Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel's Soul Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00IGEJ99U | Format: PDF
Menachem Begin: The Battle for Israel's Soul Description
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? perceptive biography gives us new insight into a remarkable politi...
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 7 hours and 19 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC
- Audible.com Release Date: March 4, 2014
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00IGEJ99U
“Menachem Begin” by Daniel Gordis (March 2013). Following are short excerpts from a book review by Hillel Halkin in the 8-9 March 2014 “Wall Street Journal” discussing this biography of the life of a prime minister of Israel (1977-1983). Halkin opined that this book “doesn’t break new investigative ground” but what is of value is his revelation that Begin’s political legacy was his “Jewishness … his restoration to Israeli public life of a fundamental sense of Jewish purpose that was missing from it during the long years of Labor hegemony” in governing Israel.
This can be seen through Begin’s “opening of the West Bank to intensive Jewish settlement, his relinquishing of Sinai for peace with Egypt and the liberalization policies that hastened the end of Israel’s semi-socialist economy”.
Halkin noted: Mr. Gordis is right that Begin “was different”. I won’t list all of these differences here, but they go into detail regarding Begin’s years in office.
How Begin’s Jewish religious beliefs differentiated from the more secular political beliefs of his opponents, that is what is of interest in this book. Halkin summarizes Gordis’ analysis as to how Begin sorted out his visions of a Zionist Israel. But, no need to review here how Begin viewed the Torah in influencing his political decisions – but to say they are extensively analyzed in this book.
Although Halkin had participated in a street protest calling for Begin’s resignation, Halkin opined that “Menachem Begin had an exacting conscience, far more than did most other political leaders of the age, Israel’s included.
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