Editing David Ben-Gurion (section)

== Controversies ==

Ben Gurion was among the Zionist leaders who prioritized Zionist goals over rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. 
The following 1938 quote by him summarizes this view: 
"''If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second – because we are not only accounting for these children, but also for the history of the Jewish people.''"<ref>Quoted in Shabtai Teveth pp. 855-856</ref> Whereas at the time he probably could not have imagined the extent of the imminent great tragedy, the ideology remained a cornerstone of mainstream Zionist ideology all through the Holocaust.

When [[Revisionist Zionist]] founder [[Ze'ev Jabotinsky]] died visiting a Zionist self-defense camp in the Catskill region in 1940, he was buried in [[Farmingdale, New York]] in accordance to his will about being buried where he died while also wishing that his remains be "transferred to the Land of Israel only at the express order of the Jewish government of that country." Ben-Gurion had great animosity toward Jabotinsky (once calling him "Vladimir Hitler") and refused to allow his reburial in Israel after independence in the decade leading to his retirement in 1963.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.jta.org/archive/cabinet-refuses-to-bring-jabotinskys-remains-to-israel-for-reburial | title=Cabinet Refuses to Bring Jabotinsky's Remains to Israel for Reburial }}</ref> Much later, Prime Minister [[Levi  Eshkol]] gave permission for reburial in Jerusalem's [[Mount Herzl]] in 1964.