14 Ben-Gurion Must Go (1956–1966)

14 Ben-Gurion Must Go (1956–1966) Israel’s dramatic victory in the Sinai War catapulted new and fresh forces into the political arena. Some of them blossomed in the Ministry of Defense, some in the IDF, several of them even in the Foreign Service. Some rose in the Mapai hierarchy. All were closely connected to their patron—David Ben-Gurion. They vener- ated him and placed their political future in his hands. For his part, he prepared them to assume higher positions. Some of them, men like Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Abba Eban, Ehud Avriel, Teddy Kollek and Yitzhak Navon, were in their late 40’s or early 50’s and had no intention of waiting patiently until there would be room for them in the national and party leadership. The veteran leaders, espe- cially Golda Meir, Zalman Aranne, Levi Eshkol, Pinchas Sapir, Pinchas Lavon and Israel Yeshaʾayahu had no intention of vacating their places for the younger rising stars. They were in their late 50’s and early 60’s, in good health and spirit and controlled the government, the Jewish Agency, Mapai and the Histadrut appara- tus. They were united in the feeling that Ben-Gurion had no right, moral, let alone political, to leapfrog over an entire generation and hand over the country’s leadership to ambitious youngsters who they thought lacked a deep ideological com- mitment to the principles and values of the labor movement and at times even made fun of them. They rose only because they existed under the huge umbrella of the founding father. The older leadership was convinced that the younger leaders symbolized Israel’s new ethos—the so-called “bitsuism” that meant per- formance and not ideology. True, some of the older leaders were not intellectual giants, but at least, it was argued, they rose through the hierarchy in the natural way, went through a long period of apprenticeship and survived to reach their present positions. Many of the older generation of leaders were deeply involved in the great drama of the struggle for statehood and served Ben-Gurion in loyalty and submission in the early years of Israel. They failed to see why they should be asked to yield their rightful place in the hierarchy only because Ben-Gurion was possessed of some new ideas how Israel should be governed, led, and behave. While he was still in Sede Boker, Ben-Gurion carefully mulled over his plans how Israel’s political structure should be reformed, mainly by changing the electoral system. He hoped that by instituting the district voting system, the state would finally achieve a stable government in which the ruling party would have no need to share power in a coalition with the smaller, mostly religious parties that blackmailed the large ones. He thought that the new system would lessen the links between the candidates for the Knesset and the party central committee and they would be less beholden to a nominating committee. Above all, this would ensure that the political parties would not make huge demands for jobs, budgets and influence. This system, feared Mapai’s second generation leaders, would DOI 10.1515/9783110492507-014, © 2008 Yediot Aḥaronot: Sifreḥemed, published by De Gruyter Oldenbourg. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 360 14 Ben-Gurion Must Go (1956–1966) reduce their control of the party which was based on their control of the national, Histadrut, Jewish Agency and party mechanisms. They realized that Ben-Gurion was out to destroy once and for all this vicious cycle. In 1954 and early 1955, many hints began to originate from Sede Boker of Ben-Gurion’s intentions to change the rules of the political game in Israel. The veterans closed ranks to defeat these ideas and to block the rise of the younger generation of leaders. In this manner they would preserve their political power and they would determine, when the time came, who would succeed Ben-Gurion. Among the veterans, Golda played a central role and soon stood out in the struggle that erupted in the late 1950’s. She had not forgotten Ben-Gurion’s insulting remarks in Givat Haim in January 1957. He tried to appease her by sending an extremely warm letter about her when the American Jewish Congress awarded her the prestigious Stephen Wise Award. On July 25, 1957, he wrote: The Jewish people is rich with great personalities, perhaps more than other people, but similar to other nations, does not lack great women. Perhaps we are the only people who remember not only the fathers of the nation but also its mothers Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel are no less in their standing than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and as we were fortunate to be led by a great woman in the era of the Judges, we are also fortunate that we have at the start of the Third Temple a woman of a noble soul, of many deeds and blessed with talent and sense to stand in the front row of our free nations representatives, in Golda’s image—as we are used to calling her out of love and esteem. Golda’s moral and spiritual greatness was evident when she was a young pioneer in the Valley, the force of her leadership was seen later in the workers movement, and when Israel was created, she was called upon to represent Israel in a major power, and after her outstanding achievements as Minister of Labor she was entrusted with administering Israel’s foreign policy. Her service was marked by dignity and splendor for the entire nation and for Jewish women and we could not find a more deserving person than Golda for being honored by American Jewry, this is the greatest gift bestowed on us by American Jewry.1 These laudatory words did little to allay her fears. Even Ben-Gurion’s overt attempts to involve her in key decisions in Israel’s foreign relations, such as the Policy of the Periphery, the nuclear issue and mainly the strengthening of ties with the United States, were seen by her as partial attempts to pacify her and her feeling of being affronted did not evaporate. Her sense of animosity towards the young leaders that surrounded the aging Ben-Gurion grew. She was convinced that they utilized his declining years to advance their own political careers. She may have hoped that one day he would wake up and see that he was being used by them and then he would reject them and go back to the loyal and trusted veteran leaders. But soon she realized that at stake was not a group of young, 1 Letter from Ben-Gurion to Israel Goldstein, 25 July 1957, in Ben-Gurion Archive. 14 Ben-Gurion Must Go (1956–1966) 361 impatient, energetic leaders using Ben-Gurion’s naïvete for their needs, but a well- thought-out policy by the leader who was using them to promote his central goal of the time—changing Israel’s political system and above all the electoral system. Mapai’s younger leaders began to advance even before the Sinai war. Three were elected to the Knesset in the 1955 elections, but soon resigned, arguing that Knesset service was dull and boring. They sought a more exciting arena in which to excel. Since the Knesset did not fit their ambitions and they had no intention of wasting their time in the grey task of legislation, some moved to the Foreign Ministry and became ambassadors. One of them was Shlomo Hillel. In 1953, Ben-Gurion promoted another young and promising man, Giora Yoseftal, to the post of the party’s secretary general, thus signaling that senior jobs, hitherto reserved for the veterans, were now open to the youngsters. In 1958, Moshe Dayan retired from the IDF and in a number of public meetings lashed out at the Mapai leadership, its institutions and methods, and demanded reforms. This led some veteran leaders to fear that Dayan could engineer a military takeover to establish a military dictatorship in Israel. They shared this fear with Ben-Gurion, but he claimed that they were exaggerating and continued to support Dayan, whom he saw not only as a war hero but prototype of a Sabra, free of the Diaspora mentality and complexes, who said what he thought and above all possessed exceptional leadership qualities. However, unknown to the older generation, Ben-Gurion decided to pass his mantle to someone else—Yigael Yadin, the IDF’s second chief of staff and well- known archaeologist. Yadin, he hoped, who had leadership qualitieis as well as a rich military background as chief of operations and the acting chief of staff during the War of Independence, and then as the IDF’s second chief of staff who built the modern IDF. Yadin, the scion of a well-known Jerusalem family and a leading academic, was not tainted by being a party politician sullied by petty politics. He was above politics. Ben-Gurion may have seen him as an Israeli De Gaulle, waiting behind the scenes to be called upon to lead the nation, a sort of Joshua after Moses. Yadin’s current achievements were mainly in archaeology and his digs in Massada and Hatzor won him international reputation, as did his many books and articles. The veterans were appalled. How could Ben-Gurion even conceive of such an idea? Yadin lacked any party background and had no political experience.

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