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170-732: The construction of a field school began in 1962, inspired by David Ben-Gurion 's vision of developing a thriving Jewish culture in the arid Negev. Ben Gurion envisioned the place to be a "Hebrew Oxford of the Negev". The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research , affiliated with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev , the Ben Gurion Heritage Institute, and a high school (with a boarding school) emphasizing environmental studies, are now located there. Ben-Gurion and his wife Paula Ben-Gurion are buried nearby in

340-505: 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

510-715: 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

680-529: 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

850-579: 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

1020-699: A calamitous end in 1683 when Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa Pasha led a huge army to attempt a second Ottoman siege of Vienna in the Great Turkish War of 1683–1699. The final assault being fatally delayed, the Ottoman forces were swept away by allied Habsburg, German, and Polish forces spearheaded by the Polish king John III Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna . The alliance of the Holy League pressed home

1190-434: 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

1360-500: A coup, but he did see the need for military mobilization. In 1883, a German military mission under General Baron Colmar von der Goltz arrived to train the Ottoman Army, leading to the so-called "Goltz generation" of German-trained officers, who played a notable role in the politics of the empire's last years. From 1894 to 1896, between 100,000 and 300,000 Armenians living throughout the empire were killed in what became known as

1530-423: 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

1700-496: A fairly modern conscripted army , banking system reforms, the decriminalization of homosexuality, the replacement of religious law with secular law, and guilds with modern factories. The Ottoman Ministry of Post was established in Istanbul in 1840. American inventor Samuel Morse received an Ottoman patent for the telegraph in 1847, issued by Sultan Abdülmecid , who personally tested the invention. The reformist period peaked with

1870-549: A figure that vastly exceeded the number of Muslim children in school at the time, who were further hindered by the amount of time spent learning Arabic and Islamic theology. Author Norman Stone suggests that the Arabic alphabet, in which Turkish was written until 1928 , was ill-suited to reflect the sounds of Turkish (which is a Turkic as opposed to Semitic language), which imposed further difficulty on Turkish children. In turn, Christians' higher educational levels allowed them to play

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2040-604: 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

2210-422: 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

2380-436: 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

2550-508: A larger role in the economy, with the rise in prominence of groups such as the Sursock family indicative of this. In 1911, of the 654 wholesale companies in Istanbul, 528 were owned by ethnic Greeks. In many cases, Christians and Jews gained protection from European consuls and citizenship, meaning they were protected from Ottoman law and not subject to the same economic regulations as their Muslim counterparts. The Crimean War (1853–1856)

2720-615: 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,

2890-521: 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

3060-633: 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

3230-687: A major center for its trade, contributing to its continued prosperity throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century. Under Ivan IV (1533–1584), the Tsardom of Russia expanded into the Volga and Caspian regions at the expense of the Tatar khanates. In 1571, the Crimean khan Devlet I Giray , commanded by the Ottomans, burned Moscow . The next year, the invasion was repeated but repelled at

3400-615: A partial one- he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations." In order to prevent the coalescence of the religious right, the Histadrut agreed to a vague status quo agreement with Mizrahi in 1935. Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire ( / ˈ ɒ t ə m ə n / ), also called the Turkish Empire , was an imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe , West Asia , and North Africa from

3570-558: 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

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3740-613: 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

3910-521: A sense of Turkish nationalism. In this period, the Ottoman Empire spent only small amounts of public funds on education; for example, in 1860–1861 only 0.2% of the total budget was invested in education. As the Ottoman state attempted to modernize its infrastructure and army in response to outside threats, it opened itself up to a different kind of threat: that of creditors. As the historian Eugene Rogan has written, "the single greatest threat to

4080-925: 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 ,

4250-595: A transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II , which marked the Ottomans' emergence as a major regional power. Under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the empire reached the peak of its power, prosperity, and political development. By the start of the 17th century, the Ottomans presided over 32 provinces and numerous vassal states , which over time were either absorbed into

4420-601: 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 ,

4590-459: A victory over the Ottoman fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), off southwestern Greece; Catholic forces killed over 30,000 Turks and destroyed 200 of their ships. It was a startling, if mostly symbolic, blow to the image of Ottoman invincibility, an image which the victory of the Knights of Malta over the Ottoman invaders in the 1565 siege of Malta had recently set about eroding. The battle

4760-628: 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

4930-468: 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

5100-572: 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

5270-639: The Anatolian Beyliks . One of these, in the region of Bithynia on the frontier of the Byzantine Empire, was led by the Turkish tribal leader Osman I ( d. 1323/4), a figure of obscure origins from whom the name Ottoman is derived. Osman's early followers consisted of Turkish tribal groups and Byzantine renegades, with many but not all converts to Islam. Osman extended control of his principality by conquering Byzantine towns along

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5440-525: The Arab Revolt . During this period, the Ottoman government engaged in genocide against Armenians , Assyrians , and Greeks . In the aftermath of World War I , the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France . The successful Turkish War of Independence , led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against

5610-465: The Battle of Molodi . The Ottoman Empire continued to invade Eastern Europe in a series of slave raids , and remained a significant power in Eastern Europe until the end of the 17th century. The Ottomans decided to conquer Venetian Cyprus and on 22 July 1570, Nicosia was besieged; 50,000 Christians died, and 180,000 were enslaved. On 15 September 1570, the Ottoman cavalry appeared before

5780-584: The Ben-Gurion Tomb National Park on a cliff overlooking the Zin valley. The Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research has developed a solar energy research program focusing on how extremes of heat and cold in the desert can be mitigated through efficient storage of heat during the day for release at night. An adobe house was built with rational fenestration , small windows in the northern side and heat collecting concrete prisms in

5950-728: The Bosporus Strait made it difficult to conquer. In 1402, the Byzantines were temporarily relieved when the Turco-Mongol leader Timur , founder of the Timurid Empire , invaded Ottoman Anatolia from the east. In the Battle of Ankara in 1402, Timur defeated Ottoman forces and took Sultan Bayezid I as prisoner, throwing the empire into disorder. The ensuing civil war lasted from 1402 to 1413 as Bayezid's sons fought over succession. It ended when Mehmed I emerged as

6120-733: 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

6290-665: The Bulgarian Tsardom of Vidin in 1396, regarded as the last large-scale crusade of the Middle Ages , failed to stop the advance of the victorious Ottomans. As the Turks expanded into the Balkans, the conquest of Constantinople became a crucial objective. The Ottomans had already wrested control of nearly all former Byzantine lands surrounding the city, but the strong defense of Constantinople's strategic position on

6460-599: The Cape of Good Hope in 1488 initiated a series of Ottoman-Portuguese naval wars in the Indian Ocean throughout the 16th century. Despite the growing European presence in the Indian Ocean, Ottoman trade with the east continued to flourish. Cairo, in particular, benefitted from the rise of Yemeni coffee as a popular consumer commodity. As coffeehouses appeared in cities and towns across the empire, Cairo developed into

6630-545: The Constitution of the Ottoman Empire and brought in multi-party politics with a two-stage electoral system ( electoral law ) under the Ottoman parliament . The constitution offered hope by freeing the empire's citizens to modernise the state's institutions, rejuvenate its strength, and enable it to hold its own against outside powers. Its guarantee of liberties promised to dissolve inter-communal tensions and transform

6800-856: The Great Northern War of 1700–1721). Charles XII persuaded the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III to declare war on Russia, which resulted in an Ottoman victory in the Pruth River Campaign of 1710–1711, in Moldavia. After the Austro-Turkish War , the Treaty of Passarowitz confirmed the loss of the Banat, Serbia, and "Little Walachia" (Oltenia) to Austria. The Treaty also revealed that the Ottoman Empire

6970-545: The Greek revolt (1821–1829) that ultimately ended with the formal independence of Greece in 1830. It was a costly enterprise for Muhammad Ali, who had lost his fleet at the Battle of Navarino in 1827. Thus began the first Egyptian–Ottoman War (1831–1833) , during which the French-trained army of Muhammad Ali, under the command of his son Ibrahim Pasha , defeated the Ottoman Army as it marched into Anatolia , reaching

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7140-795: The Greeks declared war on the Sultan. A rebellion that originated in Moldavia as a diversion was followed by the main revolution in the Peloponnese , which, along with the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth , became the first parts of the Ottoman Empire to achieve independence (in 1829). In 1830, the French invaded the Deylik of Algiers . The campaign that took 21 days, resulted in over 5,000 Algerian military casualties, and about 2,600 French ones. Before

7310-399: The Hamidian massacres . In 1897 the population was 19   million, of whom 14   million (74%) were Muslim. An additional 20   million lived in provinces that remained under the sultan's nominal suzerainty but were entirely outside his actual power. One by one the Porte lost nominal authority. They included Egypt, Tunisia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lebanon. As

7480-434: The Iberian Union . The Ottomans were holders of the Caliph title, meaning they were the leaders of Muslims worldwide. The Iberians were leaders of the Christian crusaders, and so the two fought in a worldwide conflict. There were zones of operations in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean , where Iberians circumnavigated Africa to reach India and, on their way, wage war upon the Ottomans and their local Muslim allies. Likewise,

7650-413: 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

7820-489: The Köprülü era (1656–1703), effective control of the Empire was exercised by a sequence of grand viziers from the Köprülü family. The Köprülü Vizierate saw renewed military success with authority restored in Transylvania, the conquest of Crete completed in 1669, and expansion into Polish southern Ukraine , with the strongholds of Khotyn , and Kamianets-Podilskyi and the territory of Podolia ceding to Ottoman control in 1676. This period of renewed assertiveness came to

7990-440: 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

8160-451: The Oriental Crisis of 1840 . Muhammad Ali had close relations with France , and the prospect of him becoming the Sultan of Egypt was widely viewed as putting the entire Levant into the French sphere of influence. As the Sublime Porte had proved itself incapable of defeating Muhammad Ali, the British Empire and Austrian Empire provided military assistance, and the second Egyptian–Ottoman War (1839–1841) ended with Ottoman victory and

8330-405: 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

8500-472: The Sakarya River . A Byzantine defeat at the Battle of Bapheus in 1302 contributed to Osman's rise. It is not well understood how the early Ottomans came to dominate their neighbors, due to the lack of sources surviving. The Ghaza thesis popular during the 20th century credited their success to rallying religious warriors to fight for them in the name of Islam , but it is no longer generally accepted. No other hypothesis has attracted broad acceptance. In

8670-477: The Spanish garrison of Castelnuovo on the Adriatic coast ; the successful siege cost the Ottomans 8,000 casualties, but Venice agreed to terms in 1540, surrendering most of its empire in the Aegean and the Morea . France and the Ottoman Empire, united by mutual opposition to Habsburg rule, became allies. The French conquests of Nice (1543) and Corsica (1553) occurred as a joint venture between French king Francis I and Suleiman, and were commanded by

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8840-454: The Treaty of Nasuh Pasha , which ceded the entire Caucasus, except westernmost Georgia, back into the possession of Safavid Iran . The treaty ending the Cretan War cost Venice much of Dalmatia , its Aegean island possessions, and Crete . (Losses from the war totalled 30,985 Venetian soldiers and 118,754 Turkish soldiers.) During his brief majority reign, Murad IV (1623–1640) reasserted central authority and recaptured Iraq (1639) from

9010-448: 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

9180-456: 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

9350-446: The 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe , between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a beylik , or principality , founded in northwestern Anatolia in c.  1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I . His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into

9520-433: 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

9690-475: 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

9860-428: 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

10030-406: The Arabic name ʿUthmān ( عثمان ). In Ottoman Turkish , the empire was referred to as Devlet-i ʿAlīye-yi ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عليه عثمانیه ), lit.   ' Sublime Ottoman State ' , or simply Devlet-i ʿO s mānīye ( دولت عثمانيه‎ ), lit.   ' Ottoman State ' . The Turkish word for "Ottoman" ( Osmanlı ) originally referred to the tribal followers of Osman in

10200-457: 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

10370-486: The Balkan Peninsula during the Congress of Berlin , and in return, Britain assumed the administration of Cyprus in 1878. Britain later sent troops to Egypt in 1882 to put down the Urabi Revolt (Sultan Abdul Hamid II was too paranoid to mobilize his own army, fearing this would result in a coup d'état), effectively gaining control in both territories. Abdul Hamid II was so fearful of a coup that he did not allow his army to conduct war games, lest this serve as cover for

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10540-445: The Balkans . Osman's son, Orhan , captured the northwestern Anatolian city of Bursa in 1326, making it the new capital and supplanting Byzantine control in the region. The important port of Thessaloniki was captured from the Venetians in 1387 and sacked. The Ottoman victory in Kosovo in 1389 effectively marked the end of Serbian power in the region, paving the way for Ottoman expansion into Europe. The Battle of Nicopolis for

10710-473: 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

10880-453: 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

11050-412: 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

11220-453: The CUP became increasingly radicalized and nationalistic, leading a coup d'état in 1913 that established a one-party regime. The CUP allied with the German Empire hoping to escape from the diplomatic isolation that had contributed to its recent territorial losses; it thus joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers . While the empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it struggled with internal dissent, especially

11390-446: The Conqueror , reorganized both state and military, and on 29 May 1453 conquered Constantinople , ending the Byzantine Empire. Mehmed allowed the Eastern Orthodox Church to maintain its autonomy and land in exchange for accepting Ottoman authority. Due to tension between the states of western Europe and the later Byzantine Empire, most of the Orthodox population accepted Ottoman rule, as preferable to Venetian rule. Albanian resistance

11560-444: The Constitution, called the Kanûn-u Esâsî . The empire's First Constitutional era was short-lived. The parliament survived for only two years before the sultan suspended it. The empire's Christian population, owing to their higher educational levels, started to pull ahead of the Muslim majority, leading to much resentment. In 1861, there were 571 primary and 94 secondary schools for Ottoman Christians, with 140,000 pupils in total,

11730-400: The Empire or granted various degrees of autonomy. With its capital at Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul ) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin , the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. While the Ottoman Empire was once thought to have entered a period of decline after the death of Suleiman

11900-482: The French invasion the total population of Algeria was most likely between 3,000,000 and 5,000,000. By 1873, the population of Algeria (excluding several hundred thousand newly arrived French settlers) had decreased to 2,172,000. In 1831, Muhammad Ali of Egypt revolted against Sultan Mahmud II due to the latter's refusal to grant him the governorships of Greater Syria and Crete , which the Sultan had promised him in exchange for sending military assistance to put down

12070-409: 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

12240-711: 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

12410-801: The Iberians passed through newly-Christianized Latin America and had sent expeditions that traversed the Pacific to Christianize the formerly Muslim Philippines and use it as a base to attack the Muslims in the Far East . In this case, the Ottomans sent armies to aid its easternmost vassal and territory, the Sultanate of Aceh in Southeast Asia. During the 1600s, the world conflict between

12580-864: The Islamic clergy successfully objected under the grounds of theodicy . In 1754 the artillery school was reopened on a semi-secret basis. In 1726, Ibrahim Muteferrika convinced the Grand Vizier Nevşehirli Damat Ibrahim Pasha , the Grand Mufti , and the clergy on the efficiency of the printing press, and Muteferrika was later granted by Sultan Ahmed III permission to publish non-religious books (despite opposition from some calligraphers and religious leaders). Muteferrika's press published its first book in 1729 and, by 1743, issued 17 works in 23 volumes, each having between 500 and 1,000 copies. In North Africa, Spain conquered Oran from

12750-590: The Janissary revolted . Selim's efforts cost him his throne and his life, but were resolved in spectacular and bloody fashion by his successor, the dynamic Mahmud II , who eliminated the Janissary corps in 1826. The Serbian revolution (1804–1815) marked the beginning of an era of national awakening in the Balkans during the Eastern Question . In 1811, the fundamentalist Wahhabis of Arabia, led by

12920-573: 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

13090-475: 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

13260-520: The Magnificent (1520–1566) captured Belgrade in 1521, conquered the southern and central parts of the Kingdom of Hungary as part of the Ottoman–Hungarian Wars , and, after his historic victory in the Battle of Mohács in 1526, he established Ottoman rule in the territory of present-day Hungary and other Central European territories. He then laid siege to Vienna in 1529, but failed to take

13430-459: The Magnificent, modern academic consensus posits that the empire continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. However, during a long period of peace from 1740 to 1768, the Ottoman military system fell behind those of its chief European rivals, the Habsburg and Russian empires. The Ottomans consequently suffered severe military defeats in

13600-592: 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

13770-541: The Ottoman Caliphate and Iberian Union was a stalemate since both were at similar population , technology and economic levels. Nevertheless, the success of the Ottoman political and military establishment was compared to the Roman Empire , despite the difference in size, by the likes of contemporary Italian scholar Francesco Sansovino and French political philosopher Jean Bodin . In the second half of

13940-704: The Ottoman Empire gradually shrank, 7–9   million Muslims from its former territories in the Caucasus, Crimea , Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace . After the Empire lost the First Balkan War (1912–1913), it lost all its Balkan territories except East Thrace (European Turkey). This resulted in around 400,000 Muslims fleeing with the retreating Ottoman armies (with many dying from cholera brought by

14110-573: The Ottoman admirals Hayreddin Barbarossa and Dragut . France supported the Ottomans with an artillery unit during the 1543 Ottoman conquest of Esztergom in northern Hungary. After further advances by the Turks, the Habsburg ruler Ferdinand officially recognized Ottoman ascendancy in Hungary in 1547. Suleiman died of natural causes during the siege of Szigetvár in 1566. Following his death,

14280-541: The Ottoman economy, and used its position to ensure that European capital continued to penetrate the empire, often to the detriment of local Ottoman interests. The Ottoman bashi-bazouks suppressed the Bulgarian uprising of 1876, massacring up to 100,000 people in the process. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with a decisive victory for Russia. As a result, Ottoman holdings in Europe declined sharply: Bulgaria

14450-555: The Ottomans were said to be declining, although this has been rejected by many scholars. By the end of Suleiman's reign, the Empire spanned approximately 877,888 sq mi (2,273,720 km ), extending over three continents. The Empire became a dominant naval force, controlling much of the Mediterranean Sea . The Empire was now a major part of European politics. The Ottomans became involved in multi-continental religious wars when Spain and Portugal were united under

14620-663: The Russian intervention, Sultan Mahmud II could have faced the risk of being overthrown and Muhammad Ali could have even become the new Sultan. These events marked the beginning of a recurring pattern where the Sublime Porte needed the help of foreign powers to protect itself. In 1839, the Sublime Porte attempted to take back what it lost to the de facto autonomous, but de jure still Ottoman Eyalet of Egypt , but its forces were initially defeated, which led to

14790-563: The Russians. After this treaty the Ottoman Empire was able to enjoy a generation of peace in Europe, as Austria and Russia were forced to deal with the rise of Prussia . Educational and technological reforms came about, including the establishment of higher education institutions such as the Istanbul Technical University . In 1734 an artillery school was established to impart Western-style artillery methods, but

14960-626: The Safavids. The resulting Treaty of Zuhab of that same year decisively divided the Caucasus and adjacent regions between the two neighbouring empires as it had already been defined in the 1555 Peace of Amasya. The Sultanate of Women (1533–1656) was a period in which the mothers of young sultans exercised power on behalf of their sons. The most prominent women of this period were Kösem Sultan and her daughter-in-law Turhan Hatice , whose political rivalry culminated in Kösem's murder in 1651. During

15130-521: The Turks, but was again defeated at the Second Battle of Kosovo in 1448. According to modern historiography, there is a direct connection between the rapid Ottoman military advance and the consequences of the Black Death from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. Byzantine territories, where the initial Ottoman conquests were carried out, were exhausted demographically and militarily due to

15300-537: The advantage of the defeat at Vienna, culminating in the Treaty of Karlowitz (26 January 1699), which ended the Great Turkish War. The Ottomans surrendered control of significant territories, many permanently. Mustafa II (1695–1703) led the counterattack of 1695–1696 against the Habsburgs in Hungary, but was undone at the disastrous defeat at Zenta (in modern Serbia), 11 September 1697. Aside from

15470-534: 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

15640-578: The al-Saud family, revolted against the Ottomans. Unable to defeat the Wahhabi rebels, the Sublime Porte had Muhammad Ali Pasha of Kavala , the vali (governor) of the Eyalet of Egypt , tasked with retaking Arabia, which ended with the destruction of the Emirate of Diriyah in 1818. The suzerainty of Serbia as a hereditary monarchy under its own dynasty was acknowledged de jure in 1830. In 1821,

15810-470: 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

15980-489: The autonomous Deylik of Algiers . The Bey of Oran received an army from Algiers, but it failed to recapture Oran ; the siege caused the deaths of 1,500 Spaniards, and even more Algerians. The Spanish also massacred many Muslim soldiers. In 1792, Spain abandoned Oran, selling it to the Deylik of Algiers. In 1768 Russian-backed Ukrainian Haidamakas , pursuing Polish confederates, entered Balta , an Ottoman-controlled town on

16150-657: The border of Bessarabia in Ukraine, massacred its citizens, and burned the town to the ground. This action provoked the Ottoman Empire into the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774 . The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca of 1774 ended the war and provided freedom of worship for the Christian citizens of the Ottoman-controlled provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. By the late 18th century, after a number of defeats in

16320-642: The century after Osman I, Ottoman rule had begun to extend over Anatolia and the Balkans . The earliest conflicts began during the Byzantine–Ottoman wars , waged in Anatolia in the late 13th century before entering Europe in the mid-14th century, followed by the Bulgarian–Ottoman wars and the Serbian–Ottoman wars in the mid-14th century. Much of this period was characterised by Ottoman expansion into

16490-448: The city of Kütahya within 320 km (200 mi) of the capital, Constantinople. In desperation, Sultan Mahmud II appealed to the empire's traditional arch-rival Russia for help, asking Emperor Nicholas I to send an expeditionary force to assist him. In return for signing the Treaty of Hünkâr İskelesi , the Russians sent the expeditionary force which deterred Ibrahim Pasha from marching any further towards Constantinople. Under

16660-460: 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

16830-634: The city. In 1532, he made another attack on Vienna, but was repulsed in the siege of Güns . Transylvania , Wallachia and, intermittently, Moldavia , became tributary principalities of the Empire. In the east, the Ottoman Turks took Baghdad from the Persians in 1535, gaining control of Mesopotamia and naval access to the Persian Gulf . In 1555, the Caucasus became partitioned for

17000-689: The civil strife, Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908. The last of the Ottoman censuses was performed in 1914 . Despite military reforms which reconstituted the Ottoman Modern Army , the Empire lost its North African territories and the Dodecanese in the Italo-Turkish War (1911) and almost all of its European territories in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913). The Empire faced continuous unrest in

17170-623: 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

17340-785: The day. The liquid is pumped between the two skins, protects the interior from ultraviolet rays and collects heat. At night the liquid is recirculated returning the heat to the greenhouse. David Faiman of the Solar Center has made advancements in the realm of concentrator photovoltaics CPV . Faiman has produced a CPV unit capable of producing energy at a factor of up to a thousand more than conventional units. Researchers at Midreshet Ben-Gurion have made breakthroughs in agriculture and biotechnology relevant to drylands and sustainable agriculture. The STRS1 and STRS2 genes, master controller genes in stress responses, discovered by Dr. Simon Barak and his students in 2006, helped to elucidate some of

17510-655: The eastern and southern frontiers by defeating Shah Ismail of Safavid Iran , in the Battle of Chaldiran . Selim I established Ottoman rule in Egypt by defeating and annexing the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and created a naval presence on the Red Sea . After this Ottoman expansion, competition began between the Portuguese Empire and the Ottomans to become the dominant power in the region. Suleiman

17680-514: The empire into a more harmonious place. Instead, this period became the story of the twilight struggle of the Empire. Members of Young Turks movement who had once gone underground now established their parties. Among them " Committee of Union and Progress ", and " Freedom and Accord Party " were major parties. On the other end of the spectrum were ethnic parties, which included Poale Zion , Al-Fatat , and Armenian national movement organised under Armenian Revolutionary Federation . Profiting from

17850-544: The end of the Caucasian Wars , 90% of the Circassians were ethnically cleansed and exiled from their homelands in the Caucasus, fleeing to the Ottoman Empire, resulting in the settlement of 500,000 to 700,000 Circassians in the Ottoman Empire. Crimean Tatar refugees in the late 19th century played an especially notable role in seeking to modernise Ottoman education and in first promoting both Pan-Turkism and

18020-523: The end of the seventeenth century, and instead the word increasingly became associated with the Greek population of the empire, a meaning that it still bears in Turkey today. In Western Europe, the names Ottoman Empire, Turkish Empire and Turkey were often used interchangeably, with Turkey being increasingly favoured both in formal and informal situations. This dichotomy was officially ended in 1920–1923, when

18190-476: 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

18360-484: The first time between the Safavids and the Ottomans, a status quo that remained until the end of the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774) . By this partitioning as signed in the Peace of Amasya , Western Armenia , western Kurdistan , and Western Georgia fell into Ottoman hands, while southern Dagestan , Eastern Armenia , Eastern Georgia , and Azerbaijan remained Persian. In 1539, a 60,000-strong Ottoman army besieged

18530-644: 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

18700-516: 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

18870-461: The fourteenth century. The word subsequently came to be used to refer to the empire's military-administrative elite. In contrast, the term "Turk" ( Türk ) was used to refer to the Anatolian peasant and tribal population and was seen as a disparaging term when applied to urban, educated individuals. In the early modern period , an educated, urban-dwelling Turkish speaker who was not a member of

19040-648: The independence of the Middle East" in the 19th century "was not the armies of Europe but its banks". The Ottoman state, which had begun taking on debt with the Crimean War, was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1875. By 1881, the Ottoman Empire agreed to have its debt controlled by the Ottoman Public Debt Administration , a council of European men with presidency alternating between France and Britain. The body controlled swaths of

19210-476: 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

19380-515: The last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, Famagusta. The Venetian defenders held out for 11 months against a force that at its peak numbered 200,000 men with 145 cannons; 163,000 cannonballs struck the walls of Famagusta before it fell to the Ottomans in August 1571. The Siege of Famagusta claimed 50,000 Ottoman casualties. Meanwhile, the Holy League consisting of mostly Spanish and Venetian fleets won

19550-545: The late 16th and early 17th centuries. With the Empire's population reaching 30 million people by 1600, the shortage of land placed further pressure on the government. In spite of these problems, the Ottoman state remained strong, and its army did not collapse or suffer crushing defeats. The only exceptions were campaigns against the Safavid dynasty of Persia, where many of the Ottoman eastern provinces were lost, some permanently. This 1603–1618 war eventually resulted in

19720-487: The late 18th and early 19th centuries, culminating in the loss of both territory and global prestige . This prompted a comprehensive process of reform and modernization known as the Tanzimat ; over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became vastly more powerful and organized internally, despite suffering further territorial losses, especially in the Balkans, where a number of new states emerged. Beginning in

19890-618: The late 19th century, various Ottoman intellectuals sought to further liberalize society and politics along European lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which established the Second Constitutional Era and introduced competitive multi-party elections under a constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars ,

20060-423: The loss of the Banat and the temporary loss of Belgrade (1717–1739), the Ottoman border on the Danube and Sava remained stable during the eighteenth century. Russian expansion , however, presented a large and growing threat. Accordingly, King Charles XII of Sweden was welcomed as an ally in the Ottoman Empire following his defeat by the Russians at the Battle of Poltava of 1709 in central Ukraine (part of

20230-459: The military-administrative class typically referred to themselves neither as an Osmanlı nor as a Türk , but rather as a Rūmī ( رومى ), or "Roman", meaning an inhabitant of the territory of the former Byzantine Empire in the Balkans and Anatolia. The term Rūmī was also used to refer to Turkish speakers by the other Muslim peoples of the empire and beyond. As applied to Ottoman Turkish speakers, this term began to fall out of use at

20400-687: The more important genes involved with abiotic stress responses. Avigad Vonshak , Director of the Institutes from 2002 to 2010, made headlines for his discovery, together with Prof. Sammy Boussiba (also of the institutes) of astaxanthin accumulation in green algae. Astaxanthin is an extremely valuable poly-unsaturated fatty acid ( PUFA ) which is valued for its use as a pigment, nutritional value, and possible use in bio-diesel. 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)

20570-402: 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

20740-439: The need for greater numbers of Ottoman infantry equipped with firearms, resulting in a relaxation of recruitment policy. This contributed to problems of indiscipline and outright rebelliousness within the corps, which were never fully solved. Irregular sharpshooters ( Sekban ) were also recruited, and on demobilisation turned to brigandage in the Celali rebellions (1590–1610), which engendered widespread anarchy in Anatolia in

20910-421: The new conditions of the seventeenth century and remain powerful, both militarily and economically. Historians of the mid-twentieth century once characterised this period as one of stagnation and decline, but this view is now rejected by the majority of academics. The discovery of new maritime trade routes by Western European states allowed them to avoid the Ottoman trade monopoly. The Portuguese discovery of

21080-404: The newly established Ankara -based Turkish government chose Turkey as the sole official name. At present, most scholarly historians avoid the terms "Turkey", "Turks", and "Turkish" when referring to the Ottomans, due to the empire's multinational character. As the Rum Sultanate declined in the 13th century, Anatolia was divided into a patchwork of independent Turkish principalities known as

21250-438: 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

21420-408: The occupying Allies, led to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey in the Anatolian heartland and the abolition of the Ottoman monarchy in 1922, formally ending the Ottoman Empire. The word Ottoman is a historical anglicisation of the name of Osman I , the founder of the Empire and of the ruling House of Osman (also known as the Ottoman dynasty). Osman's name in turn was the Turkish form of

21590-406: The plague, which facilitated Ottoman expansion. In addition, slave hunting was the main economic driving force behind Ottoman conquest. Some 21st-century authors re-periodize conquest of the Balkans into the akıncı phase , which spanned 8 to 13 decades, characterized by continuous slave hunting and destruction, followed by administrative integration into the Empire. The son of Murad II, Mehmed

21760-411: The restoration of Ottoman suzerainty over Egypt Eyalet and the Levant . By the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire was called the " sick man of Europe ". Three suzerain states – the Principality of Serbia , Wallachia and Moldavia – moved towards de jure independence during the 1860s and 1870s. During the Tanzimat period (1839–1876), the government's series of constitutional reforms led to

21930-414: 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

22100-420: 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

22270-610: 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

22440-448: 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

22610-467: The sixteenth century, the Ottoman Empire came under increasing strain from inflation and the rapidly rising costs of warfare that were impacting both Europe and the Middle East. These pressures led to a series of crises around the year 1600, placing great strain upon the Ottoman system of government. The empire underwent a series of transformations of its political and military institutions in response to these challenges, enabling it to successfully adapt to

22780-427: The soldiers), and 400,000 non-Muslims fled territory still under Ottoman rule. Justin McCarthy estimates that from 1821 to 1922, 5.5   million Muslims died in southeastern Europe, with the expulsion of 5   million. The defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1908—1922) began with the Second Constitutional Era , a moment of hope and promise established with the Young Turk Revolution . It restored

22950-400: 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

23120-562: The sultan and restored Ottoman power. The Balkan territories lost by the Ottomans after 1402, including Thessaloniki, Macedonia, and Kosovo, were later recovered by Murad II between the 1430s and 1450s. On 10 November 1444, Murad repelled the Crusade of Varna by defeating the Hungarian, Polish, and Wallachian armies under Władysław III of Poland and John Hunyadi at the Battle of Varna , although Albanians under Skanderbeg continued to resist. Four years later, John Hunyadi prepared another army of Hungarian and Wallachian forces to attack

23290-406: 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

23460-403: The terms of the Convention of Kütahya , signed on 5 May 1833, Muhammad Ali agreed to abandon his campaign against the Sultan, in exchange for which he was made the vali (governor) of the vilayets (provinces) of Crete , Aleppo , Tripoli , Damascus and Sidon (the latter four comprising modern Syria and Lebanon ), and given the right to collect taxes in Adana . Had it not been for

23630-413: 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

23800-466: The wars with Russia, some people in the Ottoman Empire began to conclude that the reforms of Peter the Great had given the Russians an edge, and the Ottomans would have to keep up with Western technology in order to avoid further defeats. Selim III (1789–1807) made the first major attempts to modernise the army , but his reforms were hampered by the religious leadership and the Janissary corps. Jealous of their privileges and firmly opposed to change,

23970-408: 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

24140-404: The windows of the south facing wall. The prisms are situated in the rooms. They absorb heat during the day and can be rotated to allow the heat to discharge into the rooms at night. The "chimney" is part of an evaporative cooling system that maintains the temperature of the house during the day at bearable levels. A double skin greenhouse uses copper sulfate solution as a heat screen during

24310-410: The years leading up to World War I , including the 31 March Incident and two further coups in 1912 and 1913 . The Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The Ottoman participation in the war began with the combined German-Ottoman surprise attack on the Black Sea coast of the Russian Empire on 29 October 1914. Following the attack,

24480-400: Was a major obstacle to Ottoman expansion on the Italian peninsula. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ottoman Empire entered a period of expansion . The Empire prospered under the rule of a line of committed and effective Sultans . It flourished economically due to its control of the major overland trade routes between Europe and Asia. Sultan Selim I (1512–1520) dramatically expanded

24650-421: 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

24820-693: 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

24990-412: 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

25160-446: 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

25330-431: 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

25500-414: Was established as an independent principality inside the Ottoman Empire; Romania achieved full independence; and Serbia and Montenegro finally gained complete independence, but with smaller territories. In 1878, Austria-Hungary unilaterally occupied the Ottoman provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Novi Pazar . British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advocated restoring the Ottoman territories on

25670-399: 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

25840-484: Was far more damaging to the Ottoman navy in sapping experienced manpower than the loss of ships, which were rapidly replaced. The Ottoman navy recovered quickly, persuading Venice to sign a peace treaty in 1573, allowing the Ottomans to expand and consolidate their position in North Africa. By contrast, the Habsburg frontier had settled somewhat, a stalemate caused by a stiffening of the Habsburg defenses. The Long Turkish War against Habsburg Austria (1593–1606) created

26010-561: 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

26180-429: 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

26350-442: 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

26520-409: Was on the defensive and unlikely to present any further aggression in Europe. The Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–1739), which was ended by the Treaty of Belgrade in 1739, resulted in the Ottoman recovery of northern Bosnia , Habsburg Serbia (including Belgrade), Oltenia and the southern parts of the Banat of Temeswar ; but the Empire lost the port of Azov , north of the Crimean Peninsula, to

26690-423: Was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. The financial burden of the war led the Ottoman state to issue foreign loans amounting to 5   million pounds sterling on 4 August 1854. The war caused an exodus of the Crimean Tatars , about 200,000 of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire in continuing waves of emigration. Toward

26860-460: 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

27030-505: 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

27200-409: 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

27370-432: 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

27540-608: 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

27710-446: 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

27880-413: 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

28050-468: 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

28220-447: Was the primary national founder of 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

28390-529: 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

28560-491: 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

28730-402: 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

28900-442: 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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