David Ben-Gurion דוד בן־גוריון
first prime minister of Israel, who declared its independence
David Grün was born in Płońsk in 5647 and came to the Land of Israel in 5666 with the Second Aliyah, working as a farmhand and a guard and taking the name Ben-Gurion. He rose from union organiser to head of the Histadrut and of the Jewish Agency.
On the 5th of Iyar 5708, the day the British left, he read the Declaration of Independence in Tel Aviv, against the advice of those who urged delay. The next day the armies of five Arab states entered the country. He dissolved the underground militias — harshly, to the point of shelling the ship Altalena — and created a single army.
Then came the ingathering: in three years the population doubled with Holocaust survivors and almost all the Jews of the Arab world, housed in tent camps and rationed. He signed the reparations agreement with West Germany, led the Sinai campaign of 5717, and began the nuclear project at Dimona. In 5730 he retired to kibbutz Sde Boker in the Negev, where he died in 5734.