A review of a book
Understanding the Zionist enemy requires a comprehensive and deep grasp of the early thinkers of the Zionist movement and the foundational ideas they circulated through their books, personal correspondence, and other channels, much of which has since been published. There are, in fact, influential names such as Moses Hess, Leon Pinsker, and others whose impact on the history of Zionism was significant and foundational, at times arguably exceeding even what Theodor Herzl wrote. Yet Arabic translations of these authors and their works are scarce.
The book under review here is by one of the founders of the Zionist entity and its first prime minister. He led the entity for more than a decade during its formative stage and played a central role in the plan of ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of the Palestinian people during the Nakba, as well as before and after it. He is David Ben Gurion.
These memoirs go beyond a political autobiography of a central actor in the Zionist project and an architect of the Israeli state. They are also an important text for understanding patterns of political thinking and decision making in the early stage of state building. Ben Gurion does not merely narrate his personal experience to analyse his political outlook. He presents a conceptual framework linking ideas of statehood, security, and legitimacy, and examining the relationship between ideology and the demands of governance. This is what makes the book a necessary analytical source, particularly for students of political science.
The structure of the book and its opening premise
The book is divided into ten sections addressing different issues. It begins by discussing what it means to be Jewish, insisting that no other people have been exiled, dispersed, coerced, persecuted, and chased from one country to another as Jews have. Even Europe, supposedly “civilised”, is described as a centre of Jewish persecution.
On this basis, he argues that Jews in the diaspora live in a state of perpetual exile that compels them to seek a solution. The solution he proposes is a Jewish state in Palestine so that Jews will not remain a minority living under the mercy of a non Jewish majority.
He claims that life outside a Jewish state means either living in a closed ghetto or integrating into the majority and dissolving into other societies, which he frames as the loss of Jewish nationality and distinct identity.
Early declarations and the logic of exclusivism
Ben Gurion writes about the period around 1906 and the start of his migration to Palestine: “I was certain then that this land would become entirely Jewish.” (p. 25). This clearly signals the vision and intent of the founders of the Zionist movement to establish a Jewish only state and to drive out or kill the Palestinians, the indigenous inhabitants of the land.
He then turns to his early years in Palestine. He was born on 16 October 1886 and migrated to Palestine at the age of nineteen. He speaks about Herzl’s visit to Plonsk when he was a child, saying: “We saw in him the saviour messiah.” Ben Gurion writes: “One glimpse of him made me ready to follow him.” (p. 34). He emphasises that his generation, shaped by Jewish persecution, was prepared to embrace Zionist ideology. He says the Russians who controlled Poland hated Jews, and that many Poles viewed Jews as the killers of Christ.
In 1904, many Zionists, including Herzl, chose settlement in Uganda rather than Palestine. Ben Gurion’s response, he says, was immediate migration to Palestine as a way of settling those debates.
The settlers, hardship, and organised militarisation
Ben Gurion discusses the “first ones”, those who migrated in the 1870s and 1890s, known as the first wave of migrants. He belonged to the second wave and viewed the earlier group as a major source of inspiration for himself and his generation.
He describes his personal experience with hunger and illness, especially tuberculosis, which weakened him early in his migration to Palestine. He also describes the nightly danger and tension due to Palestinian resistance, and the hard labour during the day. He speaks of the difficulty of finding work because of his physical weakness compared to Arab residents and other Jewish migrants.
He states that the struggle was extremely arduous and long, even persuading Jews to adopt Hebrew as an official language was difficult. He writes: we had to rebuild everything from scratch, to reinvent society, and therefore “we were prepared to shed blood” in the name of “autonomy”, “self determination”, and “self defence”. (p. 57)
Ben Gurion played a pivotal role in organising Hashomer units, a force made up of rudimentary militias of early migrants. Later, under the British Mandate, he led an initiative, as head of the Jewish labour federation in Palestine, to develop Hashomer into a nationwide clandestine army known as the Haganah, meaning “defence” in Hebrew. After the establishment of the entity in May 1948, the Haganah became the backbone of what is called the “Israeli Defence Forces”.
Ben Gurion writes about the importance of the army and initiating military action: “Whoever initiates the attack wins the battle.” (p. 73) On the same page, he also says: “The Gaza region lies opposite Israel’s most densely populated and built up areas, and the flattest of them, making it Israel’s most fragile region geographically and in security terms.”
Over time, Hashomer was no longer sufficient for the defensive and offensive needs of a growing and increasingly diverse Jewish community. The organisation’s guards numbered no more than forty men and women, all fully dedicated to the task. The Haganah was therefore established as a defensive arm of the General Federation of Jewish Workers in Palestine, and Ben Gurion became its first secretary general.
He says that when the “War of Independence”, meaning the Palestinian Nakba, began, they had 45,000 men and women able to work, affiliated with the Haganah and the Palmach. In addition, there were several thousand more belonging to various “private” armies operating independently.
The blurred line between civilian and military
Ben Gurion speaks about the centrality of the military within the structure of the entity. He says that at any moment of day or night, the butcher, baker, receptionist, clerk, tailor, farmer, university professor, shopkeeper, or any Israeli man or woman in the street can carry a rifle, sit in a tank driver’s seat, or operate the complex control panel of a sonar listening device, ready to perform military duties with the highest level of efficiency. This, by its nature, raises questions about the core distinction between soldier and civilian within the structure of the occupation state.
He also emphasises the centrality of military service in creating a national culture and consciousness among Jews, describing the army as an educational tool. He says it ensures that alongside combat training, every recruit leaves service with knowledge of Hebrew, the Bible, Israeli history, geography, mathematics, and civics, meeting a minimum educational standard in the entity.
Secular Zionism and religious claims
Ben Gurion discusses the Torah and its influence on him. He says: although I am not religious, and most of Israel’s early builders were not believers, their passion for the land came from the books of scripture. This highlights an intellectual contradiction among many Zionists, especially secular ones, when they say they do not believe in God while simultaneously arguing that the same creator they do not believe in gave Palestine to Jews thousands of years ago.
The Negev, settlement priorities, and the logic of control
He then turns to the Negev, claiming it is the true cradle of Judaism. He became convinced that consolidating Israel’s authority over the Negev was more important than trying to save the Old City of Jerusalem. This conviction pushed him, after retiring from political life, to live in the Negev to encourage Jews to settle there.
He also argues that concentrating millions of Jews in major cities like Tel Aviv has dangerous security consequences for Israel’s future. Therefore, settlement in the Negev, in his view, is necessary to distribute the population across more than one city.
“Peace”, denial, and existential messaging
Ben Gurion addresses what he calls “peace”. Despite bearing direct responsibility for the Nakba, the displacement of the Palestinian people, and the occupation of their land, he claims Israel wants peace and says he cannot understand hostility towards Israel. He argues that hostility against Israel is, in essence, vague and irrational, and impossible to deal with on the basis of good faith or logic.
His failure to understand the reasons for hostility stems from the fact that he sees a right for the Jewish migrant from global diasporas in Palestine while refusing to recognise Palestinian identity, the Palestinian people, or the Palestinian right to self determination. He goes further, in a strange claim, to say that Israel did not create the hostility.
He then directs an extremely dangerous message to Jews, especially outside the entity, urging them to migrate. He says: “The Arabs can be defeated a hundred times, but if they win the one hundred and first time, that is the end for us.” (p. 172) In this message, whose effects remain present in Israel to this day, there is a clear expression of the depth of the crisis and the constant invocation of an existential threat. The occupation state, in this logic, must never lose, and its narrative must remain that it is undefeated so that no one dares to even consider fighting it.
Ben Gurion ends his book by urging Jewish migration to Palestine and calling for work to keep their state strong, solid, and dominant. He concludes with words to the effect that: “Words without deeds have no value. One must show the path by action. Words that do not drive action have no value.” (p. 180) His role in expanding Jewish settlement in Palestine made him a central symbol in Israel.
Why this book matters to researchers
Finally, while this book contains historical and religious distortions and attempts to spread Zionist thinking and narratives built on corrupt religious or historical foundations, it remains important for researchers and thinkers to study these foundational texts of Zionist ideology. Deeper engagement with this literature equips researchers with the capacity to respond, dismantle, and expose it.
There is an essential need for thorough study of Zionist thought, as this is fundamental to resisting this racist, settler colonial, replacement project. The Zionist movement is the cause of the conflict in Palestine, and as is well known, before its emergence there was no conflict between Jews and Palestinians, whether Christian or Muslim.
Ben Gurion’s thought and writings, particularly this book, show how antisemitism in the West was among the most significant reasons behind Zionist thinking about building a national homeland for Jews. Finding land for Jews was presented as a way to escape Western and Russian persecution. In this framing, the Palestinian people are among the victims of Western racism, a price they continue to pay to this day through that same West’s support for this entity.
