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29.10.01, 05:54
Prime Minister of State of Israel, Menachem Begin (1913-1993)
Begin was a Polish-born Jew, later a zionist leader and prime minister of
Israel from 1977 to 1983. He was born as Mieczysław Biegun in Brześć (Brest
Litovsk) in 1913, the last year of Russian occupation of this city. 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. He was a Zionist from an early age. Begin
joined so-called Ze’ev Zabotinski’s “Betar” youth movement in his teens, and
rised quickly to important administrative and leadership positions (so called
apparatchik). In 1935 he graduated at the Faculty of Law of Warsaw University.
By 1936 he was in charge of Betar Czechoslovakia, and in 1938 he became the
head of Betar Poland, an organisation with up to 100,000 members which engaged
in weapons training (officially to “defend Polish Jewry”), preparation and
transport of illegal immigrants to Israel (Britain, which administered then
Palestine, did not wish to create ethnic and religious tensions by allowing
large numbers of Jews), agricultural training, and military communications.
Begin was the co-recipient, with Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat, of the 1978
Nobel Prize for Peace, similarly to Arafat, who received his Nobel Prize in
1994. As Arafat, Begin was initially a terrorist, fighting from 1943 a
terrorist campaign against the British. Begin found himself in Palestine after
escaping from Poland to Soviet Russia (USSR) in 1939, fearing of German
prosecutions. He was sentenced by the Soviets to eight years in a slave-labour
camp for his zionist activities, but released in 1941 to fight in the Polish
army, which units were formed in Soviet Union after this state was invaded by
the Germans. Begin entered Palestine in 1942 and became a commandant of a
paramilitary terrorist unit fighting the British, who then controlled the
Palestine. He has contacted the (then) dormant Jewish underground organisation
Irgun Zvai Leumi. Using this organisation he began planning a Jewish terror
campaign 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, which caused many deaths among the British. Following the
unilateral proclamation of the State of Israel in 1948, Begin disbanded the
Irgun, which became part of Israeli military and intelligence (Mosad).
From 1948 to 1977, Menachem Begin was the leader of Israel's opposition. 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 Israeli Cabinet. The National Unity Government
continued until 1970. In 1977, Begin was elected Prime Minister of Israel. As a
Premier, he helped initiate the peace process with Egypt, which resulted in the
Camp David Accords and in 1979 in the Peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. In
1981, Begin ordered the Israeli Air Force to bomb the Osirak nuclear reactor in
Iraq, where the Iraqis were allegedly developing nuclear weapons. For this
clearly terrorist action Israel was roundly condemned by the international
community. He was forced to resign from the post of a prime minister of Israel
after Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and died eleven years later.
Von Kaganoff
Philosophiae Doctor
Magister Artium
