In 1915 Ben-Gurion, expelled from Palestine for his nationalist and socialist activities, chose to go to New York City, where he hastily taught himself English and plunged head on into perpetrating the local Zionist-socialist movement. Yet his authoritative, almost despotic character and his enchantment with Lenin's revolution and leadership style were tempered during his three years in the U.S. by the impact American democracy left on him. Many years later, Ben-Gurion, who was urged by some countrymen to "suspend" democracy more than once, refused to do so.

After World War I he returned to Palestine, now governed by Britain and — after 1920 — designated by the League of Nations as a "National Home" for the Jewish people. He rose to prominence in the growing Zionist-socialist movement. The increasing anti-Semitism in Europe during the 1920s and '30s sent waves of Jewish immigrants into the country. Furious Arab leaders launched a rebellion against the British and a holy war on the Jews. Much earlier than others, Ben-Gurion recognized the depth and rationale of Arab objection to Zionism: he was aware of the tragic nature of a clash between two genuine claims to the same land. His position on this can be described neither as hawkish nor dovish: he saw the creation of an independent homeland for the homeless Jewish people as, first and foremost, a crucial provision for the survival of persecuted Jews. At the cost of being labeled a traitor (by extremists on the right) and an opportunist (by the dogmatic left), he was ready to go a long way to accommodate the Arabs. Yet he was one of the first to foresee that in order for the Jews to avoid a showdown with the Arabs or to survive such a showdown, they must set up a shadow state and a shadow military force.

Ben-Gurion was the great architect and builder of both. Throughout the tragic years from 1936 to 1947, while millions of Jews were rounded up and murdered by the Germans, denied asylum by almost all nations and barred by the British from finding a home in Palestine, he subtly orchestrated a complex strategy: he inspired tens of thousands of young Jews from Palestine to join the British army in fighting the Nazis, but at the same time authorized an underground agency to ship Jewish refugees into the country. As the British were intercepting, deporting and locking away these survivors of the Nazi inferno in barbed-wired detention camps, world opinion grew more and more sympathetic to the Zionist prescription for the plight of the Jews. This strategy helped bring about the favorable atmosphere that led to the 1947 U.N. resolution, partitioning Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

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