Menachem Begin
Subtitle: the battle for Israel's soul
By: Daniel Gordis
Edition: First edition.
Series: Jewish encounters
Publisher: Nextbook ; Schocken
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 295
ISBN-13: 9780805243123; 9780805243130
Subjects: Revisionist Zionists; Politics and government; Prime ministers; Biography
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 movement. A powerful orator, 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 violent acts. Intentionally left out of the new Israeli government, Begin's right-leaning Herut party became a fixture of the opposition, 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, 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 throughout the world"--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-248) and index.
Table of contents: title: Between the Kaiser and the Czar; title: A pit of decay and dust; title: This year we are slaves; title: We fight therefore we are; title: A brutal act; title: Deadly road to Jerusalem; title: A civil war with the enemy at our gates; title: Say "no" to forgiveness; title: Of whom were we afraid?; title: The style of a good Jew; title: Give those people a haven; title: A time for war and a time for peace; title: It belongs to my people; title: Crazy like a fox; title: Nobody's cowering Jew; title: I cannot go on.