Menachem Begin
(1913 - 1992)
Menachem Begin was born on August 16, 1913, in Brest-Litovsk in 1913. As a child, he was forced to flee with his family to escape the fighting between the German and Russian armies in World War I.
A passionate Zionist from an early age, he joined Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s Betar youth movement in his teens and quickly rose to important administrative and leadership positions.
By 1936, he was in charge of Betar Czechoslovakia, and, in 1938, he became the head of Betar Poland, an organization with 100,000 members that engaged in weapons training to defend Polish Jewry, preparation and transport of “illegal” immigrants to Israel, agricultural training, and communications.
In 1940, Begin was imprisoned in Siberian labor camps by Josef Stalin’s NKVD (a forerunner of the KGB). After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he was set free by dint of his Polish citizenship and joined the Free Polish Army, which in 1943 made its way to British controlled Palestine for training.
Contacting the dormant Jewish underground, Irgun Zvai Leumi, Begin set about planning a Jewish uprising against the British authorities. This began in 1944 but increased in pace and scope immediately after World War II and continued until late 1947. Begin ordered many of the Irgun’s operations, including the Akko prison breakout and the destruction of the central British administrative offices in the King David Hotel. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Begin disbanded the Irgun.
From 1948 to 1977, Begin was the leader of Israel’s opposition. In the 1950s, he led the movement against accepting German reparations for the Holocaust.
In 1965, Begin merged his Herut Party with the Liberals to form Gahal, which later served as the foundation of the Likud Party. The crisis atmosphere in 1967 saw the establishment of a National Unity Government, which finally brought Begin and other Gahal leaders to the Cabinet table. The National Unity Government continued until 1970 when Begin insisted that Israel condition Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s extension of the cease-fire across the Suez Canal on the signing of a peace treaty recognizing Israel.
In 1977, Begin was elected Prime Minister. As the new head of state, he helped initiate the peace process with Egypt, which resulted in the Camp David Accords and the 1979 Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. As a result of this effort to achieve peace with Egypt, Begin was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1978 with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
On April 2, 1979, Begin became the first Israeli Prime Minister to visit Cairo.
Begin invested national resources in development programs for Israel’s poorer neighborhoods and sought to liberalize Israel’s economy.
In 1981, Begin ordered the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, where the Iraqi regime was developing nuclear weapons. Though the international community roundly condemned Israel at the time, it became apparent during the 1991 Gulf War that Israel’s action had succeeded in hampering Baghdad’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
In 1982, after repeated acts of PLO terror, Israel launched Operation Peace for Galilee to remove the terrorist threat from Israel’s northern border.
Begin’s decision to encourage Ethiopian Jews to immigrate to Israel later culminated in Operation Moses, which brought thousands en masse to Israel in the early 1980’s.
With his health faltering and the criticism over the Lebanon war overwhelming him, Begin announced on August 29, 1983, that he planned to resign as prime minister without giving a reason. Seven days later, he told his Cabinet, I cannot go on any longer.
On September 15, he officially submitted his resignation. He was succeeded on October 10 by Yitzhak Shamir.
The decision came following the death of his wife, Aliza, in the winter of 1982 and his despair over the conduct of the war in Lebanon. He spent the rest of his life in seclusion, glimpsed in public only at memorials for his wife or at the weddings of his grandchildren.
He died on March 9, 1992, and was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.