Editing David Ben-Gurion (section)

=== Leninist views ===
According to his biographer [[Tom Segev]], Ben-Gurion deeply admired [[Lenin]] and intended to be a 'Zionist Lenin'.<ref>On his return from Moscow in 1922 he outlined what he admired in Lenin: "A man who disdains all obstacles, faithful to his goal, who knows no concessions or discounts, the extreme of extremes; who knows how to crawl on his belly in the utter depths in order to reach his goal; a man of iron will who does not spare human life and the blood of innocent children for the sake of the revolution ... he is not afraid of rejecting today what he required yesterday, and requiring tomorrow what he rejected today; he will not be caught in the net of platitude, or in the trap of dogma; for the naked reality, the cruel truth and the reality of power relations will be before his sharp and clear eyes ... the single goal, burning with red flame—the goal of the great revolution." [[Tom Segev]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=eb9uDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT108 ''A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion''], [[Farrar, Straus and Giroux]], {{isbn|978-1-429-95184-5}}. p. 182.</ref><ref>Assaf Sharon, [https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2021/11/04/david-ben-gurion-obstinate-little-man/ "This Obstinate Little Man"], ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'', 4 November 2021. p. 45.</ref> In ''Ben-Gurion: A Political Life'' by [[Shimon Peres]] and [[David Landau (journalist)|David Landau]], Peres recalls his first meeting with Ben-Gurion as a young activist in the [[HaNoar HaOved VeHaLomed|No'ar Ha'Oved youth movement]]. Ben-Gurion gave him a lift, and out of the blue told him why he preferred Lenin to [[Leon Trotsky|Trotsky]]: "Lenin was Trotsky's inferior in terms of intellect", but Lenin, unlike Trotsky, "was decisive". When confronted with a dilemma, Trotsky would do what Ben-Gurion despised about the old-style diaspora Jews: he manoeuvred; as opposed to Lenin, who would cut the [[Gordian knot]], accepting losses while focusing on the essentials. In Peres' opinion, the essence of Ben-Gurion's life work were "the decisions he made at critical junctures in Israel's history", and none was as important as the acceptance of the [[United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine|1947 partition plan]], a painful compromise which gave the emerging Jewish state little more than a fighting chance, but which, according to Peres, enabled the establishment of the State of Israel.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://forward.com/articles/147083/secrets-of-ben-gurions-leadership/?p=all |title=Secrets of Ben-Gurion's Leadership |date=5 December 2011 |publisher=Forward.com |access-date=17 May 2015}}</ref>