Honey from the Lion

...Now Ben Gurion says graciously and platitudinously, "Weizmann's place in Jewish history is alongside the great rulers and kings of old, and as our foremost leader, who fashioned our sovereign statehood" True enough...

...His domestic political enemies, including his protégé, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Ben Gurion does not even mention...

...Pearlman's role is understandable, for he is a follower of Ben Gurion's and did yeoman service as a propagandist for the Israeli government when B-G was Prime Minister...

...The British, harassed by Jewish terrorism and the upstart influence of the American President, fled, leaving the Jews under the Britishmade guns of the Arabs...

...One would not suspect either, from what Ben Gurion says, that he had his sharp differences with Weizmann and others, differences arising as much as anything else from interesting conflicts of temperament...

...Perhaps only a thoroughly Palestinean activitist like Ben Gurion could consider this complicated saga one of rationality and perseverance rewarded...

...and then Ben Gurion goes on for as many as 15 pages...

...When that time comes Ben Gurion may be given as much credit for the radicalism of his old age as for having been the difficult Father of his Country...

...He is highly pessimistic about an early settlement with the Arabs, but he believes it must eventually come, if for no other reason than because "No outside power, however strong, whether from the East or the West, can do what the Arabs and Jews can do for each other, to their mutual advantage...

...But was Ben Gurion not instrumental in 1946 in having Weizmann removed as President of the World Zionist Organization...

...Here there are none of the doubts and intimations of agony that pervade Chaim Weizmann's autobiography, Trial and Error...

...And did not Weizmann, a tragic as well as vindicated figure as the first President of Israel, die estranged from Ben Gurion...

...The method of the book is simple enough: Moshe Pearlman asks a short question ("What were your thoughts on the day of Israel's independence...

...One can readily believe in Ben Gurion's personal energy, devotion and triumph...

...Fortunately, Pearlman also devotes chapters to "The Functions of a Prime Minister," "The Arab States," and "Israel and the Jewish People," and in these Ben Gurion puts his opinions as clearly and candidly as could be wished...

...He argues for an educational program that would positively favor children of Oriental origin, in order to heal the split between Israel's "two nations...

...On other persons who have crossed him-the Revisionist Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky, Dag Hammarskjold, Dwight EisenhowerB-G is equally ready to let by-gones be by-gones...

...Yet there are men half his age who, while not all his followers, still look forward to pushing through electoral reforms when they arrive in power...

...Constituency representation and two, or at most three, parties are what Ben Gurion says is needed to produce effective government and a responsible opposition...

...What would you say is special about the Army in Israel...

...Only in the case of Ernest Bevin and' of some of the anti-Zionist or antiSemitic High Commissioners for Palestine does Ben Gurion briefly permit himself his customary bluntness toward opponents...

...It is curious, then, that David Ben Gurion, who was-and remains-nothing if not partisan in his own defense, should have taken such a generous and statesmanlike tone in this testament, and the result is not always a happy one...

...For the intellectual, apolitical Weizmann, the European catastrophe and the abdication of mandatory responsibilities by the British undermined decades of his patient negotiation...

...but as a history of 40 years of the Zionist movement and of Palestine, this presentation will not do...

...He gives his side of the Lavon Affair, which helped to precipitate his departure from Mapai...

...Pearlman, in other words, is more a prompter than an interlocutor and he fails to press questions to the point of discomfort and illumination...

...Otherwise conflicts and divisions are blurred, and B-G does not come through whole...

...for in truth the rough side of his tongue is as characteristic as his white halo...

...He restates his conviction, which upset Americans a few years back, that Jews who are free to go to live in Israel and do not, live in a state of sin...

...Rather than a Jewish state coming into being with the midwifely aid of England, Israel was improvised out of chaos...

...First a generation of old-line, Eastern European politicians will have to pass away, and reformist ideas will have to be disassociated from the personal idiosyncracies and ambitions of Ben Gurion...

...Though Ben Gurion's theories concerning current Israeli politics and society come across with force and relevance, his reminiscences, which the title suggests dominate the book, too often beg important questions...

...Honey from the Lion BEN GURION LOOKS BACK - TALKS WITH MOSHE PEARLMAN Simon & Schuster...

...Perhaps most usefully, he continues his agitation for a reform of Israel's parliamentary muddle...

...For others who were once much better known than Ben Gurion-Weizmann, for instancethe road did not always look so straight and sure...

...His dissident party, Rafi, has taken a beating at the polls, and his stock is at a low ebb...

...Reviewed by EDWARD GROSSMAN Assistant editor, "Harper's" magazine When politicians get old and are turned out to pasture, they are apt to compose memoirs justifying their careers, forgetting very few of their quarrels, and forgiving very few of their enemies...

...More than most political movements, Zionism was gifted and plagued with diverse personalities and factions, intensely self-conscious, and, as the Nazis began their persecution and murder, increasingly desperate...

...Ben Gurion's experience with the multi-party system of proportional representation, leading to government by coalition, misalliance and tantrum, was galling to him and caused almost continuous political crises...

...The life story that Ben Gurion relates to Pearlman is filled with hard work, unwavering devotion to the socialist Zionist ideal, and deserved triumph in the establishment of a Jewish state...

...This is a reasonable goal, though one suspects that it will be a long time before Israel leads a sane Anglo-Saxon political life...