David Ben-Gurion
David Ben-Gurion is a Jewish politician.
Biography
Early-life
David Ben-Gurion was born in Płońsk, Poland, which was then under the rule of the Russian Empire. In 1906, he came to the Levant after receiving a Zionist education from his father and strengthening the Hebrew language among his friends as a teenager. In 1910, at the Sixth Conference of Poalei Zion, he was elected a member of the editorial board of the "Ahdut" magazine. He signed his first article under his new name, Ben-Gurion, as one of the last defenders of Jerusalem in the war against Roman legions in ancient times. He moved to Istanbul in 1912 for a short time to study law in order to legally represent the Jews in the Yishuv, but the Ottomans expelled him from the Levant during the First World War. He fought under the Jewish Legion of the British Army in order to return, and indeed managed to come back to the Levant.
Political career
Ben-Gurion formed a party called Ahdut Ha'avodah (unity of labor) in 1919. The party would unite with Ha'poel Hatzair to form Mapai a decade later. From the 1930s, thanks to the dominance of his party, and indeed the dominant character of the man himself, he became the leader of the Hebrew Yishuv.