Menachem Begin
Israeli politician and former Prime Minister (1913-1992) · Israel · Politicians · Died at 78
Menachem Begin is read about 2,222 times a day, in 81 languages.
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Something wrong?He led a group the British called a "terrorist organisation," then decades later signed a peace treaty that won him the Nobel Prize - the arc from militant to statesman that defined modern Israel's hard right.
A life in dates
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Photos 12
Begin (top center) with his parents, his sister Rachel, and his brother Herzl in Poland, 1932
Begin reviews a Betar lineup in 1939.
NKVD mugshots of Menachem Begin, 1940
Begin in his Polish Army uniform with his wife Aliza in Tel Aviv, December 1942.
Palestine Police Force wanted poster of Irgun and Lehi members. Begin appears at the top left.
Begin in the guise of "Rabbi Sassover" with wife Aliza and son Benyamin-Zeev, Tel Aviv, December 1946In their own words 7
, In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us.
Israel is still the only country in the world against which there is a written document to the effect that it must disappear.
Mr. President, I wish to tell you something personal - not about me, but about my generation.
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Born in 1913, Begin commanded the Irgun, a Zionist militant group that broke from the Haganah and waged attacks against British rule in Mandatory Palestine, including the King David Hotel bombing in 1946. The British barred him from entering the UK for years. After Israel's founding he founded Herut and spent nearly three decades in opposition, embodying the fringe right against the Labor establishment. His 1977 election as prime minister ended that dominance. Two years later he signed a peace treaty with Egypt's Anwar Sadat, sharing the Nobel and withdrawing from Sinai, while simultaneously expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. He ordered the bombing of Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, then launched the 1982 Lebanon invasion. As the war dragged on and the Sabra and Shatila massacre drew global condemnation, Begin - already devastated by his wife Aliza's death - withdrew from public life and resigned in October 1983.
Politicians from Israel 6
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