Menachem Begin

Trivia

• A popular orator among Jewish students in Warsaw, Menachem Begin worked full-time on behalf of the Betar Zinoist youth movement in Poland following his graduation.
• Menachem Begin became head of Polish Betar in 1939, one of the most influential positions of leadership in pre-Holocaust Jewish Europe.
• At the onset of World War II, Menachem Begin encouraged the emigration of thousands of Polish Jews to the Land of Israel just as the country's gates were being shut by the British mandatory government.
• Menachem Begincontinued his Zionist organizational work until he was arrested by Soviet occupation authorities in 1940.
• Menachem Begin remained in Gulag prison camps, mostly in Siberia, until 1941, when he was freed with other Polish prisoners.
• Menachem Begin joined the Polish army-in-exile, and was assigned to a unit that was dispatched to the Middle East. His parents and older brother remained trapped in Poland and perished in the Holocaust.
• Shortly following his arrival in the Land of Israel in 1942, he was asked to assume command of the Irgun Zva'i Leumi (known as ETZEL, the Hebrew acronym for "National Military Organization").
• In this capacity, Menachem Begin directed ETZEL's operations against British rule.
• Following the reestablishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Menachem Begin, together with a number of associates, founded the Herut party.
• Menachem Begin headed the party's list in all Knesset elections from the first, in 1949, to the tenth, in 1981, by which time Herut had joined with several other political factions to form the Likud.

Quotes

• “His work is important and a major contribution to the world of economics and to theory.”
• “Because of the limited usefulness I see in my continued service, I have reached the conclusion that it is best to cease my activity in the public arena.”
• “Things you see from there are not what you see from here.”
• “Israel is still the only country in the world against which there is a written document to the effect that it must disappear.”
• "The deterrent power, or in Jabotinsky's language THE IRON WALL, was intended to convince the Arabs that they would not be able to get rid of the sovereign Jewish presence in the Land of Israeli, even if they would not bring themselves to recognize the justice of the Jewish people's claim to the homeland."
• "A million and half children were poisoned by the Ziklon gas during the Holocaust. Now Israel's children were about to be poisoned by radioactivity. For two years we have lived in the shadow if the danger awaiting Israel from nuclear reactor in Iraq. This would have been a new Holocaust . It was prevented by the heroism of our pilots to whom we owe so much."
• "Now may I tell you, dear Mr. President, how I feel these days when I turn to the creator of my soul in deep gratitude. I feel as a Prime Minister empowered to instruct a valiant army facing Berlin where amongst innocent civilians, Hitler and his henchmen hide in a bunker deep beneath the surface. My generation, dear Ron, swore on the alter of God that whoever proclaims his intent to destroy the Jewish state or the Jewish people, or both, seals his fate, so that which happened once on instructio
• "The hour of decision has arrived. You know what I have done, and what all of us have done. to prevent war and bereavement. But our fate is that in the Land of Israel there is no escape from fighting in the spirit of self-sacrifice. Believe me, the alternative to fighting is Treblinka, and we have resolved that there would be no Treblinkas. This is the moment in which courageous choice has to be made. The criminal terrorists and the world must know that the Jewish people have a right to self-def
• "Israel will not transfer Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza District to any foreign sovereign authority, [because] of the historic right of our nation to this land, [and] the needs of our national security, which demand a capability to defend our State and the lives of our citizens."
• "The Jewish people have unchallengeable, eternal, historic right to the Land of Israel [including the West Bank and Gaza Strip], the inheritance of their forefathers," and pledged to build rural and urban exclusive Jewish colonies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

Biography

Menachem Begin

Last Updated: Friday, October 30, 2009

Menachem Begin was born the son of Zeev-Dov and Hassia Begin in Brest-Litovsk, White Russia (later Poland), on August 16, 1913. Menachem Begin was educated at the Mizrachi Hebrew School and later studied law at the University of Warsaw in Warsaw, Poland. Menachem Begin had witnessed many acts of violence against Jews in Europe. He went to work for a group associated with the Revisionist Zionist Movement, which Vladimir Jabotinsky had founded. The movement called for the creation of an independent Jewish state in Palestine, which at that time was controlled by Great Britain.

In 1939 Menachem Begin married Aliza Arnold, with whom he had three children. Later that year the British moved to put limits on the immigration (coming to a country of which one is not a native) of Jews to Palestine. Menachem Begin  organized a protest in Warsaw in response and was imprisoned by the Polish police. Menachem Begin escaped, but he was arrested in 1940 by Soviet authorities. He was held in Siberia from 1940 to 1941, but was released because he was a Polish citizen. In 1942 Menachem Begin arrived in Palestine as part of the Polish army.

In 1943, after his release from the Polish army, Menachem Begin became commander of the Irgun Tzevai Leumi, a military organization dedicated to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. He declared "armed warfare" against the government in Palestine at the beginning of 1944, and led a determined struggle against the British. With the independence of the State of Israel in 1948, Menachem Begin founded the Herut (Freedom) Party and represented it in the Knesset of Israel, starting with its first meetings in 1949.  Menachem Begin became known as a gifted public speaker, writer, and political leader. He remained in the legislature until he joined the Government of National Unity on the eve of the Six-Day War of June 1967. In that war Israeli forces gained control from Arab groups of two major sections of Palestine. Begin and several others resigned from the government in August 1970 over opposition.