But even before the British left, attacks on Jews were unleashed all over the country. On May 14, 1948, in accordance with the U.N. resolution, Ben-Gurion proclaimed Israel's independence, ignoring last-minute admonitions from Washington and overruling doomsday predictions by some of his closest associates. Within hours, military forces of five Arab nations invaded Israel, joining Palestinian militias in an openly declared attempt to destroy the Jews. It was the worst of several Israeli-Arab wars: 1% of the Jewish population died, as well as thousands of Arabs. More than half a million Palestinians lost their homes; some fled, some were driven out by Israeli forces.

Ben-Gurion's iron-will leadership during the fateful 1 1/2 years of that touch-and-go war turned him from "first among equals" in the Zionist leadership into a modern-day King David. The crux of his leadership was a lifelong, partly successful struggle to transplant a tradition of binding majority rule in a painfully divided Jewish society that for thousands of years had not experienced any form of self-rule, not even a central spiritual authority. In the early years of the state, many Israelis saw him as a combination of Moses, George Washington, Garibaldi and God Almighty. In admirers as well as vehement opponents, Ben-Gurion's wrathful-father personality evoked strong emotions: awe, anger, admiration, resentment. When I first met him in 1959, I was mesmerized by his physical intensity: he was a mercurial man, almost violently vivacious. There was a fistlike tightness to his argument: bold, peasant-simple, piercing, seductively warm and, for one or two gracious moments, revealing his cheerful, childlike curiosity.

Between 1949 and 1956, Arab states drew Israel into a cycle of guerrilla attacks and retaliatory raids. In 1956 Ben-Gurion, aware of an Egyptian military buildup, escalated the conflict by storming the Sinai peninsula. The operation was coordinated with a French-British assault on Egypt. To Arabs, this was further proof of Israel as a tool of imperialism. To Israelis, this was Ben-Gurion's way of securing 11 relatively peaceful years.

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