Four mistresses and a faithful nation: Ben-Gurion’s balancing act

Published: 19 February 2018

Last updated: 4 March 2024

THE GENAZIM INSTITUTE of the Hebrew Writers Association would probably not be the first place one would associate with sex and extramarital affairs. Yet that’s where the journalist and historian Tom Segev found the most significant evidence yet unearthed about the intimate relationships of David Ben-Gurion. Among the collections documenting the lives and works of 750 Hebrew-language writers is the personal archive of the first and most serious of the lovers of Israel’s first prime minister.

Segev offers two responses to the question of where the boundary runs between cheap gossip and material of historical value, and why he interested himself in Ben-Gurion’s sex life. “The first answer is the standard one – that if the leader isn’t faithful to his wife, maybe he’s not faithful to his voters, either. If he cheats on her, maybe he cheats on them, too,” he says.

But there’s another, more meaningful reason that Segev’s 800-page new book, David Ben-Gurion: A State at All Costs, discusses at length the four women with whom Ben-Gurion had affairs. “He was regularly determining the fate of the nation,” Segev observes.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to know about his weaknesses and distress, and about the women whose company he enjoyed while making important decisions.”

FULL STORY In bed with Israel's first prime minister: Historian exposes Ben-Gurion as you never knew him (Haaretz)

Photo Pola and David Gen-Gurion (Paul Goldman / GPO)