High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Rafi, was a left-wing political party in Israel, founded by former Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion in 1965. In 1968 it was one of three parties which merged to form the Israeli Labor Party. Rafi was founded on 14 July 1965 when David Ben-Gurion led a breakaway of eight MKs from Mapai, the ruling party, taking with him Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres, Chaim Herzog, and Teddy Kollek, amongst others. The split had two main causes; the first was the disagreements within Mapai over the Lavon Affair; Ben-Gurion did not agree to declaring Lavon innocent without judicial investigation committee.