Here's a great little story for you in honor of the passing of the old year and the coming of the new. It's from Herman Wouk's book, The Will To Live On, and describes his encounter with BG.
"What took you so long?" Ben Gurion asked me when we first met, during the intermission of a performance in Hebrew of my Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, at the Habimah Threatre in Tel Aviv. It was a gala evening, laid on in honor of the playwright, a newcomer to Israel, so even the informal Israeli were somewhat dressed up, but the squat paunchy Zionist leader, instantly recognizable by the floating wings of white hair on his tanned balding head, wore a khaki open-neck shirt and pants. My wife and I had been out at sea with the fledgling Jewish navy, had docked late in Haifa, and had been rocketed to Tel Aviv in a military car, barely in time for the second act. So his inquiry might have been a gentle twitting about that, but it was not what he meant, and I understood him."I'm not here yet," I replied, adopting his allusive style.
He grinned and invited Sarah and me to his home in the Negev desert. Next day we came to the Sde Boker (Field of Morning) kibbutz in a command car escorted by a jeep with a mounted machine gun, for back in 1955 the raw little county was being bloodily harassed in broad daylight by fedayeen, terrorists from Egypt and Gaza. Ben-Gurion was out of office and working on his memoirs, so he discoursed in long Churchillian style on history, politics, philosophy, and literature until the sun was low. His wife Paula, seeing that he was enjoying himself, invited us to stay for dinner.
"No, no, they're kosher," said Ben-Gurion.
"So I'll make them hard-boiled eggs and salad."
"Paula, they have to get back to Tel Aviv before dark."
When we were leaving he came out with his straight Zionist line, no more hints. "You must return here to live," he said. "This is the only place for Jews like you. Here you will be free."
"Free?" I ventured to reply. "Free? With enemy armies ringing you, with their leaders publicly threatening to wipe out 'the Zionist entity,' with your roads impassable after sundown -- free?"
"I did not say safe," the old man retorted. "I said free."