Israel: A Month in the Country

In most nations, when the head of state takes a holiday the people relax. But not in Israel. Bushy-haired, brittle-tempered Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion habitually uses the threat of a holiday to intimidate his opponents and bring dissident leaders of his ruling Mapai Party back into line. Last week Ben-Gurion did it again.

The spur for the leave-taking was the Lavon affair (TIME, Nov. 7), a five-year-old governmental scandal that has grown as complex and abstruse as a learned commentary on the Talmud. Polish-born Pinhas Lavon was Israel's Defense Minister until 1955,...

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