Grandson Solves 67-Year-Old Mystery About Ben-Gurion Encounter in Haifa

In a remarkable story spanning over six decades, Shimon Cohen, now 78, recalls a pivotal night from his childhood in Haifa’s Wadi Salib neighborhood that changed his family’s fate. In 1959, when Shimon was 11, his father, Shalom Cohen, a Moroccan immigrant working at the Haifa port, publicly confronted Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, during a political rally. Shalom, frustrated over workplace discrimination and lack of permanent employment, shouted accusations at Ben-Gurion, prompting party members to try to restrain him. Ben-Gurion intervened, inviting Shalom onto the stage and engaging him in a dialogue about his grievances, including his seven children and his struggle to secure job stability. Within three days, Shalom received permanent employment status at the port.

Shimon’s family, originally from Morocco and having fled through Algeria and Marseille before settling in Haifa in 1947, later moved to another neighborhood in the 1960s. Shimon himself served in the paratroopers during the Six-Day War, studied civil engineering at the Technion, and eventually became his father’s employer at the shipping company Zim.

This extraordinary encounter was featured for years in the "The Old Man and the People" exhibition at the Ben-Gurion hut in Sde Boker, but the outcome of Shalom Cohen’s appeal remained unclear until recently. Ramon Ziv-Av, deputy director at the Ben-Gurion Heritage Institute, had searched for the story for eight years without success. The breakthrough came about six months ago when a teenager visiting the Sde Boker commune mentioned the exhibition and revealed that Ben-Gurion’s interlocutor was his great-great-grandfather, finally solving the 67-year-old mystery.