The Nobel Peace Prize 1978 - Presentation Speech Presentation Speech The Nobel Peace Prize 1978 Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin Share this: Award Ceremony Speech Presentation Speech delivered by Aase Lionaes, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978, Oslo, December 10, 1978. Translation Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Peace Prize for 1978 to Anwar al-Sadat, President of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, for their contribution to the two frame agreements on peace in the Middle East, and on peace between Egypt and Israel, which were signed at Camp David on September 17, 1978. Never previously in the history of the Peace Prize, stretching back over a period of almost eighty years, have we witnessed an award ceremony such as this in King Haukon V's medieval castle of Akershus, with its memories of far-off times of war and unrest in the chronicles of our land.

Never has the Nobel Committee considered it apposite to award the Peace Prize to statesmen from the troubled and sadly devastated Middle East. Never has the Prize been closely associated with agreements such as the two Camp David agreements, which provide the basis for the award to the two statesmen on whose shoulders such grave responsibilities have fallen. Never has the Peace Prize expressed a greater or more audacious hope - a hope of peace for the people of Egypt, for the people of Israel, and for all the peoples of the strife-torn and war-ravaged Middle East. The award of the Prize to the President of Egypt, Anwar al-Sadat, and the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, is moreover historical in the wider sense, in that we only know of one previous peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. This, as Israeli scholars have revealed, took place some 3,000 years ago; it was the peace concluded between King David's son, wise King Solomon, and the Egyptian Pharaoh. It was in this part of the world that the cradle of our civilisation was to be found, more than 6,000 years ago.

Here, communities with a high standard of culture, which were to exercise a profound influence on the development of human society in other parts of the world, grew up and flourished. Today, every single schoolchild knows from his or her history books that it was here that our written history first began; and adherents of three historically related religions - Islam, Judaism and Christianity have turned their gaze with unflagging devotion to that part of the world from which their religion sprang. The Middle East, situated as it is at the junction of Asia, Europe, and Africa, has been not only a meeting-place for cultures, but also a battleground for economic interests and foreign conquerors. Again and again cultural splendour and material prosperity have been rudely interrupted by wars, foreign domination, and internal schism. In our own time the struggle of the Arabs to free themselves from alien domination was crowned with success when Egypt shook off the British yoke. In this struggle for national liberation Anwar al-Sadat played a leading part. At the same time the national movement sprang up in the little Jewish communities that for two thousand years had been scattered around in various countries all over the world but holding fast at all times to memories and hopes of their historical homeland.

The anti-Semitism which culminated with Hitler's mass slaughter of Europe's Jews drove them to seek security and rebirth in their own country of Israel. With the active participation of the United Nations, the state of Israel was established in 1948. The state and nation of Israel had now become a political and human fact. The establishment of an Israeli state ushered in a new conflict throughout the Middle East. In the course of the last thirty years this dispute between the Jews and Arabs has unleashed four wars, which have not only caused tremendous material damage but also exacerbated hostility between them. Side by side with war and destruction, however, the constructive forces of peace, too, have hewn out a path for themselves. Over the years a great deal of goodwill has been harnessed to breach the psychological wall which has all too long constituted a bar to understanding and human contact between the Arab states and the Israelis. This is a wall of frightening dimensions, which President Anwar al-Sadat once compared to the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. Two men who played a vital role in paving the way for this peace deserve to be mentioned: former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

Henry Kissinger's peace mission in the Middle East was launched immediately after the conclusion of the fourth war between Israel on the one hand and Egypt and Syria on the other. We recall his energetic attempts to get the belligerent parties in the so-called Jom Kippur War to come together for a peace conference in Geneva. The conference did in fact materialise, in December 1973, and resulted in agreement between Egypt and Israel on a number of important points, such as the exchange of prisoners, the withdrawal of troops to delimited zones, security guarantees, and other measures aimed at consolidating the truce, and with a peace agreement as a long-term goal. Henry Kissinger's work in promoting the agreements concluded between the belligerents after the Jom Kippur War in 1973 provided the basis for President Jimmy Carter's move in organising the meeting at Camp David in 1978. The dramatic highlight in the efforts to arrive at a peaceful settlement was provided by President Anwar al-Sadat's courageous journey to Jerusalem on November 19, 1977. With his bold visit to the Israeli parliament, Knesset, President Sadat cut the Gordian knot at a single stroke.

The way was now open for the meetings at Camp David, where the first constructive steps were taken in the form of two agreements of fundamental importance: The frame agreement for peace in the Middle East and; The frame agreement for concluding peace between Egypt and Israel. It is for their work in laying a foundation for future peace between these two one-time enemy countries that the President of Egypt, Anwar al-Sadat, and the Prime Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, have been honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978. The four wars in the Middle East merely foreshadowed fresh conflicts, new material destruction, and human tragedy. Amid this darkness we glimpsed a sudden light, and a victory is won without a war, as President Sadat sets off on his journey to "the City of Peace", as he called Jerusalem in his historic speech in the Knesset. His outstretched hand and offer of peace, friendship, and cooperation sets the spirit of the frame agreement, pointing the way to realities in a final peace agreement based on normal diplomatic, economic, and cultural links.

The masterbuilder responsible for the bridge that had to be built between Egypt and Israel in order that these two one-time enemy nations should have any opportunity of coming together to frame an agreement, was the president of the USA, Jimmy Carter. President Sadat has described the importance of this vital step in the work of pioneering a peace in the following words: "Jimmy Carter was the Unknown Soldier". With regard to the second frame agreement from Camp David for peace in the Middle East important and apparently time-consuming negotiations on the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights still remain to be completed. The future alone can provide an answer to these questions. Meanwhile, the world must be allowed to share in the happiness of the people of Egypt and Israel, that, for the first time since the re-establishrment of the state of Israel in 1948, an agreement has successfully been reached which, on a long-term basis, provides a genuine opportunity for peace in an area over which the shadow of war had hovered so long.

Without speculating on conflicting theories on the actual driving forces at work in history, there is surely general agreement that two men, the president of Egypt, Anwar al-Sadat, and the prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin, have played key roles in the quest for peace between two former enemies which today is such a source of gratification to true friends of peace the world over. These two men have a great deal in common: they were born in a century marked by global wars and gigantic revolutions, of racial problems and foreign domination. Both of them have been active in the mainstream of history, in its political and social conflicts. From their earliest years they have identified themselves with the fate of their countries, they have fought and suffered, in prison and in labour camp, for the sovereignty of their native land and for the freedom of man. Their lives and paths have crossed in an act of peace that may well usher in a new era, a future of material renewal and peace, not only for their two respective countries, but for the entire Middle East. President Anwar al-Sadat was born on December 25, 1918.

He spent the early years of childhood in the little village of Mit Abul-Kum on the banks of the Nile. His memoirs are deeply imbued with his intense feeling of kinship with the earth and the life of the village in which he was born. His childhood is summed up in one lyrical phrase: "Everything I experienced in Mit Abul-Kum made me happy". This included his sense of oneness with Nature, his participation in the collective work of the peasants, and not least, life in a family which included a paternal grandmother who, though unlettered, was noted for her wisdom. Today, whenever he speaks of his grandmother, President Sadat does so with such warmth and devotion that we immediately sense how love for her still lives on in his heart. He still recalls her simple words: "Nothing is of such great importance as the fact that you are a child of this earth.

The earth can never die - in it lies the mystery of creation." President Sadat defines his faith thus: "I shall never go astray, because I know with such certainty that I have my roots in the village, deep down in the soil from which I, like the trees and other growing things, have sprung." Throughout his turbulent life Sadat has felt a need for the inner harmony and balance which affinity with the soil has given him. During his childhood and adolescent years Egypt was under British domination. Early on Sadat determined to fight for the independence of his country. For this reason he chose the profession of army officer, and together with Gamal Abdel Nasser, a friend from his school days, he founded in 1939, at the age of 21, a secret group of officers whose aim it was to free Egypt from foreign rule. In the course of this struggle he was arrested in 1942 and stripped of his officer's rank. After a successful escape from prison, he remained in hiding until he was arrested in 1946 and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. In 1950 he was reinstated in the Army.

In 1952 Sadat was one of the leading spirits in the Egyptian revolution which led to the fall of King Farouk. In 1969 he was appointed Vice-Presidernt of Egypt by President Nasser, and on Nasser's death in 1970 he was elected President of Egypt. President Sadat has piloted his country through a difficult period, involving war as well as far-reaching economic problems. It is to President Sadat's credit that he realised that the solution to important social and economic problems in his own country demanded too the conclusion of a peace settlement with Israel. All in all, President Sadat's policy during all these years has reflected a willingness to re-think old problems and courage to break away from traditional diplomatic methods. During the thirty preceding years, the peoples of the Middle East have on four separate occasions been the victims of warfare, and there seemed no prospect of peace. President Sadat's great contribution to peace was that he had sufficient courage and foresight to break away from this vicious circle.

His decision to accept Prime Minister Menachem Begin's invitation of November 17, 1977, to attend a meeting of the Israeli parliament on November 19 was an act of great courage, both from a personal and from a political point of view. This was a dramatic break with the past and a courageous step forward into a new age. In Jerusalem Sadat frankly submitted his demands, but in return offered recognition of Israel as a state, as well as conciliation and peace. Sadat's outstretched hand was accepted by Israel's prime minister, Menachem Begin, the other main protagonist in the Camp David agreement. The political situation into which Menachem Begin was born, in 1913, in the Polish town of Brest-Litovsk provided a starting-point and a decisive guideline for his turbulent career. The impression made on him by the violent and increasing anti-Semitism nourished in him at an early age the yearning and the determination to return to the ancient home of the Jews in Israel. While studying law he joined the Jewish Youth Movement. In May 1939 he was imprisoned for participation in a demonstration in favour of the right of the persecuted European Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

After a brief spell in prison he fled to Lithuania, in the hope that from this country he and his family might make their way to Palestine. The Soviet Russian occupation of Lithuania in 1939, however, effectively prevented this. He was arrested and sentenced to eight years' forced labour in a Siberian prison camp. After the German attack on the Soviet Union he was released, in company with thousands of other political prisoners, as the authorities hoped in this way to be able to provide sufficient recruits for a Polish army to be deployed in the struggle against Nazism. Begin now joined the Polish forces which were being trained on Soviet soil and despatched to Transjordan. In 1942 he made his way from that country to Palestine, which at that time was being administered as a British mandated territory. At this time the British authorities imposed very severe restrictions on immigration permits for Jews who during the war were under the threat of extermination in the German gas chambers. Menachem Begin deployed all his energy to circumvent these rigorous regulations. He joined the national combatant organisation Irgun Zvai Leumi, and soon rose to be its leader.

During the first few years Irgun collaborated with the British authorities in the struggle against German Nazism. However, when the British, despite systematic Nazi extermination of the European Jews, persisted in maintaining their immigration policy for Palestine, Irgun adopted a more obdurate line under Begin's leadership, demanding now not only an open door for Jewish refugees, but also the right to the establishment of an independent Jewish state. From then and up to 1947 Begin and the underground movement Irgun waged a relentless struggle against the British administration. At one time the British authorities set a price of £30,000 on his head. In 1947, when fighting broke out between Arabs and Jews, Irgun was finally recognised by the Jewish authorities, and integrated as a regular unit in the Jewish military organisation Haganah. When the state of Israel became a reality in 1948 Begin founded his own political party, Herut, which was radically opposed to the Israeli Labour Party, Mapai, led by Ben Gurion.

At the 1977 elections the Conservative alliance known as Likud won a major political victory, and on June 21, 1977, Menachem Begin became prime minister of Israel, and it was he who, on behalf of the state of Israel, accepted President Sadat's outstretched hand. Egypt and Israel now enjoy the prospect of an end to thirty years of hostility interrupted merely by brief intervals of truce. Complex problems of international law - as well as military and economic problems - must be solved and old suspicions and prejudices swept aside. It is easy to state the nature of this formidable task. But can it be solved, can entirely new relations be created between people in an area where for decades the shadow of war has eclipsed all hope? In his historic speech to the Knesset, today's Peace Prize laureate Anwar al-Sadat answered this question with the following words: "I truly tell you: we have before us today an opportunity for peace which time will never repeat and we must seize it if we are really serious in struggling for peace.

If we weaken or fritter away this opportunity we shall end in a new blood-bath; he who has conspired to lose it will have the curse of humanity and history on his head." On the same occasion today's other Prize-winner, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, expressed his own views on the potentialities of peace: "We believe that if we achieve peace, true peace, we shall be able to assist one another in all realms of life, and a new era will be opened in the Middle East: an era of flourishing and growth, of development and progress and advancement, as in ancient times ..." Men of good will all over the world will now follow in their thoughts these two prize-winners in their endeavours to solve this great task of establishing peace. This is a wish that has been expressed in the Camp David agreement: "The people of the Middle East yearn for peace, so that the vast human and natural resources of the region can be turned to the pursuits of peace and so that this area can become a model for coexistence and cooperation among nations." Today, throughout the world, we are celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

May I express the hope that this Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, enacted in our small and wintry country, tucked away near the Arctic Circle, may provide an enduring reminder to the world that it was here that representatives of Egypt and Israel shook hands as they celebrated the greatest of all victories - conciliation and lasting peace based on respect for human rights and human dignity. From Les Prix Nobel . The Nobel Prizes 1978, Editor Wilhelm Odelberg, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1979 Menachem Begin (Mieczysław Wolfovitch Biegun), 6th Prime Minister of Israel (1913 - 1992) - Genealogy stepbrother About Menachem Begin 6th Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin (Hebrew: מנחם בגין, Polish: Mieczysław Biegun, Russian: Менахем Вольфович Бегин) born 16 August 1913 – died 9 March 1992 was the sixth prime minister of the State of Israel.

Before the establishment of the state, he was the leader of the Irgun, playing a central role in Jewish resistance to the British Mandate of Palestine. After eight consecutive defeats in the years preceding his premiership, Begin came to embody the opposition to the Mapai-led Israeli establishment. His electoral victory in 1977 ended three decades of Labour Party political hegemony. Begin’s most significant achievement as prime minister was signing a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Peace together with Anwar Sadat. In the wake of the Camp David Accords, the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and returned the Egyptian territories captured in the Six-Day War. Later, Begin’s government promoted the construction of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories. Begin authorized the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 to fight PLO strongholds there, igniting the 1982 Lebanon War. As Israeli military involvement in Lebanon deepened, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre carried out by the Christian militia shocked world public opinion, Begin grew increasingly isolated. As IDF forces remained mired in Lebanon and the economy suffered from hyperinflation, the public pressure on Begin mounted.

Further depressed by the death of his wife Aliza in November 1982, he gradually withdrew from public life, until his resignation in October 1983. Biography Menachem Begin was born to Zeev Dov and Hassia Begun in Brest-Litovsk, (Brisk), a town then part of the Russian Empire which was known for its Talmudic scholars. He was the youngest of three children. On his mother's side he was descended from distinguished rabbis. His father, a timber merchant, was a community leader, a passionate Zionist, and an admirer of Theodor Herzl. The midwife who attended his birth was the grandmother of Ariel Sharon. After a year of a traditional cheder education Begin started studying at a "Tachkemoni" school, associated with the religious Zionist movement. At 12, he joined the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair. At 14, he was sent to a Polish government school, where he studied he received a solid grounding in classical literature, and gained a lifelong love of classical works, which he was able to read in Latin.

Begin began studying law at the University of Warsaw where he learned the oratory and rhetoric skills that became his trademark as a politician. He graduated in 1935, but never practiced law. In these same years he became a key disciple of Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, the founder of the militant, nationalist Revisionist Zionism movement and its Betar youth wing. His rise within Betar was rapid: in the same year he graduated, at age 22, he shared the dais with his mentor during Betar's World Congress in Krakow. In 1937 he was the active head of Betar in Czechoslovakia and Poland, leaving just prior to the 1939 invasion. Exile to the Soviet Camp In September 1939, after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, Begin escaped to Vilnius, then located in eastern Poland. The town was shortly to be occupied by the Soviet Union, but from 28 October 1939, it was the capital of the Republic of Lithuania. Vilnius was a largely Jewish town; an estimated 40 percent of the population was Jewish, and the YIVO institute was located there.

On 15 June 1940 the Soviet Union invaded Lithuania, ushering in mass persecution of Poles and Jews. An estimated 120,000 people were arrested by the NKVD and deported to Siberia. Thousands were executed with or without trial. NKVD mug shot of Menachem Begin, 1940 On 20 September 1940 Begin was arrested by the NKVD and detained in the Lukiškės Prison. He was accused of being an "agent of British imperialism" and sentenced to eight years in the Soviet gulag camps. On 1 June 1941 he was sent to the Pechora labor camps in the northern part of European Russia, where he stayed until May 1942. Much later in life, Begin would record and reflect upon his experiences in the interrogations and life in the camp in his memoir "White Nights". In June 1941, just after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and following his release under the Sikorski-Mayski Agreement, Begin joined the Polish Army of Anders. He was later sent with the army to Palestine via the Persian Corridor.

Upon arrival in August 1942, he received a proposal to take over a position in the Irgun, as Betar's Commissioner. He declined the invitation because he felt himself honour-bound to abide by his oath as a soldier and not to desert the Polish army, where he worked as an English translator. Begin was subsequently released from the Polish Army after the Irgun intervened unofficially on his behalf with senior Polish army officers.[citation needed] He then joined the Jewish national movement in the British Mandate of Palestine. Begin's father was among the 5,000 Brest Jews rounded up by the Nazis at the end of June 1941. Instead of being sent to a forced labor camp, they were shot or drowned in the river. His mother and older brother Herzl also died in the Holocaust. Begin was married to Aliza Arnold. They had three children: Binyamin, Leah and Hassia. Jewish underground Begin quickly made a name for himself, both as a fierce critic of dominant Zionist leadership for being too cooperative with British ‘colonialism’, and as a proponent of guerrilla tactics against the British, which he saw as a necessary means to achieve independence.

In 1942 he joined the Irgun (Etzel), an underground militant Zionist group which had split from the main Jewish military organization, the Haganah, in 1931. In 1944 Begin assumed the organization's leadership, determined to force the British government to remove its troops entirely from Palestine. Claiming that the British had reneged on their original promise of the Balfour Declaration, and that the White Paper of 1939 restricting Jewish immigration was an escalation of their pro-Arab policy, he decided to break with the Haganah, which continued to cooperate militarily with the British as long as they were fighting Nazi Germany. Soon after he assumed command, a formal 'Declaration of Revolt' was publicized, and armed attacks against British forces were initiated. Begin issued a call to arms and from 1944–48 the Irgun launched an all-out armed rebellion, perpetrating hundreds of attacks against British installations and posts. Begin financed these operations by extorting money from Zionist businessmen, and running bogus robbery scams in the local diamond industry, which enabled the victims to get back their losses from insurance companies.

For several months in 1945–46, the Irgun’s activities were coordinated within the framework of the Hebrew Resistance Movement under the direction of the Haganah, but this fragile partnership collapsed following the Irgun’s bombing of the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The attack killed 91 people, including British officers and troops as well as Arab and Jewish civilians. Under Begin’s leadership, the Irgun continued to carry out operations such as breaking into Acre Prison, and the hanging of two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Marvyn Paice; this latter action caused the British to suspend any further executions of Irgun prisoners. Growing numbers of British forces were deployed to quell the Jewish uprising, yet Begin managed to elude captivity, at times disguised as a rabbi. MI5 placed a 'dead-or-alive' bounty of £10,000 on his head after Irgun threatened 'a campaign of terror against British officials', saying they would kill Sir John Shaw, Britain's Chief Secretary in Palestine.

An MI5 agent codenamed Snuffbox also warned that Irgun had sleeper cells in London trying to kill members of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Cabinet. The Jewish Agency, headed by David Ben-Gurion, opposed the Irgun’s independent agenda, which it saw as a challenge to its authority as the representative body of the Jewish community in Palestine. Ben-Gurion openly denounced the Irgun as the “enemy of the Jewish People”, accusing it of sabotaging the political campaign for independence. In 1944, and again in 1947, the Haganah actively pursued and handed over Irgun members to the British authorities in what became known as The Hunting Season; Begin’s instruction to his men to refrain from violent resistance prevented this from deteriorating into an armed intra-Jewish conflict. In November 1947, the UN adopted the Partition Plan for Palestine, and Britain announced its plans to fully withdraw from Palestine by May 1948. Begin, once again rejected the plan and remained in opposition to the mainstream Zionist leadership.

In the years following the establishment of the State of Israel, the Irgun’s contribution to precipitating British withdrawal became a contested historic debate, as different factions vied for control over the emerging narrative of Israeli independence. Begin resented his being portrayed as a belligerent dissident. Altalena and the War of Independence As the Israeli War of Independence broke, Irgun fighters joined forces with the Haganah and Lehi militia in fighting the Arab forces. Notable operations in which they took part were the battles of Jaffa and the Jordanian siege on the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. One such operation was the Deir Yassin massacre of Palestinian villagers in April 1948. The day after the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on 14 May 1948, Begin broadcast a speech on radio declaring that the Irgun was finally moving out of its underground status. On June 1 Begin signed an agreement with the provisional government headed by David Ben Gurion, where the Irgun agreed to formally disband and to integrate its force with the newly formed Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

However, tensions with the IDF persisted, culminating in the confrontation over the Altalena cargo ship, which secretly delivered weapons to the Irgun in June 1948. The government demanded that all the weapons be handed over to it unconditionally, in accordance with the agreement regarding the integration of the Irgun into the IDF. However Begin refused to comply. Rather than negotiating, Ben-Gurion was determined to exercise the state’s authority over military affairs. A violent confrontation between the IDF and members of the Irgun occurred and Ben Gurion eventually ordered the IDF to take the ship by gunfire, and it burnt off the shore of Tel Aviv. Begin was on board as the ship was being shelled. In a speech later he ordered his men not to retaliate in an attempt to prevent the crisis from spiraling into a civil war. For years later Begin saw the Altalena Affair as a defining moment and viewed the government actions against the Irgun as a great injustice. Political career: Herut opposition years In August 1948, Begin and members of the Irgun High Command emerged from the underground and formed the right-wing political party Herut ("Freedom") party.

The move countered the weakening attraction for the earlier revisionist party, Hatzohar, founded by his late mentor Vladimir Jabotinsky. Revisionist 'purists' alleged nonetheless that Begin was out to steal Jabotinsky's mantle and ran against him with the old party. The Herut party can be seen as the forerunner of today's Likud. In November 1948, Begin visited the US on a campaigning trip. During his visit, a letter signed by Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook, Hannah Arendt, and other prominent Americans and several rabbis was published which described Begin's Herut party as closely akin in its organization, methods, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties and accused his group (along with the smaller, militant, Stern Gang) of having inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. In the first elections in 1949, Herut, with 11.5 percent of the vote, won 14 seats, while Hatzohar failed to break the threshold and disbanded shortly thereafter. This provided Begin with legitimacy as the leader of the Revisionist stream of Zionism.

Between 1948 and 1977, under Begin, Herut and the alliances it formed (Gahal in 1965 and Likud in 1973) formed the main opposition to the dominant Mapai and later the Alignment (the forerunners of today's Labour Party) in the Knesset; Herut adopted a radical nationalistic agenda committed to the irredentist idea of Greater Israel. During those years, Begin was systematically delegitimized by the ruling party, and was often personally derided by Ben-Gurion who refused to either speak to or refer to him by name. Ben-Gurion famously coined the phrase 'without Herut and Maki' (Maki was the communist party), referring to his refusal to consider them for coalition, effectively pushing both parties and their voters beyond the margins of political consensus. The personal animosity between Ben-Gurion and Begin, going back to the hostilities over the Altalena Affair, underpinned the political dichotomy between Mapai and Herut. Begin was a keen critic of Mapai, accusing it of coercive Bolshevism and deep-rooted institutional corruption.

Drawing on his training as a lawyer in Poland, he preferred wearing a formal suit and tie and evincing the dry demeanor of a legislator to the socialist informality of Mapai, as a means of accentuating their differences. One of the fiercest confrontations between Begin and Ben-Gurion revolved around the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany, signed in 1952. Begin vehemently opposed the agreement, claiming that it was tantamount to a pardon of Nazi crimes against the Jewish people. While the agreement was debated in the Knesset in January 1952, he led a passionate demonstration in Jerusalem in which he attacked the government, calling for a violent overthrow of the elected government. Incited by his speech, the crowd marched towards the Knesset (then at the Frumin Building on King George Street), throwing stones and injuring dozens of policemen and several Knesset members. Many held Begin personally responsible for the violence, and he was consequently barred from the Knesset for several months. His behavior was strongly condemned in mainstream public discourse, reinforcing his image as a provocateur.

Laden with pathos and evocations of the Holocaust, Begin's impassioned rhetoric appealed to many, but was deemed inflammatory and demagoguery by others. Gahal and unity government In the following years, Begin failed to gain electoral momentum, and Herut remained far behind Labor with a total of 17 seats until 1961. In 1965, Herut and the Liberal Party united to form the Gahal party under Begin’s leadership, but failed again to win more seats in the election that year. In 1966, during Herut's party convention, he was challenged by the young Ehud Olmert, who called for his resignation. Begin announced that he would retire from party leadership, but soon reversed his decision when the crowd pleaded with him to stay. At the outbreak of the Six-Day War in June 1967, Gahal joined a national unity government under Prime Minister Levi Eshkol of the Alignment, resulting in Begin serving in the cabinet for the first time, as a Minister without Portfolio.

The arrangement lasted until 1970, when Begin and Gahal left the government (by this time led by Golda Meir) due to disagreements over renewing a cease-fire with Egypt along the Suez Canal. Likud chairmanship In 1973, Begin agreed to a plan by Ariel Sharon to form a larger bloc of opposition parties, made up from Gahal, the Free Centre, and other smaller groups. They came through with a tenuous alliance called the Likud ("Consolidation"). In the elections held later that year, two months after the Yom Kippur War, the Likud won a considerable share of the votes, though with 39 seats still remained in opposition. Yet the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War saw ensuing public disenchantment with the Alignment. Voices of criticism about the government's misconduct of the war gave rise to growing public resentment. Personifying the antithesis to the Alignment's socialist ethos, Begin appealed to many Mizrahi Israelis, mostly first and second generation Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, who felt they were continuously being treated by the establishment as second-class citizens.

His open embrace of Judaism stood in stark contrast to the Alignment's secularism, which alienated Mizrahi voters and drew many of them to support Begin, becoming his burgeoning political base. In the years 1974-1977 Yitzhak Rabin's government suffered from instability due to infighting within the labor party (Rabin and Shimon Peres) and the shift to the right by the National Religious Party, as well as numerous corruption scandals. All these weakened the labor camp and allowed Begin to finally capture the center stage of Israeli politics. Prime Minister of Israel On 17 May 1977 the Likud, headed by Begin, won the Knesset elections by a landslide, becoming the biggest party in the Knesset. Popularly known as the Mahapakh ("upheaval"), the election results had seismic ramifications as for the first time in Israeli history a party other than the Alignment/Mapai was in a position to form a government, effectively ending the left's hitherto unrivalled domination over Israeli politics.

Likud's electoral victory signified a fundamental restructuring of Israeli society in which the founding socialist Ashkenazi elite was being replaced by a coalition representing marginalized Mizrahi and Jewish-religious communities, promoting a socially conservative and economically liberal agenda. The Likud campaign leading up to the election centered on Begin's personality. Demonized by the Alignment as totalitarian and extremist, his self-portrayal as a humble and pious leader struck a chord with many who felt abandoned by the ruling party's ideology. In the predominantly Jewish Mizrahi working class urban neighborhoods and peripheral towns, the Likud won overwhelming majorities, while disillusionment with the Alignment's corruption prompted many middle and upper class voters to support the newly founded centrist Democratic Movement for Change ("Dash") headed by Yigael Yadin. Dash won 15 seats out of 120, largely at the expense of the Alignment, which was led by Shimon Peres and had shrunk from 51 to 32 seats.

Well aware of his momentous achievement and employing his trademark sense for drama, when speaking that night in the Likud headquarters Begin quoted from the Gettysburg Address and the Torah, referring to his victory as a 'turning point in the history of the Jewish people'. With 43 seats, the Likud still required the support of other parties in order to reach a parliamentary majority that would enable it to form a government under Israel's proportionate representation parliamentary system. Though able to form a narrow coalition with smaller Jewish religious and ultra-orthodox parties, Begin also sought support from centrist elements in the Knesset to provide his government with greater public legitimacy. He controversially offered the foreign affairs portfolio to Moshe Dayan, a former IDF Chief of Staff and Defense Minister, and a prominent Alignment politician identified with the old establishment. Begin was sworn in as Prime Minister of Israel on 20 June 1977. Dash eventually joined his government several months later, thus providing it with the broad support of almost two thirds of the Knesset.

Camp David accords In 1978 Begin, aided by Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Defense Minister Ezer Weizman, negotiated the Camp David Accords, and in 1979 signed the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty with Egyptian President, Anwar Sadat. Under the terms of the treaty, brokered by US President, Jimmy Carter, Israel was to hand over the Sinai Peninsula in its entirety to Egypt. The peace treaty with Egypt was a watershed moment in Middle Eastern history, as it was the first time an Arab state recognized Israel’s legitimacy whereas Israel effectively accepted the land for peace principle as blueprint for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Given Egypt’s prominent position within the Arab World, especially as Israel’s biggest and most powerful enemy, the treaty had far reaching strategic and geopolitical implications. Almost overnight, Begin’s public image of an irresponsible nationalist radical was transformed into that of a statesman of historic proportions. This image was reinforced by international recognition which culminated with him being awarded, together with Sadat, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. Yet while establishing Begin as a leader with broad public appeal, the peace treaty with Egypt was met with fierce criticism within his own Likud party.

His devout followers found it difficult to reconcile Begin’s history as a keen promoter of the Greater Israel agenda with his willingness to relinquish occupied territory. Agreeing to the removal of Israeli settlements from the Sinai was perceived by many as a clear departure from Likud’s Revisionist ideology. Several prominent Likud members, most notably Yitzhak Shamir, objected to the treaty and abstained when it was ratified with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset, achieved only thanks to support from the opposition. A small group of hardliners within Likud, associated with Gush Emunim Jewish settlement movement, eventually decided to split and form the Tehiya party in 1979. They led the Movement for Stopping the Withdrawal from Sinai, violently clashing with IDF soldiers during the forceful eviction of Yamit settlement in April 1982. Despite the traumatic scenes from Yamit, political support for the treaty did not diminish and the Sinai was handed over to Egypt in 1982.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin engages Zbigniew Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David, 1978 Begin was far less resolute in implementing the section of the Camp David Accord, which defined a framework for establishing autonomous Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He appointed Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon to implement a large scale expansion of Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, a policy intended to make future territorial concessions in these areas effectively impossible. Begin refocused Israeli settlement strategy from populating peripheral areas in accordance with the Allon Plan, to building Jewish settlements in areas of Biblical and historic significance. When the settlement of Elon Moreh was established on the outskirts of Nablus in 1979, following years of campaigning by Gush Emunim, Begin declared that there are "many more Elon Morehs to come". Indeed during his term as Prime Minister dozens of new settlements were built, and Jewish population in the West Bank and Gaza more than quadrupled.[20] Bombing Iraqi nuclear reactor Begin took Saddam Hussein's anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic threats very seriously and therefore took aim at Iraq.

Israel attempted to negotiate with France so as not to provide Iraq with the nuclear reactor at Osiraq, but to no avail. In 1981, Begin ordered the bombing and destruction of Iraq's Tammuz 1 nuclear reactor by the Israeli Air Force in a successful long-range operation called Operation Opera. Soon after, Begin enunciated what came to be known as the Begin doctrine: "On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the people of Israel." Many foreign governments, including the United States, condemned the operation, and the United Nations Security Council passed a unanimous resolution 487 condemning it. The Israeli left-wing opposition criticized it also at the time, but mainly for its timing relative to elections only three weeks later. Lebanon invasion On 6 June 1982, Begin’s government authorized the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Lebanon, in response to the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov. Operation Peace for Galilee’s stated objective was to force the PLO out of rocket range of Israel's northern border.

Begin was hoping for a short and limited Israeli involvement that would destroy the PLO’s political and military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, effectively reshaping the balance of Lebanese power in favor of the Christian Militias who were allied with Israel. Nevertheless, fighting soon escalated into war with Palestinian and Lebanese militias, as well as the Syrian military, and the IDF progressed as far as Beirut, well beyond the 40 km limit initially authorized by the government. Israeli forces were successful in driving the PLO out of Lebanon and forcing its leadership to relocate to Tunisia, but the war ultimately failed in achieving security to Israel’s northern border, as well as imposing stability in Lebanon. Israeli entanglement in Lebanon intensified throughout Begin’s term, leading to a partial unilateral withdrawal in 1985, and finally ending in 2000. Like Begin, the Israeli public was expecting quick and decisive victory. Yet as this failed to arrive, disillusionment with the war, and concomitantly with his government, was growing. Begin continuously referred to the invasion as an inevitable act of survival, often comparing Yasser Arafat to Hitler, but its image as a war of necessity was gradually eroding.

Within a matter of weeks into the war it emerged that for the first time in Israeli history there was no consensus over the IDF’s activity. Public criticism reached its peak following the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in September 1982, when tens of thousands gathered to protest in Tel Aviv in what was one of the biggest public demonstrations in Israeli history. The Kahan Commission, appointed to investigate the events, found the government indirectly responsible for the massacre, accusing Defense Minister Ariel Sharon of gross negligence. The commission’s report, published in February 1983, severely damaged Begin’s government, forcing Sharon to resign. As the Israeli quagmire in Lebanon seemed to grow deeper, public pressure on Begin to resign increased. Begin’s disoriented appearance on national television while visiting the Beaufort battle site raised concerns that he was being misinformed about the war’s progress. Asking Sharon whether PLO fighters had ‘machine guns’, Begin seemed out of touch with the nature and scale of the military campaign he had authorized. Almost a decade later, Haaretz reporter Uzi Benziman published a series of articles accusing Sharon of intentionally deceiving Begin about the operation’s initial objectives, and continuously misleading him as the war progressed.

Sharon sued both the newspaper and Benziman for libel in 1991. The trial lasted 11 years, with one of the highlights being the deposition of Begin's son, Benny, in favor of the defendants. Sharon lost the case. Retirement from public life Begin himself retired from politics in August 1983 and handed over the reins of the office of Prime Minister to his old friend-in-arms Yitzhak Shamir, who had been the leader of the Lehi resistance to the British. Begin had become deeply disappointed by the war in Lebanon because he had hoped to establish peace with Bashir Gemayel, who was assassinated. Instead, there were mounting Israeli casualties. The death of his wife Aliza in Israel while he was away on an official visit to Washington DC, added to his own mounting depression. After his wife's death, Begin would rarely leave his apartment, and then usually to visit her grave-site to say the traditional Kaddish prayer for the departed. His seclusion was watched over by his children and his lifetime personal secretary Yechiel Kadishai, who monitored all official requests for meetings.

Death Begin died in Tel Aviv in 1992, followed by a simple ceremony and burial on the Mount of Olives. He asked to be buried there instead of Mount Herzl, where most Israeli leaders are laid to rest, because he wanted to be buried beside Meir Feinstein of Irgun and Moshe Barazani of Lehi, who committed suicide in jail while awaiting execution by the British. Legacy: In a 2005 poll, Begin was cited as the leader that Israelis missed the most, ahead of David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Rabin. Since the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, Likud opponents of the withdrawal, led by Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Uzi Landau, have decried the move as a dangerous departure from the Likud platform. Yet Menachem Begin was a man of contradictions,[23] who congratulated the first Jewish settler group in 1975 when it founded Elon Moreh, but also agreed to give up Sinai for peace with Egypt. Commemoration The Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem is named after him, as is Begin Boulevard, a major Jerusalem thoroughfare.

As a fictional character Begin appears in the early editions (but not the later ones) of Tintin au Pays de l'Or Noir, a graphic novel by Belgian artist and writer Hergé. Although Begin is not named, there can be no doubt that the leader of the Irgun, living in the guise of an Orthodox rabbi, is none other than Menachem Begin. [24] In the graphic novel, he mounts a daring rescue operation for one of his followers, a young Jewish man named Goldstein, apparently captured by the British. Actually, the young man is Tintin, Goldstein's doppelganger. In later editions of Tintin in the Land of Black Gold, Hergé eliminated all references to the Israelis and the British. (Compare the first and subsequent editions of Tintin au Pays de l'Or Noir. See also Thompson, Harry (1991) Tintin - Hergé & His Creation - ISBN 0-340-52393-X). Begin has been mentioned in rock band Pink Floyd's album The Final Cut. Begin appears briefly in the Harry Turtledove Worldwar series.

Quotes "Free women and men everywhere must wage an incessant campaign so that these human values become a generally recognized and practised reality. We must regretfully admit that in various parts of the world this is not yet the case. Without those values and human rights the real peace of which we dream is jeopardized." (Nobel Prize Lecture, 10 December 1978) "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-defense, just like any other people." [26] (Knesset address prior to invasion of Lebanon, 5 June 1982) Published work White Nights: The story of a prisoner in Russia (ISBN 0-06-010289-6) Further reading Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari, Israel's Lebanon War, Touchstone, 1985 Ilan Peleg, Begin’s foreign policy, 1977-1983 : Israel’s move to the right, Greenwood Press, 1987 Colin Shindler, The Land Beyond Promise : Israel, Likud and the Zionist Dream, I.B.Tauris, 2002 Eric Silver, Begin: The Haunted Prophet, Random House, 1984[23] Sasson Sofer, Begin: an anatomy of leadership, Basil Blackwell, 1988 Avi Shilon, Begin ,1913-1992 , 2007 Links: Israeli Nobel Prize Winners - Topics on Israel Topics on Israel Home ‎ > ‎ Israeli Nobel Prize Winners

 Winning a Nobel Prize is a great achievement.

Since the establishment of the state of Israel seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded to nine Israelis. These amazing people have filled our hearts with pride, joy, and a sense of great accomplishment for the state of Israel. The prizes have been awarded like this: Three prizes in chemistry, two in economics, one in literature, and two in peace. 1966- S.Y. Agnon– The first Israeli to win a Nobel Prize. Shmuel Yosef Agnon was born in 1888 and raised in a mixed cultural atmosphere. Yiddush was the language spoken in his house. He studied the Torah And Talmud (all in Hebrew) formaly, until age nine. Agnon loved to write. During his lifetime he published dozens of books and stories that gained great fame and admiration. Some of his books include "Shira,” “Only Yesterday,” “A Simple Story”, and others. Many of his successful books were translated to English. In 1966 S.Y. Agnon won the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote in rich Hebrew, mainly about the Jewish world. As the first Nobel Prize winner of Israel, he became the first to fill Israeli hearts with pride and joy. S.Y.

Agnon died on February 17, 1970 1978- Menachem Begin wins the Nobel Peace Prize Menachem Begin was born on August 16, 1913. After the establishment of the State of Israel, Begin founded the Herut Movement, and became a candidate for the Knesset. Menachem Begin has been a member of the Knesset since the first elections. During his term as Israel's sixth prime minister he signed a peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadate. Therefore, winning the peace agreement in 1978. Menachim Begin died on March 9, 1992 1994- Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres- another Nobel Peace Prize won Yitzhak Rabin was born in Jerusalem in 1922. In 1940 he joined the "Palmach", the elite unit of the Haganah. During the War of Independence (1948-1949), Rabin commanded the Harel Brigade, deployed on the Jerusalem frontand.

Shimon Peres was born in Poland in 1923 and immigrated with his family to what is now Israel. He studied at the Ben Shemen Agricultural School, and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Alumot in the Jordan Valley. Mr. Peres has served as a Member of the Knesset since 1959 and served as Deputy Minister of Defense from 1959-1965. He is the current president of Israel today. Former Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and currnt president, Shimon Peres, believed strongly in peace. Therefore, they won a Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts and activities to promote peace in the Middle East". Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated on November 4, 1995 2002- Prof. Daniel Kahneman proves that “wealth is not happiness” and becomes the first Israeli Nobel Prize winner in Economics Daniel Kahneman was born in Tel Aviv in 1934. The family really lived in Paris, but his mother was visiting her extended family in Tel-Aviv, and gave birth. Professor Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist.

won the Nobel Prize n economics in 2002 along with an American, Vernon Smith. The prize was awarded for combining psychology research into economics, pertaining to "the processes of judgment and decision-making under conditions of uncertainty". Kahneman discovered through his research, that wealthy people who can have whatever they want, when they want, are just as happy in life as the average person. So it really does turn out that materials don't buy you happiness! 2004-Technion researchers Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Avram Hershko was born on December 31, 1937, in Karcag, Hungary. Aaron Ciechanover was born in Haifa on October 1947. In 1956, Avram Hershko started to study at the Hebrew University - Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem, which was the only medical school in Isael at that time. There, he fell in love with the study of biochemistry. He studied biochemistry in three different courses: organic chemistry, basic biochemistry and a course called "physiological chemistry".

In 2004 a pair of Israelis, Avram Hershko and Aaron Ciechanover, from the Technion in Haifa, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Together they discovered the “death tag” for proteins, a molecule that sticks to damaged proteins or those whose time is up, and signals to the cell to destroy them. This is how the human body creates proteins to defend itself against infections.The two men’s work now helps to create new and well improved medicine to treat these types of infection. Their discorvery was incredible, leading them to a Nobel Peace Prize in chemistry. Be sure to check out this video about the Technion researchers! 2009- Professor Ada Yonath, the first Israeli woman to win a Nobel Prize Ada Yonath was born on June 22, 1939 in Jerusalem, Israel. She grew up in a poor family. Although the hard conditions she lived in didn't affect her. She was always an extremely curious girl. At age five, she was already investigating the world. In one of her expeirements, she tried to measure the hieght of the tiny balcony of the house she lived in, using the furniture from inside her house.

She stacked table ontop of table, chair on top of chair, and when it still didn't reach, she tried to climb up herself, fell down, and broke her arm. As she grew up she continued to wonder why things happen, and investigate. By the end of the 1970s, she was a young researcher at the Weizman Institute. Professer Ada Yonath, a researcher in the field of structured biology, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry since 1964. The research by Yonath, focused on the structure of the ribosome, and the organelle in a cell. Ada Yonath made us proud to call her the first, and currently the only, Israeli woman to win a Nobel Prize. The Guardian Removes Israelis from Nobel Prize Winners List The Guardian Removes Israelis from Nobel Prize Winners List Wednesday's Example of Media Bias — Posted on October 28, 2009 Jump to... -Read the excerpt below from Tom Gross's October 10th post at NationalReview.com. -Read "Types of Media Bias" in the right column. Then answer the questions.

The British [news]paper The Guardian – which one would just dismiss as an irrelevant left-wing [news source], except that it is the overwhelming paper of choice for British teachers and for news staff at the BBC, the world’s largest broadcasting network, who are “inspired” by Guardian stories on a daily basis in their broadcasts – … has wiped Israel off the Nobel Prize map, much as Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the real map. To accompany their story about Barack Obama winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, The Guardian posted on their website what they claimed was “every peace prize winner ever,” stating that the information came from the website Nobelprize.org . But guess whose names The Guardian took off the list…? All three Israelis who have won the peace prize: Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Following outrage in Britain, including online articles on the websites of the conservative-leaning Daily Telegraph and Spectator…, The Guardian slipped the Israeli names back on to their list. The Guardian had no trouble keeping FW De Klerk, the last president of Apartheid South Africa, on their original list.

It is only [Jewish winners] – and their achievements – which they tried to wipe off the map. And this from a paper whose motto is “Facts are sacred”. …The Guardian … misleads readers about Israel on a regular basis by omitting crucial information that portrays Israelis in a positive light. … the (London) Jewish Chronicle and the Harry’s Place blog managed to upload The Guardian’s Israel-free Nobel list before The Guardian slipped the names back in. Below, The Guardian omitted Israeli political leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, who won the peace prize jointly with [Palestinian leader] Yasser Arafat in 1994.

(Incidentally The Guardian forgot to remove the word “Israel” when removing the names of the Israeli winners): Anwar al-Sadat - Facts Anwar al-Sadat The Nobel Peace Prize 1978 Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin Born: 25 December 1918, Mit Abu al-Kawm, Egypt Died: 6 October 1981, Cairo, Egypt Residence at the time of the award: Egypt Role: President of the Arab Republic of Egypt Field: negotiation Prize share: 1/2 For a Peace Treaty with Israel In October 1981, President Sadat of Egypt was murdered by persons who were opposed to his policy of reconciliation with Israel and his close links with the United States. Sadat shared the Peace Prize with Israel's Prime Minister Begin after having taken the initiative in negotiating a peace treaty between the two countries. The so-called Camp David Accords came about thanks to the mediation efforts of US President Jimmy Carter. Anwar el-Sadat had military training. In World War II he fought against the British dominance of Egypt and was imprisoned for several years.

After the war he joined the officers who under Nasser's leadership deposed the pro-English King Farouk in 1952. Nasser died a few years after Egypt's defeat by Israel in 1967, and Sadat took over as President. He broke Egypt's links with the Soviet Union, and sought US support in recovering territories lost to Israel. In the autumn of 1977 Sadat undertook a bold journey to Jerusalem, where he offered Begin a peace treaty in return for recovery of the occupied Sinai peninsula. Copyright © The Norwegian Nobel Institute Share this: Read more : Two new books about the Nobel Peace Prize ! Menachem Begin (1913-1992) Israel "The ancient Jewish people gave the world the vision of eternal peace, of universal disarmament, of abolishing the teaching and learning of war." From Menachem Begin's Nobel Lecture. In 1978, the Nobel Committee attempted to influence peace negotiations in the Middle East by awarding the Peace Prize to the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Both had previously fought against the United Kingdom, and both had been branded terrorists by the British. Only Begin came to Oslo.

Fearing assassination attempts and demonstrations, he was taken by helicopter directly from the Royal Palace to the Akershus Fortress. The award ceremony took place behind metre-thick walls while the police fought demonstrators outside. During a military parade in Cairo less than three years later, Anwar Sadat was riddled with bullets for his policy of peace towards Israel. Early years MENACHEM BEGIN was born in the town of Brest-Litovsk, which in 1913 was part of the Russian czardom; it became Polish after the First World War. Begin witnessed harassment and humiliation of local Jewish leaders by Polish officers. His father was an eager Zionist who believed in a Jewish state in Palestine as the way to escape European anti-Semitism. Begin studied law, and worked for the Zionist organisation Betar. His idol was Zeev Jabotinsky, who was opposed to the more moderate and socialist-oriented Zionists under David Ben Gurion. Ben Gurion wanted to cooperate with the British authorities in Palestine to obtain the best possible conditions for Jewish immigration. Jabotinsky, on the other hand, wanted Jews to found a Jewish state immediately - an Erez Israel ("Great Israel") that would encompass all of Palestine.

He wanted to impose such a state on the Arabs by force. The state would have to be conquered and defended with "an iron wall of Jewish bayonets". To Palestine When Hitler invaded Poland in September 1939, Begin fled to Lithuania. When the Soviet Union invaded the following year, Begin was arrested and sentenced to eight years of hard labour as an enemy of the state. Nine months of hell followed in a camp near the Arctic Circle before he was saved by the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Stalin agreed to create an army of Poles on Soviet territory. Begin joined this army, which was sent to the Middle East to support the British, and found himself in Jerusalem in 1942. He was reunited with his wife who had managed to escape to Palestine, but his joy was overshadowed by news that the Germans had exterminated his brother and parents. War against the British Most Zionists prioritised the fight against Nazism, with 30,000 Jews fighting on the Allied side in different theatres. But extremist organisations in Palestine, such as the Irgun Zwai Leumi and the Stern, tried to force Britain into opening up for free Jewish immigration.

Begin became leader of the Irgun in 1944. He declared war on the British administration in Palestine, believing Britain had been aware of the Holocaust but had neglected to offer help to the Jews. In the autumn of 1944 Stern activists killed Churchill's Middle East minister, but Begin and the Irgun were blamed. Churchill was furious, and Ben Gurion feared that Britain would be opposed to a Jewish state after the war. He cooperated with the British in an effort to arrest Irgun leaders. With the threat of a £10,000 reward on his capture, Begin went underground. After the Second World War, Britain refused to reward Jewish war efforts with increased Jewish immigration to Palestine, giving priority to relations with the oil rich Arab states. Ben Gurion then proposed a joint front with the Irgun and the Stern against the British. Begin recognised Ben Gurion as the leader of the Zionists, but refused to subordinate himself militarily. In July 1946 the Irgun bombed the Jerusalem King David Hotel, the main British administration headquarters, killing 91 Britons, Jews and Arabs.

War against the Palestinians The situation grew untenable for the British, who left the Palestine issue to the UN. In the autumn of 1947, the UN divided Palestine into one Jewish and one Arab state. Begin disapproved; the new Israel did not resemble the Erez Israel of his dreams. Prior to the implementation of the partition plan, battles for positions in Palestine raged. Begin was again in the searchlight when Irgun and Stern forces took the Arab village of Deir Yassin, close to Jerusalem, massacring its inhabitants. The massacre contributed to a mass exodus of Arabs from Palestine. Begin did not take part in the attack. For the rest of his life, he would deny that Deir Yassin had been anything but a regular military operation. Rivalry with Ben Gurion came to a head in the summer of 1948 when Ben Gurion's army opened fire on the Altalena. The vessel was carrying an Irgun arms shipment, and Begin refused to surrender the cargo to the Israeli army. The new Jewish state was threatened by civil war, which made Begin order the disbanding of the Irgun.

Begin becomes Prime Minister Instead Begin founded the Herut political party, which was to fight for the realisation of Erez Israel. When the conflict with the Arabs escalated in 1967, Begin was included in a national coalition government. His delight was immense when Israel crushed all resistance in the Six Day War and claimed the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Begin withdrew from government in 1970 when it refused to declare that the West Bank would forever belong to Israel. Many regarded this as the end of Begin's political career, but when Israel suffered great losses of soldiers in the October War against Egypt and Syria in 1973, more and more Israelis grew critical of the ruling Labour Party. The right-of-centre Likud alliance won the elections of 1977, and Menachem Begin became prime minister. Peace with Egypt? In 1977, Jimmy Carter became president of the United States. He introduced a more critical stance towards Israel. Egypt´s president Sadat contacted Carter, who was pleased by his will to negotiate. At the same time, Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan persuaded Begin to negotiate with Sadat.

Begin and Dayan enlisted the Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, the sole communist leader who still had diplomatic ties with Israel after the 1967 Six Day War, to convey the message that they were willing to negotiate. In addition, king Hassan of Morocco functioned as a liaison. Sadat learned that Israel would return the Sinai to Egypt in return for a peace treaty. In a speech to the Egyptian national assembly, he declared a willingness to go to the end of the world for peace, even to the Knesset in Jerusalem. Begin issued an invitation to Sadat, and in November Sadat addressed the Israeli national assembly. He could not give the impression that Egypt intended separate peace with Israel, and spoke in hardline terms of Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territories. His journey to Israel became a psychological breakthrough. The two leaders vowed that conflicts between Egypt and Israel would never again be solved through war. Sadat was praised in Egypt and the West. Henry Kissinger nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize for 1978, while the Israeli "Peace Now" movement arranged large-scale demonstrations to trade land for peace. But in the Arab states, Sadat was branded a traitor.

The Camp David negotiations President Carter invited Begin and Sadat to Camp David to push for a negotiated solution. He succeeded, but the Egyptian foreign minister resigned in protest. Still, Sadat was satisfied, as Begin had agreed to work out an agreement on withdrawal from the Sinai. Also, Begin had for the first time recognised the existence of a Palestinian people with legitimate rights. For this, Begin was strongly criticised by fellow party members in Israel, but he believed that he had neutralised Egypt while not relinquishing Israeli supremacy on the West Bank. The Nobel Peace Prize In October 1978 the Nobel Committee chairperson Aase Lionæs announced Sadat and Begin as Peace Prize laureates: "not only to honour actions already performed in the service of peace, but also to encourage further efforts to work out practical solutions which can give reality to those hopes of a lasting peace, as they have been kindled by the framework agreements." Reactions ranged from condemnation to tributes. In the West, Sadat was found deserving of the prize for his intrepid journey to Jerusalem, while Begin met with scepticism or disapproval. One argument used against the award was that no peace accord had been reached. The Soviet Union had been sidelined in the peace process.

It described the award as "a joke in bad taste and an insult against the Peace Prize itself". Sadat felt that President Carter ought to have been among the laureates. The Nobel Committee agreed, but he had not been nominated before the deadline. In autumn 1978, the peace negotiations ground to a halt. Only Begin came to Oslo to accept the award, while Sadat explained his absence with the lack of a peace accord. He probably felt that he should have been the sole laureate. The killing of Sadat and Begin´s last years When Sadat signed the final Camp David Accords in March 1979 on the White House lawn, he also signed his own death warrant. During the October War memorial parade in 1981, he was gunned down by Islamic fundamentalists inspired by the Iranian revolution. Menachem Begin ensured the return of the Sinai to Egypt, but refused to enter serious negotiations over Palestinian rights. In 1982, he ordered the invasion of Lebanon to crush the Palestinians there. When the Israeli army allowed the Lebanese militia to massacre Palestinians in the Shabra and Shatilla refugee camps, he faced such a political broadside that he retired from political life.

The old warrior spent the last ten years of his life in bitterness and isolation.

Question: Which Israeli leader won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978?
Answer: Menachem Begin