Menachem Begin — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

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.

Biography

About

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 e…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin

said21 Aug 1982

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.

— (21 August 1982)

Menachem Begin

said22 Mar 1978

Israel is still the only country in the world against which there is a written document to the effect that it must disappear.

— Address in Washington D.C. (22 March 1978)

Menachem Begin

saidJul 1977

Mr. President, I wish to tell you something personal - not about me, but about my generation.

— Amb. Yehuda Avner's account of a meeting with U.S. President Jimmy Carter (July 1977)

Menachem Begin

saidundated

The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel.

— Iron Wall, p. 25 & Simha Flapan, p. 32

Menachem Begin

saidundated