... was born in Plonsk, a small town in Poland (then part of the Russian Empire), in 1886. He moved to Palestine in 1906, and adopted the name of Ben–Gurion three years later. He became the pre–eminent leader of the Jewish community in British–ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1935, and following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 he served as the country's first Prime Minister until 1963 (with a short retirement break in 1954–5).
© Haydn Thompson 2023