The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America.

In general however relations were amicable though distant. He was arrested twice during the Russian Revolution of 1905. On 14 May 1948 he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence which he had helped to write.

Posthumously Ben-Gurion was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th century. He worked very well with Konrad Adenauer's government in Bonn and West Germany provided large sums (in the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany) in compensation for Germany's prosecution of the Holocaust against the Jews. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).