By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews
Ben Gurion Hosting is a documentary in the truest sense: The entire film is based upon the first Israeli prime minister’s life and writings. But don’t expect a Ken Burns miniseries for this entry at the AJC Seattle Jewish Film Festival: It’s 12 minutes long — hardly enough to fit in decades of state-building, of course — and almost entirely animated.
The artistry behind David Ben Gurion is from the same filmmakers who created the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir, a collection of interviews and recollections from the 1981 Lebanon War that allowed many of Israel’s soldiers to open up for the first time about their experiences and the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.
Ben Gurion Hosting is certainly far less polarizing, but it gives us insight into the man whose signature was the first on his country’s declaration of independence and the love of his life: The Negev Desert. Ben Gurion was so taken with the area that his grave — alongside his wife Paula’s — overlooks the stunningly drawn canyon from the Sde Boker campus of the university that bears his name.
Starting with Ben Gurion surrounded by thousands of Jews who have come to hear his declaration of independence in 1948, the story is all his. He expounds from the rendering of his office, surrounded by law books and the requisite wood paneling. The essence just feels Israeli, from the simple design of the furniture to the Jerusalem tile on the floor.
The earthy browns and beiges of the land he resolves to build make way for the cold darkness of the small Russian town of his youth. He tells of his early years, where even at the age of 14 he had begun organizing Zionist youth groups.
“And indeed something strange happened,” he said. “The town spoke Hebrew!”
He came to Palestine in 1906, at the age of 20, with what he called one simple goal: “To physically participate in the building of the homeland.”
Everyone spoke Hebrew and everyone worked hard. The Negev, Ben Gurion could see, was key to having a strong position in the Middle East.
But as the Turks gave way to the British and the Jews’ attempt to buy the land was rejected, it became more of an imperative to fight for a homeland. At the same time, as war broke out in Europe, these Jewish freedom fighters had to work to save their people alongside the enemy that was trying to keep them away from the land.
“We were ready to sacrifice everything, suffer anything, for the return to Zion,” he said.
As independence came, and fighting commenced, he demanded that the nascent army — tired, injured and short on ammunition — fight for the Negev.
“I was certain that if we did not hold strong to the desert, Tel Aviv would not stand,” Ben Gurion said.
He may well have been right, but a year later the Magen David was hoisted over the desert and the prime minister turned his attentions to the day-to-day necessities of building a country.
The future of the country, he believed — farming, water, scientific advances — was dependent upon the build-up of the desert from Eilat to its northern edge.
The only actual footage of Ben Gurion is not of him in office or on the battlefield, but of him tending to his sheep. For himself, he asked for nothing — not wealth nor luxury — not even, as the closing credits tell us, a eulogy at his funeral.