At the end of my Al-Monitor article marking Israel’s 66th Independence Day on May 5, I quoted the responses of two past Israeli prime ministers, David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin, to the United Nation’s partition resolution of Nov. 29, 1947.
Ben-Gurion’s enthusiastic response in favor of the resolution represented the pragmatic approach, also called the “Mapai Party” (precursor of the Labor Party) approach: “another dunam, another goat.” In a speech in April 1955 to mark Israel’s seventh Independence Day, the country’s first prime minister said, “History is not made with words but with deeds.”