Israel Studies

Israel Studies 1.1 (1996) 127-143

The Citizen As Pioneer:
Ben-Gurion's Concept of Citizenship

Nathan Yanai

THE CONCEPT OF CITIZENSHIP ¹ AND the term "citizen" were associated in pre-state Jewish society in Palestine with the political right or political center. The political left used, instead, the term "comrade" and developed the concepts of the "pioneer" and the "movement." The use of variant terms reflected the social tension, ² as well as the ideological differences, between the two political camps. The Labor movement gave ideological preference to class and nation over the individual, whereas its adversaries on the political right gave preference to the nation alone. Viewing the citizen as the only legitimate constituent member of the nation conflicted with Labor's socialist ideology and its notion of a collective movement. Labor read into this term, citizen, the rejection of social vision and the selfish assertion of individual economic interests. For these reasons and others, Ben-Gurion's approach to the concept of citizenship did not lie at the center of his political philosophy. The interpretation of Ben-Gurion's approach to citizenship must be sought in the link between the historic collectivist ideology of the Labor movement and his own concept of statehood. Both placed the collective entity above the individual member.

Ben-Gurion's concept of statehood begins with a critical review of Jewish history: the failure to maintain an independent Jewish state in ancient times and the subsequent divorce from a tradition of statehood in the prolonged history of diaspora. Facing a grave threat to the Jewish state, its leaders of old failed to identify signs of danger, did not know how to unite, and did not possess the political skills needed to avert the approaching catastrophe—the destruction of the Temple and the end of the Jewish state. ³ Unlike other defeated peoples of ancient times, the Jewish people succeeded in maintaining their existence in the diaspora, but not without undergoing a meaningful change. "We did not turn into evaporating dust," ⁴ Ben-Gurion wrote, "we were transformed," however, "into a personal nation"⁵ — [End Page 127] in other words, a nation of individuals without the unifying territorial base of a homeland and without a common language. Ben-Gurion was torn between his admiration for the very survival of the Jewish people in the absence of a state of its own, and his abhorrence of the alteration of its common character because of its dispersion. He was uncertain of the exact reason for the survival of the Jewish people, going so far as to use a vague phrase, "vitamin of existence," to indicate the almost genetic capacity for, and perhaps the mystery of, their survival.

Ben-Gurion does not relate to the power of religion in the search for an explanation, although he ascribes weight to his people's adoption of moral values and recognition of the supremacy of ideas. This collective trait of the Jewish people remained the key, in his mind, to its possible future survival and to the prevention of another destruction of the renewed State of Israel. Despite the survival of the Jews, according to Ben-Gurion's state-centered approach, the diaspora turned the people collectively into "dust" after all. ⁶ In the diaspora,

"we had common aspirations, collective longings, but it is doubtful whether we had a common will. Such a will began to emanate here, in the Land of Israel, ever since we returned to take root in the soil of our homeland and established our independent undertaking, and the question is [he said in 1948] whether this project has managed already to mature and ripen." ⁷

The conflict within Ben-Gurion's two-part description of the condition of the Jewish people was compatible with his own ideological approach and aims. He wanted to underscore the historical continuity of the Jewish people, which was the source of their new political claim for the Land of Israel; at the same time, he intended to press the need for a radical change in their common character...