Menachem Begin

1913 - 1992.

Menachem Begin was an underground Commander, Opposition Leader, and Israel’s sixth Prime Minister.

Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978. Source: USAF, public domain.

As one of the most outstanding Jewish leaders of the 20th century, his life followed the trajectory of the travails and successes of the Jewish people in their Exile and their Return to Zion. 

He was born into a traditional Jewish family life but one open to the world around. His birthplace, Brest/Brisk, was then part of Russia, later Poland and today, Belarus, and the year was 1913. His father, Ze'ev Dov, served as the secretary of the Jewish community and his mother was a housewife. He had an older sister and brother. His brother disappeared during the Holocaust while his sister survived, residing in Uzbekistan. His mother was murdered by the Nazis while in hospital, and his father was thrown into the nearby Bug River, stones bound around his neck.

He was involved in Zionist youth activity from a young age. After briefly participating in the leftist HaShomer HaTzair movement, he joined Betar shortly after his Bar Mitzvah and met Ze'ev Jabotinsky, leader of the Revisionist Zionists, a year later. Parallel to his university law studies in Warsaw, he became very involved in Betar, eventually, in early 1939, assuming the leadership position of the movement in Poland with its tens of thousands of members.

According to Eli Lake, what made Begin the man he was is an element of the ideology of Betar: hadar, a Hebrew word meaning self-respect, honor, and dignity. Despite the Jewish condition of victimhood, of living at the mercy of anti-Semites, they would no longer accept being spectators to their humiliation and annihilation. The new Jew would be proud. He would fight back.

Upon the outbreak of World War Two, he and his wife, Aliza, fled eastwards to Vilna but there, a year later, he was arrested by the Soviet regime. Charged with counter-revolutionary activity as a Zionist nationalist, he spent a year in detention including a period in the Pechora gulag camp. Following the German invasion of Russia, he was freed with other Poles and joined Anders' Army (Polish Armed Forces) and made his way with the troops to the Land of Israel, under British Mandate. He arrived in April 1942 and rejoined his wife.

By December 1943 he had been appointed commander of the anti-British Irgun underground. For the next four years and more, he was hunted by the British Mandatory regime, changing living quarters and identities, while leading the Irgun. His strategy, according to Professor David Charters, was to simultaneously undermine British rule in Palestine while promoting the Irgun’s image and message thereby creating ever-increasing damage to British prestige, while the act itself would enhance the reputation of the Irgun.

Following the armed resistance campaign, buttressed by the actions of the Lechi underground and the Palmach, as well as the clandestine immigration by boats, the British turned to the UN to relieve them of the Mandate responsibility. Operations such as the King David Hotel bombing (on 22 July 1946), the Acre prison break-out, the hanging of two British sergeants and attacks on army camps and police stations and dozens of others made British rule impossible.

With the establishment of the state of Israel, the Altalena ship incident in June 1948 almost marred the stability of the new government when David Ben-Gurion reneged on an agreement over the arms distribution brought in by the Irgun but Begin ordered his men not to engage in any civil strife. He headed Herut, the main opposition party to the Mapai hegemony. In 1967, on the eve of the Six Days War, he joined a national unity coalition, ending his ostracism. He served as a Minister until 1970 when he resigned after the government agreed to a compromise with Egypt, accepting the Rodgers’ Plan.

Finally, in 1977, the new political bloc Begin headed, Likud, won a plurality of Knesset seats and established a government. Begin served as Prime Minister, and additional ministerial posts, until he resigned in the fall of 1983.

Among his accomplishments were the bombing of the Iraq nuclear reactor, Project Renewal to rehabilitate underprivileged neighborhoods, a peace treaty with Egypt which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize, reforms in the domestic field, elimination of tuition fees for secondary education and, among others, introduction of a national income support system. A trend began that nudged Israel more to a capitalist economy.

After a year of the First Lebanon War and the death of his wife, Begin resigned in September 1983. For the next decade, he lived as a recluse and passed away in March 1992.

He was considered the epitome of a ‘Jewish’ statesman, a politician with high moral standards and integrity, one who upheld Israel’s security as primary while paying the utmost respect to Jewish traditions and honoring Israel’s minorities and their civil rights. 

Recommended Reading:

• Menachem Begin, The Revolt

• Menachem Begin, White Nights

• Daniel Gordis, Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel's Soul 

• Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers

• Harry Hurwitz and Yisrael Medad, Peace in the Making: the Begin-Sadat Correspondence

Article Written by Yisrael Medad

Israeli journalist and author, and former director of educational programming and information resources at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.

Personnal Blog: myrightword.blogspot.com