for two months. He made detailed plans with which he tried to entice his father to come and be a farmer. In October 1907, on Shlomo Zemach 's suggestion, Ben-Gurion moved to Sejera . An agricultural training farm had been established at Sejera in the 1880s and since then a number of family-owned farms, moshavah , had been established forming

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1440-614: A fund with money from these companies to help needy Holocaust survivors. A similar fund was set up by the Swiss, as was a Hungarian fund for the compensation of Holocaust victims and their heirs. At the close of the 1990s, discussions of compensation were held by insurance companies that had before the war insured Jews who were later murdered by the Nazis. These companies include Allianz , AXA , Assicurazioni Generali , Zürich Financial Services Group , Winterthur, and Baloise Insurance Group . With

1560-604: A group of around 25 Poale Zion followers. Shochat made a point of inspecting new arrivals looking for recruits. A month after his arrival at Petah Tikva, Shochat invited Ben-Gurion to attend the founding conference of the Jewish Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Land of Israel in Jaffa. The conference, 4–6 October 1906, was attended by 60 or so people. Shochat engineered the elections so that Ben-Gurion

1680-422: A heavy fine. He immediately deserted and returned to Sejera, travelling, via Germany, with forged papers. On 12 April 1909 two Jews from Sejera were killed in clashes with local Arabs following the death of a villager from Kfar Kanna , shot in an attempted robbery. There is little conformation of Ben-Gurion's accounts of his part in this event. Later that summer, Ben-Gurion moved to Zichron Yaakov . From where

1800-436: A labourer for one of the moshav families. One of the first acts of 'the collective' was organising sacking of the farm's Circassian nightwatchman. As a result, shots were fired at the farms every night for several months. Guns were brought and the workforce armed. Ben-Gurion took turns patrolling the farm at night. In the autumn of 1908 Ben-Gurion returned to Plonsk to be conscripted into the army and avoid his father facing

1920-615: A letter to Yiddish Kemfer (" The Jewish Fighter " ), a Yiddish newspaper in New York City. It was an appeal for funds and was the first time something written by Ben-Gurion was published. The arrival of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi in April 1907 revitalised the local Poale Zion. Eighty followers attended a conference in May at which Ben-Zvi was elected onto a two-man Central Committee and all Ben-Gurion's policies were reversed: Yiddish, not Hebrew,

2040-521: A limited action aimed at the conquest of Latrun, and not for an all-out offensive. According to David Tal, in the cabinet meeting, Ben-Gurion reacted to what he had been just told by a delegation from Jerusalem. He points out that this view that Ben-Gurion had planned to conquer the West Bank is unsubstantiated in both Ben-Gurion's diary and in the Cabinet protocol. The topic came back at the end of

2160-633: A major Zionist leader, and the executive head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence , which he had helped to write. Under Ben-Gurion's leadership, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw the uniting of the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and

2280-558: A real Jew until she underwent an Orthodox conversion many years later. Amos became Deputy Inspector-General of the Israel Police , and also the director-general of a textile factory. He and Mary had six granddaughters from their two daughters and a son, Alon, who married a Greek gentile. Geula had two sons and a daughter, and Renana, who worked as a microbiologist at the Israel Institute for Biological Research , had

2400-613: A result Jabotinsky's supporters split with the Haganah and abandoned Havlagah. The house where he lived from 1931 on, and for part of each year after 1953, is now a historic house museum in Tel Aviv, the " Ben-Gurion House ". He also lived in London for some months in 1941. In 1946, Ben-Gurion and North Vietnam's Politburo chairman Ho Chi Minh became very friendly when they stayed at the same hotel in Paris. Ho Chi Minh offered Ben-Gurion

2520-925: A son. After the death of theorist Ber Borochov , the left-wing and centrist factions of Poalei Zion split in February 1919, with Ben-Gurion and his friend Berl Katznelson leading the centrist faction of the Labor Zionist movement. The moderate Poalei Zion formed Ahdut HaAvoda with Ben-Gurion as leader in March 1919. In 1920 he assisted in the formation of the Histadrut , the Zionist Labor Federation in Palestine, and served as its general secretary from 1921 until 1935. At Ahdut HaAvoda's 3rd Congress, held in 1924 at Ein Harod , Shlomo Kaplansky ,

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2640-601: A veteran leader from Poalei Zion , proposed that the party should support the British Mandatory authorities' plans for setting up an elected legislative council in Palestine. He argued that a Parliament, even with an Arab majority, was the way forward. Ben-Gurion, already emerging as the leader of the Yishuv , succeeded in getting Kaplansky's ideas rejected. In 1930, Hapoel Hatzair (founded by A. D. Gordon in 1905) and Ahdut HaAvoda joined forces to create Mapai ,

2760-576: Is natural: we have taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? In 1909, Ben-Gurion attempted to learn Arabic but gave up. He later became fluent in Turkish . The only other languages he

2880-468: Is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created. Ben-Gurion published two volumes setting out his views on relations between Zionists and

3000-621: Is rearing its ugly head again in Germany, and our so-called Western 'friends' are nurturing that Nazism; they are resurrecting Nazi Germany ... Our army, the Israel Defense Forces , will be in the same camp as the Nazi army, and the Nazis will begin infiltrating here not as our most terrible enemies, but rather as our allies ..." At a session of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in September 1952, Yitzhak Ben-Aharon , then

3120-572: The 1955 elections . He backed Israel's reprisal operations to Arab guerrilla attacks , and its invasion, along with Britain and France, of Egypt during the Suez Crisis in 1956. He stepped down from office in 1963, and retired from political life in 1970. He then moved to his modest "hut" in Sde Boker , a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death. Posthumously, Ben-Gurion

3240-789: The British Army and trained at Fort Edward in Windsor, Nova Scotia . He volunteered for the 38th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers , one of the four which constituted the Jewish Legion. His unit fought against the Ottomans as part of Chaytor's Force during the Palestine Campaign , though he remained in a Cairo hospital with dysentery. In 1918, after a period of guarding prisoners of war in the Egyptian desert, his battalion

3360-631: The Jaffa Professional Trade Union Alliance with 75 members. He and Shochat also brokered a settlement to a strike at the Rishon Le Zion winery where six workers had been sacked. After three months the two-man Central Committee was dissolved, partly because, at that time, Ben-Gurion was less militant than Shochat and the Rostovians. Ben-Gurion returned to Petah Tikva. During this time Ben-Gurion sent

3480-541: The No'ar Ha'Oved youth movement . Ben-Gurion gave him a lift, and out of the blue told him why he preferred Lenin to Trotsky : "Lenin was Trotsky's inferior in terms of intellect", but Lenin, unlike Trotsky, "was decisive". When confronted with a dilemma, Trotsky would do what Ben-Gurion despised about the old-style diaspora Jews: he manoeuvred; as opposed to Lenin, who would cut the Gordian knot , accepting losses while focusing on

3600-666: The Palestine region of the Ottoman Empire in 1906. Adopting the name of Ben-Gurion in 1909, he rose to become the preeminent leader of the Jewish community in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935 until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, which he led until 1963 with a short break in 1954–55. Ben-Gurion's interest for Zionism developed early in his life, leading him to become

3720-768: The State of Israel as well as its first prime minister . As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine , and largely led the movement for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine . Born in Płońsk , then part of Congress Poland , to Polish Jewish parents, he immigrated to

Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany - Misplaced Pages Continue

3840-661: The US Attorney 's Office announced an indictment against 11 employees of the Claims Conference and several other individuals for fraud and embezzlement of over $ 42 million from the Claims Conference. The Claims Conference management alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation as soon as it discovered the fraud in 2009, and continues to cooperate with the FBI. On October 19, 2012, The Forward reported that

3960-717: The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine . While the Jewish Agency under Ben-Gurion accepted, the Arabs rejected the plan and the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine broke out. Ben-Gurion's strategy was for the Haganah to hold on to every position with no retreat or surrender and then launch an offensive when British forces had evacuated to such an extent that there would be no more danger of British intervention. This strategy

4080-523: The expulsion and flight of a majority of the Palestinian Arab population. Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father ". Following the war, Ben-Gurion served as Israel's first prime minister and minister of defence . As prime minister, he helped build state institutions, presiding over national projects aimed at the development of the country. He also oversaw the absorption of Jewish immigrants . A major part of his foreign policy

4200-606: The 1948 war, when General Yigal Allon also proposed the conquest of the West Bank up to the Jordan River as the natural, defensible border of the state. This time, Ben-Gurion refused although he was aware that the IDF was militarily strong enough to carry out the conquest. He feared the reaction of Western powers and wanted to maintain good relations with the United States and not to provoke the British. Moreover, in his opinion

4320-407: The 1990s, Dr Pinto-Duschinsky , commented: "It is wrong for the executive vice-president to earn annually the same as the compensation for several hundred former slave laborers. The moral authority of the leading Jewish organizations is gravely weakened by excessively high salaries for top officials." One of the most outspoken critics of the Claims Conference is Isi Leibler , the former chairman of

4440-641: The Arab League. Public debate was among the fiercest in Israeli history. Opposition to the agreement came from both the right ( Herut and the General Zionists ) and the left ( Mapam ) of the political spectrum; both sides argued that accepting reparation payments were the equivalent of forgiving the Nazis for their crimes. On 5 November 1951, Yaakov Hazan of Mapam said in the Knesset: " Nazism

4560-594: The Arab economies; and a Jewish trade union was to be established. Three members of the Central Committee resigned and Ben-Gurion and Shochat continued meeting weekly in Jaffa or Ben Shemen where Shochat was working. Ben-Gurion walked to the meetings from Petah Tikva until he moved to Jaffa where he gave occasional Hebrew lessons. His political activity resulted in the establishment of three small trade unions amongst some tailors, carpenters and shoemakers. He set up

4680-428: The Arab world: We and Our Neighbors , published in 1931, and My Talks with Arab Leaders published in 1967. Ben-Gurion believed in the equal rights of Arabs who remained in and would become citizens of Israel. He was quoted as saying, "We must start working in Jaffa. Jaffa must employ Arab workers. And there is a question of their wages. I believe that they should receive the same wage as a Jewish worker. An Arab has also

4800-457: The Arabs" or "not expel the Arabs" depending on one's interpretation of whether such deletion was intended by Ben-Gurion. Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that the idea of expulsion of Palestinian Arabs was endorsed in practice by mainstream Zionist leaders, particularly Ben-Gurion. He did not give clear or written orders in that regard, but Morris claims that Ben-Gurion's subordinates understood his policy well: From April 1948, Ben-Gurion

4920-654: The British, and after Lehi assassinated Lord Moyne , the British Minister of State in the Middle East, decided to stop it by force. While Lehi was convinced to suspend operations, the Irgun refused and as a result, the Haganah began supplying intelligence to the British enabling them to arrest Irgun members, and abducting and often torturing Irgun members, handing some over to the British while keeping others detained in secret Haganah prisons. This campaign, which

Reparations Agreement between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany - Misplaced Pages Continue

5040-566: The British, stating: "Peace in Palestine is not the best situation for thwarting the policy of the White Paper". Ben-Gurion believed a peaceful solution with the Arabs had no chance and soon began preparing the Yishuv for war. According to Teveth "through his campaign to mobilize the Yishuv in support of the British war effort, he strove to build the nucleus of a 'Hebrew Army', and his success in this endeavor later brought victory to Zionism in

5160-471: The British. In June 1946, the British launched Operation Agatha , a large police and military operation throughout Palestine, searching for arms and arresting Jewish leaders and Haganah members in order to stop the attacks and find documentary evidence of the alliance the British suspected existed between the Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. The British had intended to detain Ben-Gurion during the operation but he

5280-533: The Claims Conference allocated funds for welfare services to support approximately 10,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors (5,000 with home care and 500 bed-bound) in Ukraine, who required additional assistance due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The organization also committed an additional $ 47 million for welfare services in 2023, alongside other direct payments to survivors. Every year since 2017

5400-696: The Claims Conference has hosted International Holocaust Survivors Night on the third night of Chanukah to honor Jewish survivors of the Shoah. Events have been hosted in Jerusalem, Berlin, the New York/New Jersey metro area, Paris and Moscow. On May 19, 2006, The Jewish Chronicle revealed that the Claims Conference highest-paid official, executive vice-president Gideon Taylor, was awarded $ 437,811 (£240,000) in salary and pension (2004 numbers). An advisor to British survivors in compensation claims in

5520-409: The General Assembly and in other places: talk of Arab-Jewish amity sound fantastic, for the Arabs do not wish it, they will not sit at the same table with us, they want to treat us as they do the Jews of Bagdad, Cairo, and Damascus. Nahum Goldmann criticised Ben-Gurion for what he viewed as a confrontational approach to the Arab world. Goldmann wrote, "Ben-Gurion is the man principally responsible for

5640-436: The German government and are subject to eligibility criteria determined by the German government. The Conference continually negotiates to expand and liberalize eligibility criteria in order to include additional victims in the programs. In 1978, after 25 years of payments, the total Federal Republic of Germany compensation payments amounted to 53 billion Deutsch Marks. Payments from some programs continue to this day. In 2022,

5760-481: The German government in 1998 and 1999 to compensate Holocaust victims who immigrated to the US after the war." In 2007, Israeli MK Rafi Eitan made suggestions that were interpreted as a claim to reopen the agreement, although he insisted that he merely intended to "establish a German-Israeli work team that would examine how Germany could help the financially struggling survivors". Initially, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück rejected any possibility of expanding

5880-455: The Governing Board of the World Jewish Congress , who cites allegations of incompetence, impropriety and cover-ups as well as the absence of an independent review board, bureaucratization and a domination by a small clique. In an article of The Jerusalem Post he says that "the richest Jewish foundation in the world, has still failed to provide adequate financial assistance to elderly and sick Holocaust survivors who live in abject poverty in

6000-425: The Holocaust , were complicated further by Cold War politics and the division of Germany into mutually hostile Eastern and Western states; the former a communist satellite aligned with the Soviet Union , the latter a liberal democracy oriented towards the West. Due to a variety of factors, it quickly became apparent that West Germany would be the state most willing and able to deal with Israeli claims related to

6120-404: The Holocaust. To complicate matters further, Israel also had to be sensitive to the strategic interests of the United States which, following the breakdown in the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, had come to believe the establishment of a prosperous West German economy was essential to forge a reliable and productive alliance with the postwar democratic government, seated in Bonn . Israel

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6240-508: The Holy Land. The group ran Hebrew classes for local youth and in 1903 collected funds for the victims of the Kishinev pogrom . One biographer writes that Ezra had 150 members within a year. A different source estimates the group never had more than "several dozen" members. In 1904 Ben-Gurion moved to Warsaw where he hoped to enroll in the Warsaw Mechanical-Technical School founded by Hipolit Wawelberg . He did not have sufficient qualifications to matriculate and took work teaching Hebrew in

6360-409: The Israeli merchant marine. Funds from the reparations were also used for port development; the Port of Haifa was able to obtain new cranes, including a floating crane that was named Bar Kokhba . The Bank of Israel credited the reparations for about 15% of Israel's GNP growth and the creation of 45,000 jobs during the 12-year period they had been in effect, though the BoI report also noted that

6480-440: The Jewish Resistance Movement be dissolved. From then on, the Irgun and Lehi continued to regularly attack the British, but the Haganah rarely did so, and while Ben-Gurion along with other mainstream Zionist leaders publicly condemned the Irgun and Lehi attacks, in practice the Haganah under their direction rarely cooperated with the British in attempting to suppress the insurgency. Due to the Jewish insurgency, bad publicity over

6600-424: The Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant. In autumn of 1906 he left Poland to go to Palestine . He travelled with his sweetheart Rachel Nelkin and her mother, as well as Shlomo Zemach his comrade from Ezra . His voyage

6720-405: The Manifesto Committee the task of deciding the new party's objectives. They produced The Ramleh Program which was approved by a second smaller 15-man conference held in Jaffa the following January 1907. The program stated "the party aspires to political independence of the Jewish People in this country." All activities were to be conducted in Hebrew; there should be segregation of the Jewish and

6840-438: The Nazis, but stressed that the Germans could never make up for what they did with any type of material recompense. Negotiations leading to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany began in March 1952 and were conducted between representatives of the government of the Federal Republic, the government of the State of Israel, and representatives of the World Jewish Congress, headed by Goldmann. These discussions led to

6960-507: The State of Israel ... to bring about a solution of the material indemnity problem, thus easing the way to the spiritual settlement of infinite suffering." One month after Adenauer's speech, Nahum Goldmann , co-chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and president of the World Jewish Congress , convened a meeting in New York City of 23 major Jewish national and international organizations. The participants made clear that these talks were to be limited to discussion of material claims, and thus

7080-433: The ages of five and 13 Ben-Gurion attended five different heders as well as compulsory Russian classes. Two of the heders were 'modern' and taught in Hebrew rather than Yiddish . His father could not afford to enroll Ben-Gurion in Płońsk's beth midrash so Ben-Gurion's formal education ended after his bar mitzvah . At the age of 14 he and two friends formed a youth club, Ezra , promoting Hebrew studies and emigration to

7200-567: The agreement, but subsequently German government spokesman Thomas Steg said that Germany was willing to discuss the possibility of making extra pension payments to Holocaust survivors if the Israeli government makes an official request. In 2009, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz announced that he will demand a further €450 million to €1 billion in reparations from Germany on behalf of some 30,000 Israeli forced labor survivors. Claims Conference The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany , or Claims Conference , represents

7320-418: The anti-Arab policy, because it was he who molded the thinking of generations of Israelis." Simha Flapan quoted Ben-Gurion as stating in 1938: "I believe in our power, in our power which will grow, and if it will grow agreement will come..." Goldmann reported that Ben Gurion had told him in private in 1956: Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That

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7440-408: The city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than

7560-439: The country's infrastructure and played an important role in establishing the economy of the new state . Israel at the time faced a deep economic crisis and was heavily dependent on donations by foreign Jews, and the reparations, along with these donations, would help turn Israel into an economically viable country. The reparations were paid directly to the headquarters of the Israeli purchase delegation in Cologne , which received

7680-505: The creation of the state of Israel in 1948. During the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine , Ben-Gurion instigated a policy of restraint (" Havlagah ") in which the Haganah and other Jewish groups did not retaliate for Arab attacks against Jewish civilians, concentrating only on self-defense. In 1937, the Peel Commission recommended partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab areas and Ben-Gurion supported this policy. This led to conflict with Ze'ev Jabotinsky who opposed partition and as

7800-410: The debate in the Knesset on 7 January 1952, all adjacent roads were blocked. Roadblocks and wire fences were set up around the building and the IDF was prepared to suppress an insurrection. The rally, gathered by the agreement's opponents drew 15,000 people and the riots that ensued would be the most significant attempt in Israeli history to overturn a democratically made Knesset decision. The decision

7920-423: The essentials. In Peres' opinion, the essence of Ben-Gurion's life work were "the decisions he made at critical junctures in Israel's history", and none was as important as the acceptance of the 1947 partition plan , a painful compromise which gave the emerging Jewish state little more than a fighting chance, but which, according to Peres, enabled the establishment of the State of Israel. The 1937 Ben-Gurion letter

8040-519: The first year, using various pen names, eventually settling for Ben Gurion. The adopting of Hebrew names was common amongst those who remained during the Second Aliyah . He chose Ben-Gurion after the historic Joseph ben Gurion . In the spring of 1911, faced with the collapse of the Second Aliyah, Poale Zion's leadership decided the future lay in "Ottomanisation". Ben-Zvi , Manya and Israel Shochat announced their intention to move to Istanbul . Ben-Zvi and Shochat planned to study law; Ben-Gurion

8160-459: The following spring he was invited, by Ben-Zvi, to join the staff of Poale Zion's new Hebrew periodical, Ha'ahdut (The Unity), which was being established in Jerusalem. They needed his fluency in Hebrew for translating and proof reading. It was the end of his career as a farm labourer. The first three editions came out monthly with an initial run of 1000 copies. It then became a weekly with a print run of 450 copies. He contributed 15 articles over

8280-413: The fraud had grown to $ 57 million. In 2013, an 8-year jail sentence was handed down to Art. 2 funds director Semen Domnitser. David Ben-Gurion David Ben-Gurion ( / b ɛ n ˈ ɡ ʊər i ə n / ben GOOR -ee-ən ; Hebrew : דָּוִד בֶּן־גּוּרִיּוֹן [daˈvid ben ɡuʁˈjon] ; born David Grün ; 16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of

8400-403: The funds deposited by various Nazis in Swiss banks. In addition, individual companies (many of them based in Germany) began to be pressured by survivor groups to compensate former forced laborers. Among them are Deutsche Bank AG , Siemens AG , Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) , Volkswagen AG , and Adam Opel AG . In response, early in 1999, the German government proclaimed the establishment of

8520-402: The funds received were not crucial in that Israel would have secured the funds in any case from other sources. Yad Vashem noted that "in the 1990s, Jews began making claims for property stolen in Eastern Europe. Various groups also began investigating what happened to the money deposited in Swiss banks by Jews outside of Switzerland who were later murdered in the Holocaust, and what happened to

8640-538: The help of information about Holocaust victims made available by Yad Vashem, an international commission under former US Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger has been trying to uncover the names of those who had been insured and were murdered in the Holocaust. The World Jewish Restitution Organization was created to organize these efforts. On behalf of US citizens, the US Foreign Claims Settlement Commission reached agreements with

8760-476: The introduction and two-thirds of the text. He suspended all his Poale Zion activities and spent most of the next 18 months in New York Public Library . Ben-Zvi, originally designated as co-editor, contributed a section on Jewish history in which he expounded the theory that the fellahin currently living in the area were descendants of pre- Roman conquest Jews. Eretz Israel – Past and Present

8880-564: The memory and lessons of the Holocaust . Julius Berman has led the organization as chairman of the board, and currently president, as of 2020 . The organization was founded in 1951 as a result of negotiations between 23 American Jewish organizations and the government of West Germany under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . As of 2012, the Claims Conference had administered the following programs, which provide direct payments to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. Programs were negotiated with

9000-545: The money from the German government in annual installments. The delegation then bought goods and shipped them to Israel, receiving its orders from a Tel Aviv -based company that had been set up to decide what to purchase and for whom. A great part of the reparations money went into purchasing equipment and raw materials for companies that were owned by the government, the Jewish Agency , and the Histadrut labor union. Notably, much of that money went into purchasing equipment for about 1,300 industrial plants; two-thirds of this money

9120-402: The more moderate Zionist labour party (it was still a left-wing organisation, but not as far-left as other factions) under Ben-Gurion's leadership. In the 1940s the left-wing of Mapai broke away to form Mapam . Labor Zionism became the dominant tendency in the World Zionist Organization and in 1935 Ben-Gurion became chairman of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency , a role he kept until

9240-488: The murderers do not become the heirs as well" . His other argument was that the reparations were needed to finance the absorption and rehabilitation of the Holocaust survivors in Israel. "The Claims Conference had the task of negotiating with the German government a program of indemnification for the material damages to Jewish individuals and to the Jewish people caused by Germany through the Holocaust." Israel's relations with Germany, already extremely delicate on account of

9360-549: The next four months Ben-Gurion and Ben Zvi embarked on a speaking tour planned to visit Poale Zion groups in 35 cities in an attempt to raise a pioneer army, Hechalutz , of 10,000 men to fight on the Ottoman side. The tour was a disappointment. Audiences were small; Poale Zion had fewer than 3,000 members, mostly in the New York area. Ben-Gurion was hospitalised with diphtheria for two weeks and spoke on only five occasions and

9480-497: The office of Germany's independent federal auditor announced it was considering an investigation of the Claims Conference in June 2008. In 2023 Claims Conference launched an international investigation into Holocaust denialism . They pushed the claim a large percentage of Dutch youth dismissed the Holocaust. However, investigators and reporters noticed the research was done shoddily and the results seemed made-up. On November 9, 2010,

9600-464: The organization that emerged from the meeting was called the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany—the Claims Conference. The Board of Directors of the new conference consisted of groups that took part in its formation, with each member agency designating two members to the board. In 1952, the first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion argued that the reparation demand was based on recovering as much Jewish property as possible " so that

9720-475: The protests, the agreement was signed in September 1952, and West Germany paid Israel a sum of 3 billion marks (around 714 million USD according to 1953–1955 conversion rates) over the next fourteen years; 450 million marks were paid to the World Jewish Congress. The payments were made to the State of Israel as the heir to those victims who had no surviving family. The money was invested in

9840-542: The protests. In October 1952 Dov Shilansky was arrested near the Foreign Ministry building, carrying a pack of dynamite . In his trial, he was accused of being a member of an underground organization against the Reparations Agreement and was sentenced to 21 months in prison. Several parcel bombs were sent to Adenauer and other targets, one of which killed a policeman who handled it. Despite

9960-753: The restriction of Jewish immigrants to Palestine, non-acceptance of a partitioned state (as suggested by the United Nations) amongst Arab leaders, and the cost of keeping 100,000 troops in Palestine the British Government referred the matter to the United Nations. In September 1947, the British decided to terminate the Mandate. In November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution approving

10080-420: The results of the war were already satisfactory and Israeli leaders had to focus on the building of a nation. According to Benny Morris, "Ben-Gurion got cold feet during the war. ... If [he] had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country -the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion rather than

10200-610: The right to be elected president of the state, should he be elected by all." Ben-Gurion recognised the strong attachment of Palestinian Arabs to the land. In an address to the United Nations on 2 October 1947, he doubted the likelihood of peace: This is our native land; it is not as birds of passage that we return to it. But it is situated in an area engulfed by Arabic-speaking people, mainly followers of Islam. Now, if ever, we must do more than make peace with them; we must achieve collaboration and alliance on equal terms. Remember what Arab delegations from Palestine and its neighbors say in

10320-530: The ruling CDU/CSU's 214 MPs supported the motion, which relied on the unanimous support of the opposition Social Democrats to get through. The Arab League strongly opposed the motion and threatened a boycott of the Federal Republic of Germany after it passed the restitution agreement, but the plan was abandoned due to economic considerations, namely that the Arab League would suffer far more from losing trade with West Germany than West Germany would from

10440-499: The same time Ben-Gurion assisted the illegal immigration of thousands of European Jewish refugees to Palestine during a period when the British placed heavy restrictions on Jewish immigration. In 1944, the Irgun and Lehi , two Jewish right-wing armed groups, declared a rebellion against British rule and began attacking British administrative and police targets. Ben-Gurion and other mainstream Zionist leaders opposed armed action against

10560-539: The struggle to establish a Jewish state." During the Second World War, Ben-Gurion encouraged the Jewish population to volunteer for the British Army . He famously told Jews to "support the British as if there is no White Paper and oppose the White Paper as if there is no war". About 10% of the Jewish population of Palestine volunteered for the British Armed Forces, including many women. At

10680-626: The survivors, and everything else should be secondary. We are spending money for thousands of projects, but the health of the survivors can't wait. They are dying daily." [...] "I'm not saying that these are bad programs, but they can wait – or else they should be the responsibility of the world Jewish community, not the Claims Conference. In a 2006 investigative report, it was claimed the organization, while having $ 1.7 billion in its accounts, finances welfare assistance for only 9,000 survivors while "tens of millions of dollars each year" are spent on management expenses. Amidst this mounting criticism,

10800-575: The ten-day campaign during the 1948 war , the Israelis were militarily superior to their enemies and the Cabinet subsequently considered where and when to attack next. On 24 September, an incursion made by the Palestinian irregulars in the Latrun sector, killing 23 Israeli soldiers, precipitated the debate. On 26 September, Ben-Gurion put his argument to the Cabinet to attack Latrun again and conquer

10920-485: The twilight of their lives. An organization which boasts that it currently holds in trust $ 900 million in assets, yet fails to rectify such a condition, must be held accountable for one of the greatest scandals in contemporary Jewish life." The priorities of the organization have also been criticized. Among the critics is the Claims Conference own treasurer, Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor, who told The Jewish Chronicle : "Survivors are suffering. Our only priority should be

11040-530: The violent insurrection against the British in cooperation with the Irgun and Lehi with the approval of himself and other Jewish Agency officials. However, Ben-Gurion asked that the operation be delayed, but the Irgun refused. The Irgun carried out the King David Hotel bombing in July 1946, killing 91 people. Ben-Gurion publicly condemned the bombing. In the aftermath of the bombing, Ben-Gurion ordered that

11160-505: The water supply, oil drilling, mining equipment for use in extracting copper from the Timna Valley mines, and heavy equipment for agriculture and construction such as combines, tractors, and trucks. About 30% of the reparations money went into buying fuel, while 17% was used to purchase ships for the Israeli merchant fleet; some fifty ships including two passenger liners were purchased, and by 1961, these vessels constituted two-thirds of

11280-464: The whole or a large part of West Bank. The motion was rejected by a vote of seven to five after discussions. Ben-Gurion qualified the cabinet's decision as bechiya ledorot ("a source of lament for generations") considering Israel may have lost forever the Old City of Jerusalem. There is a controversy around these events. According to Uri Bar-Joseph, Ben-Gurion placed a plan that called for

11400-722: The world's Jews in negotiating for compensation and restitution for victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs. According to Section 2(1)(3) of the Property Law of Germany, the Claims Conference is a legal successor with respect to the claims not filed on time by Jewish persons. This fact was reasserted in decisions of some lawsuits which attempted to redefine the Claims Conference as a "trustee" of these assets. These lawsuits were dismissed. The Claims Conference administers compensation funds, recovers unclaimed Jewish property, and allocates funds to institutions that provide social welfare services to Holocaust survivors and preserve

11520-421: Was able to use when in discussions with Arab leaders were English, and to a lesser extent, French. The British 1939 White paper stipulated that Jewish immigration to Palestine was to be limited to 15,000 a year for the first five years, and would subsequently be contingent on Arab consent. Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs. After this Ben-Gurion changed his policy towards

11640-693: Was arrested twice, the second time he was held for two weeks and only released with the help of his father. In December 1905 he returned to Płońsk as a full-time Poalei Zion operative. There he worked to oppose the anti-Zionist Bund who were trying to establish a base. He also organised a strike over working conditions amongst garment workers. He was known to use intimidatory tactics, such as extorting money from wealthy Jews at gunpoint to raise funds for Jewish workers. Ben-Gurion discussed his hometown in his memoirs, saying: For many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Płońsk

11760-649: Was at sea, returning from Istanbul, when the First World War broke out. He was not amongst the thousands of foreign nationals deported in December 1914. Based in Jerusalem , he and Ben-Zvi recruited forty Jews into a Jewish militia to assist the Ottoman Army. Despite his pro-Ottoman declarations he was deported to Egypt in March 1915. From there he made his way to the United States, arriving in May. For

11880-498: Was called the Saison or "Hunting Season", left the Irgun unable to continue operations as they struggled to survive. Irgun leader Menachem Begin ordered his fighters not to retaliate so as to prevent a civil war. The Saison became increasingly controversial in the Yishuv, including within the ranks of the Haganah, and it was aborted at the end of March 1945. At the end of World War II, the Zionist leadership in Palestine had expected

12000-484: Was elected onto the five-man Central Committee and the 10-man Manifesto Committee. He also arranged that Ben-Gurion was chosen as chairman of the sessions. These Ben-Gurion conducted in Hebrew, forbidding the translation of his address into Russian or Yiddish. The conference was divided: a large faction— Rostovians —wanted to create a single Arab–Jewish proletariat. This Shochat and Ben-Gurion opposed. The conference delegated

12120-450: Was expected that their relationship would continue when they landed in Jaffa but he shut her out after she was fired on her first day labouring—manuring the citrus groves of Petah Tikva. Whilst in New York City in 1915, he met Russian-born Paula Munweis and they married in 1917. In November 1919, after an 18-month separation, Paula and their daughter Geula joined Ben-Gurion in Jaffa . It

12240-561: Was funded by his father. Immediately on landing in Jaffa , 7 September 1906, Ben-Gurion set off, on foot, in a group of 14, to Petah Tikva . It was the largest of the 13 Jewish agricultural settlements and consisted of 80 households with a population of nearly 1,500; of these around 200 were Second Aliyah pioneers like Ben-Gurion. He found work as a day labourer, waiting each morning hoping to be chosen by an overseer. Jewish workers found it difficult competing with local villagers who were more skilled and prepared to work for less. Ben-Gurion

12360-691: Was given to 36 factories, most of them owned by the Histadrut. At the same time, hundreds of other plants, mostly privately owned ones, received minimal assistance with reparations money. From 1953 to 1963, the reparations money funded around one-third of investment in Israel's electrical system, helping it to triple its capacity, and nearly half the total investment in Israel Railways , which obtained German-made rolling stock, tracks, and signaling equipment with reparations money. The reparations were also used to purchase German-made machinery for developing

12480-543: Was improving relations with West Germany through a reparations agreement in compensation for Nazi confiscation of Jewish property during the Holocaust . In 1954, he resigned as prime minister and minister of defence but remained a member of the Knesset . He returned as minister of defence in 1955 after the Lavon Affair and the resignation of Pinhas Lavon . Later that year he became prime minister again, following

12600-412: Was intent on taking in what remained of European Jewry . Israel was also recovering from the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and was facing a deep economic crisis, which led to a policy of austerity . Unemployment was very high, especially in the ma'abarot camps, and foreign currency reserves were scarce. David Ben-Gurion and his party, Mapai , took a practical approach and argued that accepting the agreement

12720-569: Was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th century . David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk in Congress Poland —then part of the Russian Empire , to Polish Jewish parents. His father, Avigdor Grün, was a pokątny doradca (secret adviser), navigating his clients through the often corrupt Imperial legal system. Following the publication of Theodore Herzl 's Der Judenstaat in 1896 Avigdor co-founded

12840-573: Was poorly received. Ben-Zvi spoke to 14 groups as well as an event in New York City and succeeded in recruiting 44 volunteers for Hechalutz; Ben-Gurion recruited 19. Ben-Gurion embarked on a second tour in December, speaking at 19 meetings, mostly in small towns with larger events in Minneapolis and Galveston . Due to the lack of awareness of Poale Zion's activities in Palestine it was decided to republish Yizkor in Yiddish . The Hebrew original

12960-610: Was published in Jaffa in 1911; it consisted of eulogies to Zionist martyrs and included an account by Ben-Gurion of his Petah Tikva and Sejera experiences. The first edition appeared in February 1916 and was an immediate success; all 3,500 copies were sold. A second edition of 16,000 was published in August. Martin Buber wrote the introduction to the 1918 German edition. The follow-up was conceived as an anthology of work from Poale Zion leaders; in fact Ben-Gurion took over as editor, writing

13080-464: Was published in April 1918. It cost $ 2 and was 500 pages long, over twice the length of Yizkor . It was an immediate success, selling 7,000 copies in 4 months; second and third editions were printed. Total sales of 25,000 copies made a profit of $ 20,000 for Poale Zion. It made Ben-Gurion the most prominent Poale Zion leader in America. In May 1918 Ben-Gurion joined the newly formed Jewish Legion of

13200-481: Was remarkably free of it ... Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Płońsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland ... Life in Płońsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. ... The number of Jews and Poles in

13320-608: Was shocked at the number of Arabs employed. In November he caught malaria and the doctor advised he return to Europe. By the time he left Petah Tikva in summer of 1907 he had worked an average 10 days a month which frequently left him with no money for food. He wrote long letters in Hebrew to his father and friends. They rarely revealed how difficult life was. Others who had come from Płońsk were writing about tuberculosis, cholera and people dying of hunger. On his disembarkation at Jaffa, Ben-Gurion had been spotted by Israel Shochat who had arrived two years previously and had established

13440-511: Was successful, and by May 1948 Jewish forces were winning the civil war. On 14 May 1948, a few hours before the British Mandate officially terminated, Ben-Gurion declared Israeli independence in a ceremony in Tel Aviv. A few hours later, the State of Israel officially came into being when the British Mandate terminated on 15 May. The 1948 Arab–Israeli War began immediately afterwards as numerous Arab nations then invaded Israel. After

13560-413: Was the first time he met his one-year-old daughter. The couple had three children: a son, Amos, and two daughters, Geula Ben-Eliezer and Renana Leshem. Amos married Mary Callow, already pregnant with their first child. She was an Irish gentile , and although Reform rabbi Joachim Prinz converted her to Judaism soon after, neither the Palestine rabbinate nor her mother-in-law Paula Ben-Gurion considered her

13680-542: Was the language to be used; the future lay with a united Jewish and Arab proletariat . Further disappointment came when Ben-Zvi and Shochat were elected as representatives to go to the World Zionist Congress . Ben-Gurion came last of five candidates. He was not aware that at the next gathering, on Ben-Zvi's return, a secret para-military group was set up— Bar-Giora —under Shochat's leadership. Distancing himself from Poale Zion activism Ben-Gurion, who had been

13800-604: Was the only way to sustain the nation's economy. "There are two approaches", he told the Mapai central committee. "One is the ghetto Jew's approach and the other is of an independent people. I don't want to run after a German and spit in his face. I don't want to run after anybody. I want to sit here and build here. I'm not going to go to America to take part in a vigil against Adenauer". Negotiations were held between Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer . In 1951, Israeli authorities made

13920-632: Was to join them but first needed to learn Turkish , spending eight months in Salonika , at that time the most advanced Jewish community in the area. Whilst studying he had to conceal that he was Ashkenazi due to local Sephardic prejudices. Ben-Zvi obtained a forged secondary school certificate so Ben-Gurion could join him in Dar al-Funun . Ben-Gurion was entirely dependent on funding from his father, while Ben-Zvi found work teaching. Struggling with ill health, Ben-Gurion spent some time in hospital. Ben-Gurion

14040-543: Was transferred to Sarafand . On 13 December 1918 he was demoted from corporal to private, fined three days' pay and transferred to the lowest company in the battalion. He had been five days absent without leave visiting friends in Jaffa . He was demobilised in early 1919. One of Ben-Gurion's companions when he made the Aliyah was Rachel Nelkin. Her step-father, Reb Simcha Isaac, was the leading Zionist in Płońsk, and they had met three years previously at one of his meetings. It

14160-520: Was ultimately accepted by 61–50 margin, but not before the advancing riots interrupted the plenum debate for the first time in Knesset history. Following a passionate speech, Menachem Begin led the protesters towards the Knesset. Begin referred to the Altalena Affair in 1948, when the IDF shelled a ship carrying arms for the Irgun by order of Ben Gurion, saying, "When you fired at me with

14280-469: Was visiting Paris at the time. The British stored the documents they had captured from the Jewish Agency headquarters in the King David Hotel , which was being used as a military and administrative headquarters. Ben-Gurion agreed to the Irgun's plan to bomb the King David Hotel in order to destroy incriminating documents that Ben-Gurion feared would prove that the Haganah had been participating in

14400-506: Was written when he was head of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency , to his son Amos on 5 October 1937. The letter is well known to scholars as it provides insight into Ben-Gurion's reaction to the report of the Peel Commission released on 7 July of the same year. It has also been subject to significant debate by scholars as a result of scribbled-out text that may or may not provide written evidence of an intention to "expel

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