Menachem Begin

Prime minister of Israel (1977-1983)

• Born: August 16, 1913
• Birthplace: Brest-Litovsk, Russia (now Belarus)
• Died: March 9, 1992
• Place of death: Tel Aviv, Israel

Begin placed pressure on the British Mandate government to withdraw from Palestine, enabling Israel to declare its independence and sovereignty over part of Palestine. He also served as a key opposition leader and eventually as prime minister of Israel.

Early Life

Menachem Begin (MEH-nah-ghem BAY-gihn) was born on the eve of World War I in the Polish-Jewish city of Brest-Litovsk, occupied by czarist Russia. In 1918, Germany took the area from the Soviet Union in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, and, at the Versailles Conference in 1919, it became part of the reestablished nation of Poland. Menachem’s father and mother were orthodox Jews who worked for Zionism, the return of Jews to Palestine.

As a child Menachem (whose name means “one who brings comfort”) saw a growing anti-Semitism in Brest-Litovsk: Rocks broke windows in Jewish homes; confiscatory, discriminatory taxation on Jews was levied by the Polish government; Jewish students were beaten by their peers. Once he had to watch several leading Jewish citizens receive twenty-five lashes in a public park for alleged “sympathy with Bolsheviks.” Begin decided as a youth that Jews should not take such treatment passively and helped organize resistance against unwarranted attacks by fellow students.

Early in life, Begin demonstrated a forceful and effective public speaking personality. He attended a Polish gymnasium and received a good liberal arts education. He studied law in Warsaw and received the degree of magister juris from the University of Warsaw. Begin was greatly influenced by Vladimir Jabotinsky, an eloquent Russian journalist who preached Zionist activism and violence if necessary. Begin was a key organizer of the Polish chapter of Betar, Jabotinsky’s activist youth organization, and eventually became its commander of seventy thousand.

Meanwhile, in Palestine a splinter group of young Jews broke from the Haganah (the Jewish self-defense organization), which at the time followed a passive self-restraint in trying not to alienate the British as they defended their lands against Arab terrorist attacks. The splinter group eventually adopted the name Irgun Z’vai Leumi, the National Military Organization. The new underground organization received training in sabotage and underground warfare from Polish army officers plus quantities of weapons in exchange for promises to recruit as many Jews as possible from Poland and take them to Palestine.

In the spring of 1939, Begin married Aliza Arnold, after warning her of the exceptionally difficult life she would lead as his wife. Serene and cheerful, she was one of the great strengths of Begin’s life. She and Begin escaped Warsaw just ahead of the German Blitzkrieg. They went to the neutral city of Vilna, Lithuania, but Begin was arrested by the Soviet secret police and sentenced to eight years in a labor camp in Siberia. Aliza managed to escape to Palestine. After working fourteen hours a day for nearly a year in extremely cold conditions, Begin and other Polish prisoners were released to join the Polish Liberation Army. Their first assignment was Palestine, in which Begin first set foot in May, 1942.

Begin was already well known to the Irgun as the leader of the Polish Betar, Irgun’s best source of recruits. Jabotinsky had recently died; many Irgun members had joined the British army; and a splinter group of the Irgun, the “Stern Gang,” Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, or Lehi), had taken with them eight hundred Irgun members. Irgun, then, by the end of 1943, numbered scarcely five hundred members. It needed a dedicated, dynamic organizer, and Begin was chosen to lead the decimated Irgun.

Life’s Work

Begin’s principal purpose in life was to establish the State of Israel and build it up to survive in strength. He was willing to pay any price to accomplish that objective. “The God of Israel, the Lord of hosts, will help us,” Begin declared in 1943. “[T]here will be no retreat. Freedom or death.” Begin’s strategy was to demonstrate to the international community Great Britain’s inability to govern Palestine and thus hasten its departure. He did not want to destroy its ability to wage war against Germany and Japan and so did not raid British army bases or installations necessary to the war effort. Instead, Irgun sought to harass nonmilitary targets: disrupt communications; destroy records against illegal Jewish immigration; hamper the collection of taxes; and raid police stations and warehouses for weapons stockpiling. Irgun avoided killing either British or Arab except when “necessary.” Irgun raided a British army payroll train and “confiscated” banknotes amounting to thirty-eight thousand pounds.

Most members of Irgun were part-time saboteurs or propagandists (depending on the division to which they were assigned). Full-time staff of Irgun never numbered more than thirty or forty. Discipline and military training were strict. Irgun had an underground radio station begun in 1944 and the Irgun newspaper, Herut. (Haganah’s radio station did not begin broadcasting until October, 1945). One of Begin’s strong points as a leader was the meticulous and detailed way in which he analyzed problems and planned missions for Irgun. His conduct of meetings was the same way; he even had specific questions detailed for the agenda.

Begin tried to enlist Arabs in an effort to rid Palestine of the British. Irgun leaflets distributed in Arab villages claimed Jewish willingness to see the Arabs as peaceful citizens in the future Jewish state which was not quite the political arrangement Arabs had in mind.

In response to Irgun raids and bombings, the British in 1944 imposed a curfew on the three major cities, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Tel Aviv, and brought out an old law imposing the death penalty for possessing arms or placing explosive devices. In June, 1946, a British military court condemned to death two Irgun members for stealing weapons from a British military installation. Irgun kidnapped five British officers with the tacit warning that if the Irgun men were hanged, so too would the British die. In July, the high commissioner commuted the death sentences of the two Irgun raiders. Irgun then released the British officers, each with a one-pound note for compensatory damages. On Sabbath, June 29, 1946, the British arrested literally thousands of Jews, including members of the Jewish Agency, and even sought to arrest David Ben-Gurion.

Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi all participated in the planning of the King David Hotel bombing on July 22, 1946. Warnings were telephoned to the hotel and nearby buildings a half hour before the bomb exploded, and some escaped as a result. Nevertheless, one wing of the hotel ignored the warnings, and more than one hundred people were killed in the blast. Haganah immediately and publicly condemned Irgun and disassociated itself from the terrorist act.

Begin detested the humiliation of floggings by British authorities and warned that floggings of Jews must stop or there would be retaliation in kind. When an Irgun suspect was flogged by British police, Irgun captured a British major and three noncommissioned officers and flogged each with eighteen lashes. Then they were set free with an Irgun communiqué showing the emblem of the two banks of the Jordan River and a rifle with the slogan “Only Thus.” The British flogged no more Jews or Arabs for the rest of their time in Palestine.

Irgun’s (and Begin’s) greatest triumph was the successful storming of the impregnable Crusader fortress of Acre, where Jewish prisoners were kept and, in capital cases, executed. In the middle of an Arab city, Begin planned an elaborate operation that blew an enormous hole in the walls and freed 251 prisoners 131 Arabs and 120 Jews. Fifteen Jews were killed and fifteen captured. When three of those captured were executed, Irgun retaliated with the hanging of two innocent British sergeants, one of the most despicable actions ever taken by Irgun in the eyes of its critics. Equally despicable were the murders of five innocent Jews by British soldiers and police officers in Tel Aviv in retaliation for the hanging of the sergeants. No more Jewish terrorists or British soldiers were executed in the remaining year of British occupation. After Begin became prime minister of Israel, he refused to permit the execution of Arab terrorists.

When the British withdrew from Palestine and the Israeli War of Independence (Arab-Israeli War) began in May, 1948, with the invasion of Palestine by Arab troops from Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, Begin and his Irgun were a thorn in the flesh for the new government of Israel under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. The Haganah needed all the help it could get, but neither Irgun nor Lehi was willing to relinquish control of its organization to the new government. They were willing to fight the Arabs. The massacre of Deir Yassin remains the most notorious of uncontrolled Irgun/Lehi actions.

Begin’s willingness to cooperate with the new government but not to submit to its authority led to armed conflict between Haganah and Irgun over the disposition of weapons brought in by Irgun on the Altalena. Of Irgun’s men, fourteen were killed and sixty-nine wounded. The government ended with two killed and six wounded. Much of the desperately needed ammunition had been destroyed. To Ben-Gurion, Israel could not afford to have private armies that were not under the discipline of the government. To Begin’s credit, he swallowed his pride and fought the common Arab enemy and did not let the Israeli cause perish in fratricidal conflict. He refused to fight fellow Jews and accepted the authority of the government. On September 20, 1948, Ben-Gurion presented Begin with an ultimatum ordering the immediate disbandment of the Irgun. Begin accepted the order and disbanded his organization.

As the war drew to an end, Begin helped organize the opposition Herut party in Israel. Herut proposed a vigorous capitalist system instead of the labor socialism of the ruling Mapai coalition. Herut also insisted that the Land of Israel included all of biblical Palestine on both sides of the Jordan River. In the first election to the 120-member Knesset, Israel’s parliament, Herut obtained fourteen seats, including one for Begin, a post he held for thirty years.

Though usually a key opposition leader to the government, Begin closed ranks during each of Israel’s wars. By 1977, Begin had formed a right-wing coalition called the Likud bloc and controlled sixty-two Knesset seats, a majority. Begin became prime minister of Israel. He was supported partially because of his uncompromising stance on the West Bank captured by Israel in the 1967 war. It was Prime Minister Begin who signed the Camp David agreement in an effort to normalize relations with Egypt (leading to his receiving, with Anwar el-Sadat, the Nobel Peace Prize of 1978), and it was also Begin who ordered the invasion of Lebanon and the war to end the Palestine Liberation Organization’s attacks in Israel.

Significance

No one can doubt Begin’s dedication to the cause of Israeli independence and strength. He was a realist. He was brutal when he thought he needed to be. He suffered much, but he also caused much suffering. He was intensely loyal and a capable commander who tried to protect his subordinates. He brought enormous pressure on the British, who finally were almost too glad to depart Israel, thereby making it possible for Israel to win independence and prevent Arab conquest of part of Palestine. Did the British leave and the Israelis win because of or in spite of Irgun and Begin? Would the British have left anyway, or would they have left in a context more favorable to Arab Palestinians? If the Israelis had refrained from all terrorism and sabotage, would the British have cooperated more or sided with the Arabs more? These are the imponderables of history, to which no more than tentative answers can be given.

The Arabs hated the Israelis for depriving the Palestinian Arabs of the land of their fathers, but many Arabs hated the Jews long before they had such a cause. Begin played a crucial role before 1948, but the Irgun could not win the war for independence. Only the Jewish Agency and the Haganah had the resources to do what seemed impossible at the time. Begin’s role as an opposition politician and later as an unpopular prime minister continues to be clouded in controversy and conflict, both of which plagued Begin all of his life.

Bibliography

Bauer, Yehuda. From Diplomacy to Resistance: A History of Jewish Palestine, 1939-1945. Translated by Alton M. Winters. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1970. Begin arrived in Israel in 1942, and his most significant historical contributions to Israel were in the years 1942-1948. This book analyzes in detail the historical situation during the critical years for Palestine. Bauer describes the intricate interrelationships and cooperation among Haganah, Irgun, and Lehi. The books examines the ambivalent attitudes of the British government and occupying army in Palestine and their relationship to both Arab and Jew.

Begin, Menachem. The Revolt. Translated by Shmuel Katz. New York: Schuman, 1951. In all the controversies surrounding Begin, it is only fair to hear his side of the story. Begin tells of insights and detailed facts that a sweeping narrative cannot. Begin’s account, however, ends with 1948 and so is valuable only for the early period.

Bell, J. Bowyer. Terror Out of Zion: Irgun Zvai Leumi, LEHI, and the Palestine Underground, 1929-1949. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977. A well-written, fascinating insight into the intrigues, mentality, and troublesome times of the Israeli underground groups and their relationships and disagreements. One hundred pages follow Begin’s career, especially after his arrival in Palestine. This book was published after Begin became prime minister, giving more historical perspective to the events described.

Cullen, Bob. “Two Weeks at Camp David.” Smithsonian, September, 2003, 56. Recounts the events that occurred during a 1978 peace conference attended by Begin, Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat, and U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

Hirschler, Gertrude, and Lester S. Eckman. Menachem Begin: From Freedom Fighter to Statesman. New York: Shengold, 1979. A sympathetic biography of Begin with many details of his family and early life. Covers all stages of his life. In the various controversies of his career, Begin is presented in as favorable a light as the authors can persuasively find.

Hirst, David. The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. A sharply critical analysis of Israeli actions in Palestine, including Begin’s role in “Gun Zionism.”

O’Brien, Conor Cruise. The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986. A full history of modern Israel written by an Irishman and often placing an unusual interpretation on historical events. O’Brien wrote much about Begin, including his years as prime minister. This is a balanced, scholarly account.

Silver, Eric. Begin: The Haunted Prophet. New York: Random House, 1984. A fascinating biography written by an Oxford-educated English journalist who lived in Israel for eleven years as a foreign correspondent. He sees Begin as consistent, who was unswerving in his dedication to Israeli security. He is often critical of Begin but detached in his observations and analysis.