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Strategic Alliances for a Secure, Connected, and Prosperous Region
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Author: Giora Goldberg

Giora Goldberg is a Senior lecturer in the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and also teaches at the Department of Political Science at Tel Aviv University. He has published numerous papers in periodicals and collections in Israel, and the United States and Europe.
Ben-Gurion and Jewish Foreign Policy

Ben-Gurion and Jewish Foreign Policy

April 2, 1991 | Giora Goldberg
This essay examines the Jewish basis of David Ben-Gurion's foreign policy. For Ben-Gurion, Israel was the sum and substance of everything Jewish. Therefore, his foreign policy was totally Israel-centric ? ideological when it came to matters of Israel's centrality and pragmatic when it came to Israel's survival. Ben-Gurion developed a unique interpretation of Judaism which enabled him to adopt policies and make decisions that would be compatible with his own version of Judaism while at the same time serving the collective interests of the new Jewish state. Such foreign policy issues as non-alignment, reaction to the alleged Jewish doctors' plot in the USSR, rapprochement with West Germany, attitudes towards South Africa, anti-Semitism in the diaspora, and the Eichmann trial are analyzed in this light.