Talk a little bit about Ben-Gurion. What he was like?
Shimon Peres: Let me tell you how I met him. I admired him before I met him. Once day, I was informed that Ben-Gurion would give me a ride from Tel Aviv to Haifa. At that time, it took two hours to do it. Imagine how excited I was! Here was my hero, my legendary man, and here was an unknown boy from nowhere. I thought, “My God, I’m going to have two hours with this man.” It was a wintery day. I went to the car, and to my unpleasant surprise, he put on his coat, turned his back to me, and forgot about me. I was sitting, so disappointed, up to the point we reached Haifa, very close to the place, and all of a sudden, he turned to me and he said, “You know, Trotsky was not a statesman.” How did Trotsky arrive in the car at the last moment? I didn’t know, but me being so much interested in having conversation, I said, “Why?” He said, “What do you mean why? What sort of a policy is that? No peace and no war? Either peace and pay the price, or war and take the risk. Otherwise it’s a Jewish in
