Jerusalem, 15 November, 2026 (TPS-IL) — On Monday, Israel will mark the state Memorial Day for David Ben-Gurion, 53 years after his death. To mark the occasion, the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute and the Ben-Gurion Archive are revealing two historical documents that carry unusual weight today: a letter Ben-Gurion wrote to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis on January 5, 1934, and a memorandum he sent him on June 4, 1935.
In both, Ben-Gurion warns of the global spread of antisemitism and cautions that Jews may be forced to leave their countries. He also lays out a far-sighted strategy: to secure the Jewish people’s future, the Land of Israel must expand its capacity to absorb immigrants, and the Negev must be developed. He saw it as the last great land reserve, one that water, settlement and labor could turn into space for millions of Jews.
The documents were released through a collaboration between the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute and the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of Israel and Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They are being published for the first time.
In the 1934 letter, written after the Nazis rose to power in Germany, Ben-Gurion describes how antisemitic propaganda was spreading across Europe. During a short visit to England and France, he wrote that he saw the seeds of Nazi propaganda against Jews slowly taking root in both countries, almost unnoticed.
He did not treat this as a local or passing phenomenon. He understood that antisemitism could spread far beyond Germany’s borders, and that the Jewish nation could not build its future on the assumption that other nations would guarantee its safety. That conclusion put immigration at the center of his thinking, along with the Land of Israel’s ability to receive Jews forced to leave their homes.
The letter names two considerations that Zionist leaders must keep in view: the plight of the Jewish people and the absorptive capacity of the country. For Ben-Gurion, it was not enough to acknowledge Jewish distress or call on Jews to immigrate. An economic, employment, and settlement infrastructure had to be built so they could arrive and make their lives here. He estimated that the country could then absorb 50,000 Jews a year, and warned that without timely preparation the Jewish people might pay a heavy price.
By June 1935, Ben-Gurion had moved from the question of immigration to the question of action: where could hundreds of thousands of Jews, and perhaps millions in the future, be absorbed? His memorandum to Brandeis opens by declaring that the most pressing problem in the Land of Israel at that moment was the problem of land. He cautioned that the limits of settlement had nearly been reached, and that without expanding the areas available, it would be impossible to absorb all the Jews who were forced, or might be forced, to leave their countries.
His answer was the Negev, a vast and almost uninhabited expanse that he believed held enormous potential. Its main importance, he wrote, lay in the fact that large areas were literally empty of inhabitants. By drilling wells, he argued, it would be possible to create dense, large-scale settlement that could be achieved nowhere else in western Palestine.
This thinking is tied to one of his best-known maxims: “If we find the water, we will find the land.” Ben-Gurion understood that the main obstacle in the Negev was not a shortage of land but the human and technological ability to turn desert into a place for living, farming, and working. In this vision, the Negev’s future is not dictated by nature but depends on what people can create and build.
Nor did he stop at a general vision. He identified the Gulf of Eilat and the Arava Valley as economically, politically, and strategically significant. As early as 1935, he proposed establishing a pioneering Jewish community of 50 to 100 settlers near Umm Rashrash, on the Red Sea, engaged in farming and fishing. He also foresaw Eilat’s future role as a link between Europe and Asia and as a commercial and economic hub. The Jewish future, he wrote, was tied to large-scale agricultural settlement in the Negev and to opening an avenue for Jewish work and initiative on the sea, and the sooner the better.
Eitan Dunietz, CEO of the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute, said that reading documents written 91 years ago is jarring precisely because of their relevance to today’s reality. Ben-Gurion saw antisemitism spreading in Europe in 1934, he noted, and this reinforced his earlier understanding that the Jewish nation cannot entrust its future to others.
The official state ceremony will be held this week at the Ben-Gurion Gravesite National Park at Midreshet Ben-Gurion, with President Isaac Herzog in attendance alongside government representatives, security forces, members of Kibbutz Sde Boker, the Ben-Gurion family, and residents of the Ramat Negev Regional Council.
