What Ben-Gurion Learned From Churchill

On May 1, 1940, David Ben-Gurion, leader of the Jewish Agency Executive in Palestine, arrived in London for what was supposed to be a brief visit. Ten days later, Hitler invaded France and the Low Countries and Winston Churchill became prime minister. Knowing that Churchill had long been friendly to the Zionist cause, Ben-Gurion decided to stay in London, hoping to persuade the new government to raise a Jewish army in Palestine.

Ben-Gurion’s ten-month stay in London over 1940-41, which spanned the Battle of Britain and the stormiest days of the war, was a political failure. The Jewish Brigade would not get going until 1944. And Chaim Weizmann, the British Zionist leader, mostly excluded Ben-Gurion from diplomatic efforts with Churchill and other British politicians. But these months in London were crucial for Ben-Gurion’s political education. As the bombs fell, for perhaps the first time in his life, he had ample free time. He read Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek classics day and night while furiously studying Greek grammar. And though Ben-Gurion did not personally interact with Churchill, he watched his statesmanship closely.

Ben-Gurion’s admiration for Churchill knew no bounds: “How blessed is this nation, which was granted such a leader at a fateful hour,” wrote Ben-Gurion in a letter to his wife Paula. With an acolyte’s zeal, he studied Churchill’s rhetoric, copying whole passages into his diary. The “We Shall Never Surrender” speech, given after Dunkirk, struck a particularly deep chord. Ben-Gurion praised Churchill for candidly acknowledging that the Allies had suffered a “colossal military disaster” in France and Belgium: “Only a great man who believes in his strength can allow himself to say such bitter words—and before the entire nation.”