Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin

Author: Avi Shilon

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2012-11-27

Total Pages: 587

ISBN-13: 0300189036

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Menachem Begin, father of Israel's right wing and sixth prime minister of the nation, was known for his unflinchingly hawkish ideology. And yet, in 1979 he signed a groundbreaking peace treaty with Egypt for which he and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat received the Nobel Prize for Peace. Such a contradiction was typical in Begin's life: no other Israeli played as many different, sometimes conflicting, roles as Begin, and no other figure inspired such sharply opposing responses. Begin was belittled and beloved, revered and despised, and his career was punctuated by exhilarating highs on the one hand, despair and ostracism on the other./divDIV DIVThis riveting biography is the first to provide a satisfactory answer to the question, Who was Begin? Based on wide-ranging research among archival documents and on testimonials and interviews with Begin's closest advisers, the book presents a detailed new portrait of the founding leader. Among the many topics the book holds up to new light are Begin's antagonistic relationship with David Ben-Gurion, his controversial role in the 1982 Lebanon War, his unique leadership style, the changes in his ideology over the years, and the mystery behind the total silence he maintained at the end of his career. Through Begin's remarkable life, the book also recounts the history of the right-wing segment of Israeli society, a story essential to understanding the Israel of today./div

Menachem Begin
Menachem Begin

Author: Daniel Gordis

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2014-03-04

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0805243127

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Reviled as a fascist by his great rival Ben-Gurion, venerated by Israel’s underclass, the first Israeli to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a proud Jew but not a conventionally religious one, Menachem Begin was both complex and controversial. Born in Poland in 1913, Begin was a youthful admirer of the Revisionist Zionist Ze’ev Jabotinsky and soon became a leader within Jabotinsky’s Betar movement. A powerful orator and mesmerizing public figure, Begin was imprisoned by the Soviets in 1940, joined the Free Polish Army in 1942, and arrived in Palestine as a Polish soldier shortly thereafter. Joining the underground paramilitary Irgun in 1943, he achieved instant notoriety for the organization’s bombings of British military installations and other violent acts. Intentionally left out of the new Israeli government, Begin’s right-leaning Herut political party became a fixture of the opposition to the Labor-dominated governments of Ben-Gurion and his successors, until the surprising parliamentary victory of his political coalition in 1977 made him prime minister. Welcoming Egyptian president Anwar Sadat to Israel and cosigning a peace treaty with him on the White House lawn in 1979, Begin accomplished what his predecessors could not. His outreach to Ethiopian Jews and Vietnamese “boat people” was universally admired, and his decision to bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 is now regarded as an act of courageous foresight. But the disastrous invasion of Lebanon to end the PLO’s shelling of Israel’s northern cities, combined with his declining health and the death of his wife, led Begin to resign in 1983. He spent the next nine years in virtual seclusion, until his death in 1992. Begin was buried not alongside Israel’s prime ministers, but alongside the Irgun comrades who died in the struggle to create the Jewish national home to which he had devoted his life. Daniel Gordis’s perceptive biography gives us new insight into a remarkable political figure whose influence continues to be felt both within Israel and throughout the world. This title is part of the Jewish Encounters series.

The Life and Times of Menachem Begin
The Life and Times of Menachem Begin

Author: Amos Perlmutter

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13:

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A distinguished political scientist and journalist presents the first comprehensive biography of Menachem Begin, exploring the inner man behind the complex leader. 31 black-and-white photographs.

Begin
Begin

Author: Harry Zvi Hurwitz

Publisher: Gefen Publishing House Ltd

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9789652293244

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Whenever the name of Menachem Begin is mentioned, people of all ages and persuasions respond in the same way: "We need him now." What is it that "we need"; what is missing? Perhaps Menachem Begin's most important and unique contribution to the Jewish People was Supreme Patriotism. More and more frequently we hear and read accounts that show a loss of national will quite contrary to the spirit of Patriotism, which--in the words of Harav Kook, the Chief Rabbi of Eretz Israel in the 1920s, and of Menachem Begin throughout his political career--once reverberated throughout the land and the universe, "AHAVAT ISRAEL" and "AHAVAT ERETZ ISRAEL" The love of the people of Israel and the Land of Israel. This type of Jewish leadership today is lacking, and it is here that "we need him now." We miss his deep faith, his courage, and his Jewish pride. Yet, above all, Begin is missed because of his personal qualities of modesty, integrity, truthfulness, devotion, and adherence to principle, no matter how difficult or unpopular. For all these reasons and more we need him now.

The Life and Times of Menachem Begin
The Life and Times of Menachem Begin

Author: Amos Perlmutter

Publisher: Doubleday Books

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13:

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A distinguished political scientist and journalist presents the first comprehensive biography of Menachem Begin, exploring the inner man behind the complex leader. 31 black-and-white photographs.

Thirteen Days in September
Thirteen Days in September

Author: Lawrence Wright

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2015-04-28

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 0804170029

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ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, The Daily Beast, St. Louis Post-Dispatch In September 1978, three world leaders—Menachem Begin of Israel, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, and U.S. president Jimmy Carter—met at Camp David to broker a peace agreement between the two Middle East nations. During the thirteen-day conference, Begin and Sadat got into screaming matches and had to be physically separated; both attempted to walk away multiple times. Yet, by the end, a treaty had been forged—one that has quietly stood for more than three decades, proving that peace in the Middle East is possible. Wright combines politics, scripture, and the participants’ personal histories into a compelling narrative of the fragile peace process. Begin was an Orthodox Jew whose parents had perished in the Holocaust; Sadat was a pious Muslim inspired since boyhood by stories of martyrdom; Carter, who knew the Bible by heart, was driven by his faith to pursue a treaty, even as his advisers warned him of the political cost. Wright reveals an extraordinary moment of lifelong enemies working together—and the profound difficulties inherent in the process. Thirteen Days in September is a timely revisiting of this diplomatic triumph and an inside look at how peace is made.

Peace in the Making
Peace in the Making

Author: Menachem Begin

Publisher: Gefen Publishing House Ltd

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9789652294562

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Here, for the first time, is the complete correspondence between Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt's President Anwar el-Sadat as they wrestled with what would become their Nobel Peace Prize winning accomplishment. The letters, together with transcripts of speeches, press conferences, interviews, rare photos and official documents, reveal the personal relationship the two leaders constructed, which was eventually reflected in the treaty they signed. The personalities, the principled issues, the manoeuvrings, the clashes, the compromises and agreements are all revealed in these letters. Covering the period from June 1977 until a day before Sadat's assassination in October 1981, the Begin-Sadat correspondence affords a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the efforts, crises, and agonising decisions these two leaders faced and overcame to achieve peace. Supplemented with photos and the full texts of the Camp David Accords and the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, this ground-breaking volume sheds new light on a peace process that succeeded.

A State at Any Cost
A State at Any Cost

Author: Tom Segev

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2019-09-24

Total Pages: 816

ISBN-13: 1429951842

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2019 National Jewish Book Award Finalist "[A] fascinating biography . . . a masterly portrait of a titanic yet unfulfilled man . . . this is a gripping study of power, and the loneliness of power." —The Economist As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he thereupon took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel’s independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. And yet Ben-Gurion remains an enigma—he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding. In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional “nutty moments”—from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Segev also reveals that Ben-Gurion first heard about the Holocaust from a Palestinian Arab acquaintance, and explores his tempestuous private life, including the testimony of four former lovers. The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost”—at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation, and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill—a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.

Ben-Gurion
Ben-Gurion

Author: Avi Shilon

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-05-12

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1442249471

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This is the first in-depth account of the later years of David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973), Israel’s first Prime Minister and founding father. One of the first to sign Israel’s declaration of independence and a leading figure in Zionism, Ben-Gurion stepped down from office in 1963 and retired from political life in 1970, deeply disappointed about the path on which the state had embarked and the process that brought about the end of his political career. He moved to a kibbutz in the Negev desert, where he lived until his death. Robbed of the public aura that had wrapped him for decades, his revolutionary passion, which was not weakened in his 80s, pushed him to continue seeking social and moral change in Israel, a political solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict, and to conduct a personal and national soul-searching about the development of the State he himself had declared. Based on his personal archives and new interviews with his intimate friends and family, the book reveals how the founding father explored the Israeli establishment he created and from which he later disengaged. It provides a thorough examination of the decisive moments in the annals of Zionism as revealed through the lens of Ben-Gurion’s worldview, which are still relevant to present-day Israel.