Tom Segev’s voluminous biography, A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, gives new meaning to the Latin phrase – carpe diem – seize the day. That is just what David Ben-Gurion (1886-1973) did when he proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948.
The now-or-never philosophy of Israel’s “founding father” is captured in the video below, which shows Ben-Gurion confidently stepping out of a Lincoln sedan and proudly saluting the waiting crowd before striding into the Tel Aviv Museum, where he will announce the fateful declaration.
In the video, we see a short, pudgy man with two protruding tufts of white hair crowning his large, balding head. In his left hand is a briefcase, presumably containing the Hebrew text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, a document he personally rewrote the night before because he was dissatisfied with the original draft by his Zionist colleague, Moshe Shertok (Sharett).
Ben-Gurion’s salute signaled to a skeptical world his steely resolve in the face of opposition from President Harry Truman’s top two cabinet members: Secretary of State George C. Marshall and Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, misgivings also voiced by his more cautious Zionist comrades, as well as the threat of an imminent war with better-equipped Arab armies.
The now-or-never philosophy of Israel’s “founding father” is captured in the video below, which shows Ben-Gurion confidently stepping out of a Lincoln sedan and proudly saluting the waiting crowd before striding into the Tel Aviv Museum, where he will announce the fateful declaration.
In the video, we see a short, pudgy man with two protruding tufts of white hair crowning his large, balding head. In his left hand is a briefcase, presumably containing the Hebrew text of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, a document he personally rewrote the night before because he was dissatisfied with the original draft by his Zionist colleague, Moshe Shertok (Sharett).
Ben-Gurion’s salute signaled to a skeptical world his steely resolve in the face of opposition from President Harry Truman’s top two cabinet members: Secretary of State George C. Marshall and Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal, misgivings also voiced by his more cautious Zionist comrades, as well as the threat of an imminent war with better-equipped Arab armies.
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