Menachem Begin-A Brief Biography & Quotes

Menachem Begin-A Brief Biography & Quotes

eMail to a friend
Return to Zionist Quotes

Posted on December 10, 2001

BASED On Declassified Israeli Documents & Personal Diaries

1913-1992

Manachem Begin was born in 1913 in Brest Litovsk, currently Belarus, and graduated as a lawyer from the University of Warsaw, Poland. After the Germans occupied Poland, he sought refuge in Lithuania. In 1942, he emigrated to Palestine where he led the Irgun terror gang. Since the British proposed the policies set out in the 1939 White Paper, Begin as well as Shamir (who led the Stern terror gang) joined forces to wage a wave of terror against British and the Palestinian people during WW II. Both Begin and Shamir were wanted by the British as terrorists for war crimes against the Palestinian people.

The Irgun and Begin were credited with the most famous massacre against Palestinian civilians, during the 1948 war,. visit DEIR YASSIN for further details. For internal Israeli political reasons, the Irgun, Stern and Begin were unfairly singled out by the main stream Israelis as a terrorists. On the other hand, the Haganah committed the lion's share of undisclosed war crimes against the Palestinian people. Between 1948-1977 Begin led the Israeli opposition as a member of the Likud party, and in 1977 he became Israel's sixth Prime Minister. He is credited with achieving the first peace treaty and neutralizing Egypt's army. With Egypt sidelined, Begin felt comfortable attacking the PLO and destroying its bases in Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli invasion. He resigned office in 1983 soon after the death of his wife, and then lived in seclusion until his death in 1992.

It's worth noting that Begin was a major disciple of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and a strong believer in the IRON WALL theory. The lose of both of his parents during the Holocaust had a profound affect on his political life. From his quotes below, you will get an idea how much the Holocaust had obscured his vision of reality, and created a two dimensional view of the world around him. The Nazi war crimes against Jews were often cited by Begin as an excuse for heavy handed policies against the Palestinian people and Arabs in general.

Famous Quotes

One day after the U.N. vote to partition Palestine, Menachem Begin, the commander of the Irgun and Israel's future Prime Minster between 1977-1983, proclaimed:

"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized .... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever." (Iron Wall p. 25 & Simha Flapan, p. 32)

Soon after Menachem Begin and the Likud party won the Israeli election in 1977, the government's foreign policy was stated as follows:

"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." (Iron Wall, p. 354-355) This is a typical Zionist argument where the Bible or the "Word of God" is being used to achieve political objectives.

While Menachem Begin was negotiating the with Egypt on the final status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, he presented the following reasoning why Israel cannot withdraw from these areas:

"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." (Iron Wall, p. 356)

Again Begin used the Holocaust as a justification for the invasion of Lebanon. On June 5, 1982 he told the Israeli Cabinet:

"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" (Iron Wall, p. 404-405).

Almost 18 years later, the Israeli army was forced out of Lebanon after murdering more than 20,000 Lebanese & Palestinian civilians. The only difference between the old and the new Treblinka that in the new Treblinka it was Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who were being murdered, not Jews.

When the American President Ronald Reagan threatened to review American-Israeli relations over the indiscriminate carpet bombing of Beirut in 1982, once again the Prime Minister of the "Jewish state" used the Holocaust to clamp down on his critics, Menachem Begin wrote president Reagan:

"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 instruction from Berlin---with or without inverted commas--- will never happen again" (Iron Wall, p. 404-405).

If Palestinians felt that Israel was founded based on the destruction of their hopses, and the theft of their homes, farms, businesses, ports, banks, ..etc., would it be just to mention the memories of Sabara and Shatila to justify the the carpet bombing of Tel-Aviv?

The reference to the Holocaust is often used and abused by many Israeli leaders to justify aggression, invasion, and the usurpation of other people's rights. When President Reagan sent a letter to Menachem Begin condemning the attack on the Iraqi civilian nuclear reactor in June 1981, Begin responded with a letter replete with references to the Holocaust, he wrote:

"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." (Iron Wall, p. 387)

Menachem Begin was strongly influenced by Ze'ev Jabotinsky's Iron Wall theory, he stated to Eliahu Ben-Elissar (the director general of the PM's office):

"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." (Iron Wall, p. 354)

Return to Zionist Quotes

What is new?

-PalestineRemembered.com and its Nakba Oral History Project were featured on al-Jazeera Satellite TV.
-Nakba Oral History Video Podcast: Over 450 Oral History interviews (including 1,600 hours of recording) can be viewed now online.
-Gaza Jail Break
-Arabic version now available - النسخة العربية للموقع الان متوفرة
-Videos:Documenting the destroyed villages in video: Tracing all that remains since Nakba.
-Videos: Responding to Zionist Propaganda
-Satellite View & Google Earth: Over 6,000 placemarks identifying all destroyed towns, W. Bank & Gaza Strip Towns, & refugee camps.
-Interview:The ethnic cleansing of Palestine: George Galloway interviews Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe.
-For Palestinians, memory matters. It provides a blueprint for their future By George Bisharat.
-Zionist FAQ now available in Hebrew שאלות שציונים שואלים, עכשיו בעברית
-Video: The Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer report on the influence of the Israel Lobby on U.S. Foreign Policy
-The Nakba - an event that did not occur (although it had to occur) By Eitan Bronstein
-The Palestinian-Israeli conflict for beginners

PalestineRemembered.com		The Home of Ethnically Cleansed & Occupied Palestinians			Satellite View	Search	Donate	Contact Us	النسخة العربية
Home	Pictures	Maps	Oral History	Zionist FAQ	Zionist Quotes	The Conflict 101	R.O.R. 101	Site Members	About Us

Related Links

Famous Quotes