http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/content/module/2011/12/27/main-feature/1/apologia-for-ben-gurion/e
“Between Weizmann and Jabotinsky, it’s hard to know whom Ben-Gurion hated more. He schemed with Weizmann against Jabotinsky—but had contempt for Weizmann’s hesitancy and ultimately sidelined the elder statesman. True differences of principle separated Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky. Ben-Gurion favored class struggle and an agrarian economy; Jabotinsky was a classical liberal who wanted to foster an urban middle class. Ben-Gurion also scorned Jabotinsky’s demand for the territorial integrity of Eretz Israel. But it went deeper: Jabotinsky died of a heart attack in 1940 in New York; when the state was founded, Ben-Gurion refused to allow his adversary’s remains to be reinterred in Israel.”
At this year’s yahrzeit ceremony in Sde Boker for David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with Iran clearly on his mind, emphasized—eight times—Ben-Gurion’s capacity for making hard decisions. This theme permeates Ben-Gurion: A Political Life. The book is a “conversation” between the author, advocacy journalist David Landau, and Israeli President Shimon Peres. Landau calls it a “fusion of memory and history and multiple competing narratives.” Here we have truth in labeling, for what this slim volume is not is reliable history.