Israel Fighter, First and Last: Menachem Begin (1913-1992)

The life of every man who fights in a just cause is a paradox. He makes war so that there should be peace. He sheds blood so that there should be no more bloodshed.

— Menachem Begin, The Revolt, 1949

There was a touch of the mystical, the messianic, about him. In starched white shirt and dark suit, tie tightly knotted at his throat, spectacles ever in place, he looked like a stern schoolmaster who had spent so many hours in lonely thought that he moved with an evident lack of ease among other people. From his earliest boyhood in a Polish ghetto, he was propelled by a determination to help bring about the birth of a Jewish state. It became the dream that motivated his life, first as leader of a bloody campaign against the British and the Arabs, finally as Prime Minister of Israel.

No leader proved so paradoxical to his friends or so confounding to his critics as did Menachem Begin in his stewardship of that office. He came to power in 1977 after a campaign in which he advocated continued Israeli rule of captured Arab territories. Abrasive and seemingly uncompromising, he talked incessantly of Israel’s claim to Judea and Samaria, that part of Israel along the West Bank of the Jordan River that was taken from Jordan in 1967, a territory now inhabited by 1 million Palestinians.

Yet after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his extraordinary decision to go to Jerusalem in 1977, Begin found it a gesture so bold and imaginative that he signed a peace treaty with Egypt. In exchange for normal relations, Israel pledged to return the Sinai peninsula to Egypt and to participate in negotiations to determine the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It was a daring gamble that would ensure both men a place in history and a share of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. But by the time Begin died last week at the age of 78, the magic of that moment had long since faded.

Indomitable and often unpredictable, Begin put an unprecedented strain on relations with the U.S. Ronald Reagan was caught off guard by the 1981 bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and a year later by Israel’s bloody invasion of Lebanon. Such actions served to underscore a fundamental duality in Begin’s nature: the peacemaker was not a pacifist, and never abandoned his dream of a Greater Israel.

Begin’s government pursued a policy of aggressive territorial expansion. More than three times as many Jewish settlements were established in the West Bank territories during his six years as Prime Minister as in the previous decade of Labor governments. In 1980 he presided over the annexation of the Arab sector of Jerusalem. In December 1981 he pushed through a bill effectively annexing Syria’s Golan Heights.

Menachem Begin came early to his Zionist zeal. He was born in a Polish town where his father was a leader in the Jewish community. After earning a law degree at the University of Warsaw, he became national commander of Betar, a right-wing paramilitary group that advocated the violent ouster of the British from Palestine. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, he fled to Lithuania, leaving behind his parents, who died under the Nazis. A year later, he joined the anti-German Free Polish Army and served with a unit that was attached to British forces in Palestine. There in 1943 he took command of the Jewish underground terrorist organization Irgun. The British put a $30,000 price tag on his head but never captured him.

Not until 1967, when he joined the government of national unity as a Minister Without Portfolio, did Begin acquire a measure of political respectability. In May 1977, on his ninth try to become Prime Minister, he scored a stunning upset as leader of the right-wing Likud bloc at the age of 63, only seven weeks after he had suffered a serious heart attack. Despite his repeated hospitalizations, his energy and oratorical flair never sagged.

If Camp David was the zenith of his career, his ineptness in economic policy nearly proved his undoing. By 1981 the Likud trailed in the polls. Just three weeks before elections, Begin ordered the attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor. The raid, which helped the Likud eke out a narrow victory, signaled a newly aggressive Israeli military policy. On June 6, 1982, army tanks rolled into Lebanon. The country paid a high price: more than 600 of its soldiers died, and 3,000 were wounded. There were also psychological scars after Israel permitted Christian Phalangist militiamen to enter the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, where they murdered at least 800 men, women and children.

In November 1982, Aliza, Begin’s wife of 43 years, died. In the months that followed, his aides noticed that he appeared listless, almost indifferent to events. On Aug. 28, 1983, he announced that he would resign. Then he went into almost complete seclusion.

More than three decades ago, Begin wrote that the struggle to create the state of Israel could be summed up in a single sentence: “We fight, therefore we are.” If the fighter had finally laid down his sword, Menachem Begin’s role in the battle would be remembered — and hotly debated — for years to come.