THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MENACHEM BEGIN
Amos Perlmutter
Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Company, 1987
444 pp., $19.95
When former President Jimmy Carter visited Israel in March 1987, he expressed a wish to call on former Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Begin refused. Since resigning, Begin has become a total recluse - a strange way to end one of the most extraordinary careers in Israeli politics.
Begin's career is the subject of a new, authoritative political biography, The Life and Times of Menachem Begin, by Amos Perlmutter, a preeminent authority on Israeli history and politics. Perlmutter has written a truly informative book that fulfills the promise of the title: The book rewards the attentive reader with insight into both the life and times of its subject. Over the years, Perlmutter has had access to Begin and to almost all of Israel's senior political and military leaders. He has also made use of documents in Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and other languages relevant to a full understanding of the subject. Few, if any, other authorities are as qualified as Perlmutter for the task he has set for himself.
Together with the late president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter were responsible for the most important diplomatic accords in Israeli history, the Israeli-Egyptian Peace Treaty of March 26, 1979. Fragile though the peace has been, it has endured. Apparently, Carter and Begin had little trust or liking for each other. Nor did they understand the accords in the same way. Carter saw the Camp David Accords as a transitional agreement that left the difficult issue of Palestinian self-determination to be settled at a later date. Begin saw the accords as a historic turning point in which Israel's most populous adversary finally made peace. Still, Begin and Carter were jointly responsible for an improbable moment in history that will not soon be forgotten. For most elder statesmen, that alone would have been reason to come out of seclusion, but not for Begin. Something has happened to the man that makes it impossible for him to face the world.
Begin's Life in Poland
Born to middle-class parents in 1913 in Brest-Litovsk, Poland, Begin received a law degree from the University of Warsaw in 1937. In 1931 Begin became a member of Betar, a right-socialist Zionist youth movement led by Vladimir Jabotinsky, the radical nationalist leader of the revisionist movement within Zionism and Begin's lifelong ideological mentor. Begin did not emigrate to Palestine upon receiving his degree, as socialist Zionists of comparable standing invariably did. He remained in Poland as a lawyer and Betar activist, becoming Betar's High Commissioner for Poland in 1939. According to Perlmutter, Begin remained a Diaspora Jew even as prime minister of Israel. His Polish experiences were decisive for the way he viewed the world throughout his career. By contrast, his political adversary, David Ben-Gurion, left Poland in 1906 at age nineteen to settle in Palestine, where he started out as an agricultural laborer and watchman. Ben-Gurion was convinced that "the settlement of the land is the only true Zionism, all else being self-deception, empty verbiage, and merely a pastime." Ben-Gurion volunteered for the British Army in May 1918, reaching Egypt as a member of the Jewish Legion.
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