Shlomo Argov (14 December 1929, Jerusalem – 23 February 2003) was a prominent Israeli diplomat. He was the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom whose attempted assassination led to the 1982 Lebanon War.

Attempted assassination[link]

On 3 June 1982, three men, Hussein Ghassan Said, Marwan al-Banna, and Nawaf al-Rosan^[1] approached Argov as he got into his car after a banquet at the Dorchester Hotel, in Park Lane, London. Said shot Argov in the head. Though not killed, he remained in a coma for three months. The events left him permanently paralysed and in need of constant medical assistance, which he received at the Hadassah Hospital, in Jerusalem.^[1]

The attempted assassins were members of Abu Nidal's organization, a Palestinian terrorist splinter group from the PLO. The attack was ordered by the Iraqi Intelligence Service.^[2][3][4] Al-Banna was Abu Nidal's cousin, Said a Jordanian and the third of Argov's would-be assassins, Al-Rosan, was a Baghdad intelligence colonel. The gunman, Said, was shot by the bodyguard and also sustained serious head injuries and, like Argov, survived.^[5] The two uninjured assassins fled the scene but were arrested shortly afterwards in a London flat. It appeared that they were next planning to kill Nabil Ramlawi, the PLO representative in London.^[1]

The attackers were convicted, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 30 to 35 years. Subsequently two became mentally ill, and were transferred to high security hospitals in the UK.^[6] There was some speculation in Israel at the time that the British security services were aware of the plot.^[7] Lord Alton of Liverpool failed to draw the government into commenting on the speculation when he raised the issue in the House of Lords.^[8]

The attempt on Argov's life was used as a justification for the 1982 Lebanon War,^[1] which began on 6 June and led to the expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization from Lebanon, although the would be assassins were not members of the PLO.

Argov died in 2003 aged 73 from the injuries inflicted in the attack.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Lebanon: A chronology of key events
• Israeli government's page on Argov

v t e Prominent Palestinian militancy attacks in the 1980s Within Israel Misgav Am hostage crisis1 (April 7, 1980) Murder of Danny Katz (December 8, 1983) Egged bus 300 hostage crisis2 (April 12, 1984) Night of the Gliders1 (November 25, 1987) Mothers' Bus attack3 (March 7, 1988) Murder of Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon2 (February 16, 1989) Tel Aviv Jerusalem bus 405 suicide attack2 (July 6, 1989) Worldwide Assassination attempt of the Israeli ambassador in London (June 3, 1982) Shooting attacks on the El Al counters in Rome and Vienna (December 27, 1985) 1 Attacks launched from Lebanon 2 Attacks launched from the Gaza Strip 3 Attacks launched from Egypt 1970s 1990s

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Zohar Argov (Hebrew: זוהר ארגוב‎, born Zohar Orkabi on July 16, 1955, died November 6, 1987) was a popular Israeli singer and a distinctive voice in the Mizrahi music scene. Argov is widely known in Israel as "The king of Mizrahi music"^[1][2]

Background[link]

The most serious hurdle on his way to stardom was Argov's socioeconomic background. He was born in Rishon LeZion, and grew up in a poor family, the eldest of ten children.^[3] In those years, singers often began their careers by serving as entertainment for military troops, but Argov did not serve in the army. His remarkable singing abilities were cultivated at home, through his participation from early childhood in the singing and chanting of the religious Yemenite community.

Musical career[link]

Argov's debut album Eleanor (1981) featured the title track, "Sod HaMazalot" ("The Zodiac Secret"), and "Mah Lakh, Yaldah?" ("What's With You, Girl?"), a tribute to his ex-wife, Bracha, who remained the love of his life.^[4]

While Argov's career was dotted with creative and personal lapses caused by his heroin and crack cocaine addictions, which eventually led to his death at the age of 32.^[5][6] his musical achievements overshadowed his personal problems. His ability to sing heartbreaking versions of his songs in live performances, even under the influence of drugs, allowed a blind eye to be turned to his addictive rampages, which ended up destroying his personal relationships.

Popularity and musical style[link]

Argov was among the first singers to achieve commercial and nationwide success in the sphere of Middle Eastern-Mediterranean/oriental (Mizrahi)-style music, despite the fact that his music was not mainstream at the time, and radio stations gave predominance to pop music from overseas. Some believe that the great popularity of Argov and other Mizrahi singers of his time, among them Avihu Medina, Haim Moshe and Margalit Tzan'ani, was a response to the widespread sense among Mizrahi Jews in Israel that they were being discriminated against by the Ashkenazi hegemony.

The themes of Argov's songs were similar to those of American country music: love, heartache, disappointments, joy, addiction. He is considered a prodigy by many in the music business. Arranger and conductor Nancy Brandes, who musically directed many of his recordings, described him as a musical genius: He could make perfect recordings in one take, and when asked to do another take, was able to sing a totally different version just as perfectly. Argov had a remarkable talent for improvisation that respected the spirit of the song while allowing him to leave his personal mark.

Death[link]

Argov committed suicide in his jail cell following an arrest on rape charges.^[7] He died at dawn, a few hours after his appearance on a popular Israeli television talk show, where he discussed his life and drug problems. On the show he stated that he was being treated for his addiction. Argov had one son, Gili.^[8]

Legacy[link]

After his death Argov has continued to retain his undisputed status as "HaMelekh" (the King) of Mizrahi music^[9]. In recent years his important contribution to Israeli culture has been widely acknowledged. A mainstream label, Hed Artzi, released a double album of his music, "Zohar Argov: The Best." Argov was the subject of a play mounted at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv, and a feature film on his life, named "Zohar," has enjoyed commercial success.^[10]

His songs, among them "Perakh BeGani" ("Flower in My Garden"), "Mah Lakh, Yaldah?" ("What's With You, Girl"), "Ba'avar Hayu Zmanim" ("In The Past") and "Badad" ("Alone"), are now Israeli pop classics and an integral part of national culture. Proposals to name streets after him in Rishon Lezion and Tel Aviv were discussed in 2007, amid controversy over the balance between his criminal and artistic reputations.^[7]

In 2005, he was voted the 60th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.^[11]

See also[link]

• Mizrahi Music

References[link]

Abu Nidal (Arabic: أبو نضال) (May 1937 – August 16, 2002), born Sabri Khalil al-Banna (Arabic: صبري خليل البنا), was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council (Arabic: فتح المجلس الثوري), a militant Palestinian splinter group also known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO).^[1] At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of [the] struggle," was widely regarded as the most ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders.^[2] He told Der Spiegel in a rare interview in 1985: "I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares."^[3]

Part of the secular Palestinian rejectionist front, so called because they reject proposals for a peaceful settlement with Israel, the ANO was formed after a split in 1974 between Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Setting himself up as a freelance contractor, Abu Nidal is believed by the United States Department of State to have ordered attacks in 20 countries, killing or injuring over 900 people.^[4] The group's most notorious attacks were on the El Al ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, when Arab gunmen high on amphetamines opened fire on passengers in simultaneous shootings, killing 18 and wounding 120. Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal's biographer, wrote of the attacks that their "random cruelty marked them as typical Abu Nidal operations."^[5]

Abu Nidal died of between one and four gunshot wounds in Baghdad in August 2002. Palestinian sources believe he was killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi government insisted he had committed suicide.^[6] The Guardian wrote on the news of his death: "He was the patriot turned psychopath. He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary."^[7]

	Biography portal
	Palestine portal
	Terrorism portal

Early life[link]

Abu Nidal was born in Jaffa, where he was raised in a large stone house near the beach.

Abu Nidal was born in May 1937 in Jaffa, now part of Tel Aviv-Yafo, on the Mediterranean coast of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. His father, Hajj Khalil al-Banna, was a wealthy merchant who made his money from the 6,000 acres (24 km²) of orange groves he owned, which extended from the south of Jaffa to Majdal, today Ashkelon in Israel. He raised his large family in luxury in a three-storey stone house near the beach, now used as an Israeli military court.^[8]

According to Abu Nidal's brother, Muhammad Khalil al-Banna, their father was the richest man in Palestine, with orchards in Majdal, Yibna, and Abu Kabir, near the town of Tirah. Every year, the father would supervise as his crops were packed in wooden crates for shipment to Europe on a shipping line from Jaffa to Liverpool.^[9] Muhammad told journalist Yossi Melman:

[My father] marketed about ten percent of all the citrus crops sent from Palestine to Europe—especially to England and Germany. He owned a summer house in Marseilles, France, and another house in İskenderun, then in Syria and afterwards Turkey, and a number of houses in Palestine itself. Most of the time we lived in Jaffa. Our house had about twenty rooms, and we children would go down to swim in the sea. We also had stables with Arabian horses, and one of our homes in Ashkelon even had a large swimming pool. I think we must have been the only family in Palestine with a private swimming pool.^[10]

Khalil's money meant he could afford to take several wives. According to Abu Nidal in a rare interview with Der Spiegel in 1985, conducted in a remote villa near Tripoli, his father had 13 wives, who gave birth to 17 sons and eight daughters.^[11] Abu Nidal's mother was the eighth wife, according to Melman.^[8] She had been one of the family's maids, a young Alawite girl just 16 years old when Khalil married her against the wishes of his family. She gave birth to Sabri, Khalil's 12th child. Because the family disapproved of the marriage, Abu Nidal was reportedly scorned from an early age by his older half-brothers and half-sisters.^[12]

Khalil sent him to Collège des Frères, a French Roman Catholic mission school in the Old Jaffa quarter.^[10] The school's records are not made available to journalists, but according to the school keeper they show that Abu Nidal completed the first grade.^[10] Khalil died in 1945, when Abu Nidal was seven years old, and the family turned his mother out of the house. His older brothers, more devout Muslims than his father had been, took Abu Nidal out of the mission school and enrolled him in a Muslim school in Jerusalem, now known as Umariya Elementary School, at the time one of the most prestigious private schools in the country. He attended the school for about two years.^[13]

1948 Palestine War[link]

Abu Nidal's family had good relations with the Jewish community and used to visit Chaim Weizmann, later the first president of Israel, at his home in Rehovot.^[13]

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations resolved to partition Palestine into two states— one Jewish, one Arab. Fighting broke out immediately between Arab and Jewish militias, and Jaffa found itself under siege. Life became unbearable, according to Melman, and the disruption of the citrus fruit business hit the family's income. Booby-trapped cars were exploding in the center of the city and there were food shortages. The al-Banna family had had good relations with the Jewish community. Abu Nidal's brother told Melman: "My father was a close friend of Avraham Shapira, one of the founders of Hashomer, the Jewish self-defense organization. He would visit [Shapira] in his home in Petah Tikva, or Shapira riding his horse would visit our home in Jaffa. I also remember how we visited Dr. Weizmann [later the first president of Israel] in his home in Rehovot." But it was war and the relationships didn't help them.^[14]

Just before Jaffa was conquered by Israeli troops in April 1948, the family decided to flee to their house near Majdal. "[W]e will return in a few days", his mother said.^[15] But the Jewish militias arrived in Majdal too, and they had to flee again. This time they went to the Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, then under the control of Egypt. There the family spent nine months living in tents, dependent on UNRWA for their weekly allowance of oil, rice, and potatoes. The experience had a powerful effect on Abu Nidal, who was used to wealth and servants, but now found himself living in abject poverty.^[15]

The family's skill in commerce, and the small amount of money they had managed to take with them, meant they were able to set themselves up in business again as merchants. Their orange groves however had gone, now part of the new State of Israel, which had declared its independence on May 14, 1948. They decided to move to Nablus in the West Bank, then ruled by Jordan, where Abu Nidal had spent his teenage years. He completed elementary school and graduated from high school in 1955. Melman writes that he loved reading, particularly adventure stories, and was regarded as studious, although not particularly bright. His education was elementary; his childish handwriting remained a source of great embarrassment to him throughout the rest of his life. He applied to study engineering at Cairo University, but returned to Nablus after two years without a degree—although he would later describe himself as having one, part of his constant embellishment of his past.^[16]

He joined the Arab nationalist Ba'ath party when he was 18, but King Hussein of Jordan closed the party down in 1957. He then made his way to Saudi Arabia, where in 1960 he set himself up as a painter and electrician in Riyadh, according to Seale, or Jeddah, according to Melman, and later went on to work as a casual laborer for Aramco.^[17] He remained close to his mother and returned to Nablus from Saudi Arabia every year to visit her. It was during one of those visits in 1962 that he met his future wife, Hiyam al-Bitar, whose family had also fled from Jaffa. They had a son, Nidal, and two daughters, Bisan and Na'ifa. Decades later, in the 1980s, he boasted that his daughter Bisan had no idea he was Abu Nidal.^[3]

Personality and appearance[link]

Seale writes that Abu Nidal was a nondescript figure, often in poor health and shabbily dressed in a zip-up jacket and old trousers. In his later years, he drank whisky every night, and seemed to prefer his own company, living like a mole, lonely and isolated. He became a master of disguise and subterfuge, addicted to secrecy and power.^[18] Those who knew him saw him as capable of hard work and clear thinking, with a good financial brain, and able to inspire a mixture of dedication and fear in his followers.^[19] Abu Iyad, the late deputy chief of Fatah, came to know him well in the late 1960s, and took Abu Nidal under his wing to some extent, a relationship that Abu Iyad eventually paid for with his life. "He had been recommended to me as a man of energy and enthusiasm, but he seemed shy when we met. It was only on further acquaintance that I noticed other traits. He was extremely good company, with a sharp tongue and an inclination to dismiss most of humanity as spies and traitors. I rather liked that! I discovered he was very ambitious, perhaps more than his abilities warranted, and also very excitable. He sometimes worked himself up into such a state that he lost all powers of reasoning."^[20]

Seale suggests that Abu Nidal's unhappy childhood explains his difficult personality, described as chaotic by Abu Iyad, and as psychopathic by Issam Sartawi, the late Palestinian heart surgeon.^[21] His siblings' scorn; the loss of his father and his mother's removal from the family home when he was seven; then the loss of his home and status in the conflict with Israel, created a mental world full of plots and counterplots, later reflected in his tyrannical leadership of the ANO—trusting no one, and at one point suspecting even his own wife of working for the CIA.^[22] It seems he grew to despise women, forcing his wife to live in isolation without friends, and forbidding ANO members from telling their wives about their activities, or allowing the women to befriend one another.^[23]

Political life[link]

When King Hussein expelled the PLO during Black September, Abu Nidal was in Iraq, leading to the suspicion that he, Nidal, was interested only in saving his own skin.

In Saudi Arabia, he helped found a small group of young Palestinians who called themselves the Palestine Secret Organization. His political activism and vocal denunciation of Israel drew the attention of his employer, Aramco, which fired him, and then the Saudi government, which imprisoned, tortured, and expelled him as an unwelcome radical.^[17] He returned to Nablus with his wife and young family, and it was around this time that he joined Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction of the PLO, although the exact timing and circumstances are unknown. He worked as an odd-job man until June 1967, committed to Palestinian politics but not particularly active, until Israel won the 1967 Six-Day War, capturing the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The sight of Israeli tanks rolling into Nablus, after he had already been forced to flee from Jaffa because of the war, and from Saudi Arabia because of his activism, was a traumatic and pivotal experience for him, according to Melman, and his passive involvement in Palestinian politics was transformed into a deadly hatred of Israel.^[24]

He moved to Amman, Jordan, setting up a trading company called Impex,^[20] and joining the Fatah underground, where he was asked to choose a nom de guerre. He chose Abu Nidal, in part after his son, Nidal—it is customary in the Arab world for men to call themselves "father of" (Abu), followed by their first son's name—but also because the name means "father of the struggle". He was described by those who knew him at the time as a tidy, well-organized leader, not a guerrilla. During skirmishes in Jordan between the Palestinian fedayeen and King Hussein's troops, he stayed indoors, never leaving his office.^[24]

Impex soon became a front for Fatah activities, serving as a meeting place for members and as a conduit for funds with which to pay them.^[20] This was to become a hallmark of Abu Nidal's business career. Companies controlled by the ANO made him a rich man by engaging in legitimate business deals, while acting as cover for his political violence and his multi-million-dollar arms deals, mercenary activities, and protection rackets. Seeing his talent for organization, Abu Iyad appointed him in 1968 as the Fatah representative in Khartoum, Sudan, then to the same position in Baghdad in July 1970, just two months before Black September, when King Hussein's army drove the Palestinian fedayeen out of Jordan, with the loss of between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in just ten days. Abu Nidal's absence from Jordan during this period, where it was clear that King Hussein was about to act against the Palestinians, raised the suspicion within the movement that he was interested only in saving his own skin.^[25]

Criticism of the PLO[link]

Just before the PLO expulsion from Jordan, and during the three years that followed it, several radical Palestinian and other Arab factions split from the PLO and began to launch attacks on Israeli targets, and on civilian targets overseas. These included George Habash's PFLP; the DFLP; the Arab Liberation Front; as-Sa'iqa; the Palestine Liberation Front, at that time headed by Ahmed Jibril who went on to set up the radical PFLP-GC; and Black September, the cover name of a group of radical fedayeen associated with Arafat's Fatah.

Shortly after King Hussein expelled the Palestinians, Abu Nidal began broadcasting criticism of the PLO over Voice of Palestine, the PLO's own radio station in Iraq, accusing them of cowardice for having agreed to a ceasefire with Hussein.^[26] During Fatah's Third Congress in Damascus in 1971, he emerged as the leader of a leftist alliance against Arafat. Together with Palestinian intellectual Naji Allush and Abu Daoud—one of Fatah's most ruthless commanders, who was later involved in the 1972 kidnapping and killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Village in Munich—Abu Nidal called for Arafat to be overthrown as an enemy of the Palestinian people, and demanded more democracy within Fatah, as well as violent revenge against King Hussein. Seale writes that it was the last Fatah congress Abu Nidal would attend, but he had made his mark.

First operation and expulsion from Fatah[link]

Mahmoud Abbas, now president of the Palestinian National Authority, flew to Iraq to reprimand Abu Nidal for seizing the Saudi Embassy. The Iraqis said they had asked him to do it for them.^[27]

Abu Nidal's first operation took place on September 5, 1973, when five gunmen, using the name Al-Iqab (The Punishment), seized the Saudi embassy in Paris, taking 11 hostages and threatening to blow up the building if Abu Dawud was not released from jail in Jordan, where he had been arrested in February 1973 for an attempt on King Hussein's life.^[28] After lengthy negotiations, the gunmen and some of the hostages left on a Syrian Airways jet for Kuwait, from where they flew to Riyadh, threatening to throw some of the hostages out of the aircraft on the way. For three days negotiations continued, aided by Ali Yassin, a PLO representative, until eventually the gunmen were convinced by the Saudi's insistence that they had no control over the Jordanian authorities. They surrendered and released the hostages on September 8. Abu Dawud was released from prison two weeks later. Seale writes that the Kuwaiti government had agreed to pay King Hussein $12 million for the release.^[29]

According to Seale, the seizure of the embassy had been commissioned by Iraq's president, Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr. On the day of the seizure, 56 heads of state had gathered in Algiers for the 4th conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Seale writes that al-Bakr commissioned the attack out of jealousy toward Algeria that they were the hosts; a high-level hostage situation was therefore arranged as a distraction. One of the hostage-takers later admitted that his orders had been to fly the hostages back and forth until the NAM conference had ended.^[27]

Although the media blamed the attack on Black September, a Fatah front, Melman writes that Abu Nidal had carried out the operation without the permission of Abu Iyad, Arafat's deputy, who acted as the liaison between Fatah and Black September. Far from having given it the go-ahead, Abu Iyad and Mahmoud Abbas—who eventually became President of the Palestinian National Authority—flew to Iraq to reason with Abu Nidal that operations such as these harmed the movement, Abu Iyad later condemning it as "illogical adventurism".^[28] According to Seale, the Iraqi government made it clear that the idea for the operation had been theirs. Abu Iyad told Seale that an Iraqi official at the meeting said: "Why are you attacking Abu Nidal? The operation was ours! We asked him to mount it for us."^[27] Abbas was so angry, writes Seale, that he stormed out of the meeting, followed by the other PLO delegates, and from that point on, the PLO regarded Abu Nidal as a mercenary.^[27]

Two months later, just after the October 1973 Yom Kippur War, during discussions about convening a peace conference in Geneva, the ANO hijacked a KLM airliner, using the name the Arab Nationalist Youth Organization. The operation was intended to send a signal to Fatah not to send representatives to any peace conference. In response, Arafat expelled Abu Nidal from Fatah in March 1974, and the rift between the two groups, and the two men, was complete.^[30]

Six months later, Abu Nidal was sentenced to death in absentia by Fatah for the attempted assassination of Mahmoud Abbas. It's unlikely that Abu Nidal intended to kill Abbas, and just as unlikely that Fatah wanted to kill Abu Nidal—he was invited to Beirut to discuss the death sentence and attended, refusing to humble himself and was allowed to leave—but the effect of the sentence was to signal that Abu Nidal was persona non grata, and to drive him further into the arms of the Iraqi government. He became "Mr. Palestine" in Iraq. The Iraqis gave him Fatah's assets in Iraq, including a training camp, a farm, a newspaper, a radio station, passports, scholarships for studying overseas, and $15 million worth of Chinese weapons. He also became the recipient of Iraq's regular aid to the PLO: 50,000 Iraqi dinars a month, around $150,000 at the time, and a lump sum of $3–5 million.^[31]

The ANO[link]

Nature of the organization[link]

By all accounts, the ANO reflected Abu Nidal's paranoid personality, more of a mercenary group willing to act on behalf of diverse interests, than one guided by political principle.^[33] A variety of names were used as cover for different operations: Fatah–the Revolutionary Council; the Palestinian National Liberation Movement; Black June; Black September; The Revolutionary Arab Brigades; The Revolutionary Organization of Socialist Muslims; The Egyptian Revolution; Revolutionary Egypt; Al-Asifa (The Storm), a name also used by Fatah; Al-Iqab (The Punishment); and The Arab Nationalist Youth Organization. Abu Nidal originally chose the name Black June for the group to mark his disapproval of the 1976 Syrian intervention in Lebanon in support of the Christians, but changed it to Fatah–Revolutionary Council when he switched bases from Iraq to Syria in 1981. The group is now most commonly referred to as the Abu Nidal Organization or Abu Nidal group.^[34]

He targeted lively, intelligent students for the ANO, preferably very young people from the refugee camps who wanted to get ahead, promising to pay them well, help with their education, and look after their families. In joining him, they would be striking a blow on behalf of the Arab nation, by wrestling Palestine back by armed struggle. As'ad Abu Khalil writes that, once recruited, they were not allowed to leave, and lived under the constant suspicion of being a double agent. The ANO's official newspaper Filastin al-Thawra regularly carried stories announcing the execution of traitors within the movement.^[35] Each new recruit was given several days to write out his entire life story by hand—including names and addresses of family members, friends, and lovers—and then was required to sign a paper saying he agreed to be executed if anything was found to be untrue. Every so often, the recruit would be asked to rewrite the whole story. Any discrepancies were taken as evidence that he was a spy, and he would be asked to write it out again, often after days of being beaten and nights spent forced to sleep standing up.^[36]

The organization assumed total control over its membership. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, womanizing, friendship—all had to be relinquished until the ANO said otherwise. "Jorde", an ANO member who spoke to Patrick Seale was told, "If we say, 'Drink alcohol'", do so. If we say, 'Get married", find a woman and marry her. If we say, 'Don't have children,' you must obey. If we say, 'Go and kill King Hussein,' you must be ready to sacrifice yourself!"^[37]

Committee for Revolutionary Justice[link]

By 1987, Abu Nidal had turned the full force of his paranoia and terror tactics inwards on the ANO itself. Members were routinely tortured by the "Committee for Revolutionary Justice" until they confessed to betrayal and disloyalty.^[38] There were several mass purges. Dozens were killed in the 1970s. Over 40, including women and university students, were smuggled out of Syria to Lebanon to be killed in the Badawi^{[disambiguation needed ]} refugee camp throughout the 1980s. During one night in November 1987, 170 members were shot and buried in a mass grave. A bulldozer was brought in to dig the trench; the men were then lined up with their hands tied behind their backs, machine-gunned, and pushed into the grave, some of them still alive and struggling. Another 160 met the same fate in Libya shortly afterwards. In one year from 1987–1988, around 600 were killed, between a third and a half of the membership. Abu Nidal even had the elderly wife of a veteran member, Al-Hajj Abu Musa, thrown in jail and killed on a charge of lesbianism. The killings were mostly the work of four men: Mustafa Ibrahim Sanduqa of the Justice Committee; Isam Maraqa, Abu Nidal's deputy, who was married to his wife's niece; Sulaiman Samrin, also known as Dr. Ghassan al-Ali, the ANO's first secretary; and Mustafa Awad, also known as Alaa, the head of the Intelligence Directorate. Most of the decisions to kill, said Abu Dawud, a long-time member of the ANO, were taken by Abu Nidal "in the middle of the night, after he [had] knocked back a whole bottle of whiskey".^[38]

Committee for Special Missions[link]

The Committee for Special Missions chose targets for the ANO's more spectacular operations. It had started life as the Military Committee, headed by Naji Abu al-Fawaris, a specialist in car bombs who in 1973 lost an eye and a hand in an accident. It was al-Fawaris who led the operation that killed Heinz Nittel, the head of the Israel-Austria Friendship League, in Vienna in May 1981.^[39] In 1982, the committee changed its name to the Committee for Special Missions. It was given to Dr. Ghassan al-Ali, who had been born in the West Bank and educated in England, where he obtained a BA and MA in chemistry. He married a British woman with whom he had twin sons. One of the sons died in April 1990—he was in love with a girl who rejected him, so he shot her, then killed himself. The ANO attributed his death to martyrdom.^[40]

The Committee would produce a list of potential targets, and Abu Nidal and al-Ali would go over them. An ANO defector told Seale: "Dr. Ghassan always seemed to favor the most extreme and reckless operations. He used to speak with the greatest admiration of the Khmer Rouge, the IRA, the Red Army Faction. These were the models he held up to us. He detested any form of moderation."^[41]

Intelligence Directorate[link]

The Intelligence Directorate was formed in 1985, with four subcommittees: the Committee for Special Missions, the Foreign Intelligence Committee, the Counterespionage Committee, and the Lebanon Committee. Led by Abd al-Rahman Isa, the longest-serving member of the ANO, the directorate maintained 30–40 people overseas who created and guarded the group's arms caches. It trained staff, arranged passports and visas, and reviewed security arrangements at airports and seaports. Members were not allowed to meet at each other's homes, and no one outside the directorate was supposed to know who was a member.^[42]

Isa was conspiracy-minded like Abu Nidal, seeing the world as a series of plots and counter-plots. Originally from 'Anin, near Jenin, he was a refugee who believed the only way to force Israel to let him return home was armed struggle. Seale writes that he was physically ugly, unshaven and shabby, but he could nevertheless be charming and persuasive. He was once stopped at Geneva airport and asked if he had anything to declare. He was carrying $5 million in cash, which he declared, and found himself being respectfully escorted to the bank of his choice.^[43] Isa was demoted in 1987, because Abu Nidal believed he had become too close to other figures within the ANO. Always keen to punish members by humiliating them, Abu Nidal insisted he remain in the Intelligence Directorate, forcing him to work for his previous subordinates, who were reportedly instructed to treat him with contempt, to the extent that new members saw their promotion rest on how unpleasant they could be to Isa.^[44]

Operations and relationships[link]

Shlomo Argov affair[link]

In June 1982, Abu Nidal succeeded in sparking the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the PLO's expulsion from its base there. On June 3, three ANO operatives—Hussein Ghassan Said, Nawaf al-Rosan, and Marwan al-Banna, Abu Nidal's cousin—approached Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to Britain, as he left the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane, London. Said shot him in the head, but Argov survived, spending the next three months in a coma, and the rest of his life disabled, until his death in February 2003.^[45]

It was an attack that was later compared to the shooting of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defence minister, used it as a pretext to invade Lebanon, calling the Argov attack "the spark that lit the fuse". It was precisely this response that Abu Nidal had intended to provoke. The Israeli government knew that Abu Nidal had nothing to do with the PLO, but the Israelis had been looking for an excuse and Abu Nidal had helpfully provided it: "Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal", as Rafael Eitan, then the IDF's chief of staff, famously said.^[46] The next day, Israeli forces bombed PLO bases, and 48 hours later, Israeli troops launched Operation Peace for Galilee, and crossed the Lebanese border. It was 18 years before they left.^[45] The German magazine Der Spiegel put it to Abu Nidal in October 1985 that his assault on Argov, when he knew Israel was poised to attack the PLO, made him appear, in the view of Yasser Arafat, to be working for the Israelis. Abu Nidal told the interviewer:

What Arafat says about me doesn't bother me. Not only he, but also a whole list of Arab and world politicians claim that I am an agent of the Zionists or the CIA. Others state that I am a mercenary of the French secret service and of the Soviet KGB. The latest rumor is that I am an agent of Khomeini. During a certain period they said we were spies for the Iraqi regime. Now they say we are Syrian agents. ... I will tell you something. Many psychologists and sociologists in the Soviet bloc tried to investigate this man Abu Nidal. They wanted to find a weak point in his character. The result was zero. Now they have given up on that.^[47]

Rome and Vienna[link]

It was with the help of Libyan intelligence, while still living in Syria, that Abu Nidal carried out his most infamous operation, allegedly without the knowledge of the Syrian government. At 08:15 GMT on December 27, 1985, four gunmen approached Israel's El Al ticket counter at the Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport in Rome, and opened fire, killing 16 people and wounding 99 others. A few minutes later, in Vienna International Airport, three men threw hand grenades at passengers waiting to check in to a flight to Tel Aviv, killing two and wounding 39. Austria and Italy were the two European countries with the closest ties to the PLO, and both governments were actively involved at the time of the attacks in trying to bring the Israelis and Palestinians together for peace talks. The PLO believed that the object of the attacks was to force Austria and Italy to sever ties with the Palestinians.^[48]

Seale writes that the gunmen were "Palestinian youngsters, the bitter products of refugee camps, who had been brainwashed into throwing away their lives ..." The gunmen had been told to throw their grenades and open fire blindly at the check-in counter, and that the people they saw there in civilian clothes would be Israeli pilots returning from a training mission. A former close aide of Abu Nidal told Seale that originally Frankfurt had been part of the operation too.^[50] The man who organized the attacks was the ANO's head of the Intelligence Directorate's Committee for Special Missions, Dr. Ghassan al-Ali. Sources close to Abu Nidal said that Libyan intelligence had supplied the weapons. The Libyan news agency hailed the attacks as "heroic operations carried out by the sons of the martyrs of Sabra and Shatila". The damage to the PLO was enormous, according to Abu Iyad, Arafat's deputy. Most people in the West and even many Arabs could not distinguish between the ANO and Fatah, he said. "In their minds, all Palestinians are guilty."^[49]

U.S. bombing of Libya[link]

A 48th Tactical Fighter Wing F-111F aircraft takes off from RAF Lakenheath in England to bomb Libya on April 14, 1986

On the night of April 15, 1986, U.S. warplanes launched a series of bombing raids from British bases against Tripoli and Benghazi, killing over 100 Libyans in retaliation for the bombing on April 5 that year of a Berlin nightclub used by U.S. service personnel.^[51] The dead were reported to include Hanna Gaddafi, a baby girl Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his wife had adopted, though Melman writes this was regarded as propaganda by some journalists. Two of Gaddafi's biological children were injured. Gaddafi himself was reportedly so shocked he was unable to appear in public for two days, but he did survive, to the dismay of the United States government.^[52]

According to Atef Abu Bakr, a former senior member of the ANO, Gaddafi responded to the American raids by asking Abu Nidal to organize a series of revenge attacks against the U.S. and Britain, in cooperation with the head of Libyan intelligence, Abdullah Senussi. Abu Nidal first arranged for two British school teachers, Leigh Douglas and Philip Padfield, and an American, Peter Kilburn, to be kidnapped in Lebanon. Their bodies were found in a village east of Beirut on April 17, 1986, wrapped in white cloth and with gunshot wounds to the head. A note left nearby said: "The Arab Commando Cells are carrying out the death sentences on a CIA official and two British intelligence officers." British journalist John McCarthy was kidnapped the same day.^[53] Another British journalist, 64-year-old Alec Collett, who had been kidnapped in Beirut on March 25, 1986, while working on an article about the UN, was hanged by ANO operatives in response to the bombing. Collett's remains were found in the Bekaa Valley in November 2009.^[54]

Hindawi affair[link]

On the same day the bodies were found and McCarthy disappeared, Ann Marie Murphy, a pregnant Irish chambermaid, was stopped in Heathrow airport by an El Al security guard, who found she was about to carry a Semtex bomb in the false bottom of one of her bags on board an El Al flight from London to Tel Aviv. The bag had been packed by her Jordanian fiancé Nizar Hindawi, who was supposedly going to join her in Israel where they were to be married. The British government later determined that the Syrian government had been behind the attack.^[55]

Hindawi had worked as a freelance for a number of Palestinian groups, including the Abu Nidal Organization, and it was Abu Nidal, according to Melman, who had recommended Hindawi to the Syrians.^[56] Seale writes that the bomb had been manufactured by Abu Nidal's technical committee, who had delivered it to Syrian air force intelligence, who had been Abu Nidal's sponsors in Syria. Air force intelligence had sent it to London in a diplomatic bag, where it was handed to Hindawi. It was widely supposed at the time that the attack was in revenge for an incident two months earlier, where Israel had forced down an executive jet flying Syrian officials to Damascus, but Seale writes that Abu Nidal's involvement lent it another dimension.^[57]

Pan Am Flight 73[link]

Abu Nidal allegedly suggested to Abdullah Senussi, the head of Libyan intelligence, that an aircraft be hijacked or blown up in retaliation for the attack on Libya. On September 5, 1986, an ANO team hijacked Pan Am Flight 73 at Karachi Airport on its way from Bombay to New York. The gunmen held the hostages, 389 passengers and crew, for 16 hours in the plane on the tarmac before detonating grenades inside the cabin. Someone was able to open an emergency door, and passengers covered in blood tumbled down the vinyl chute; 16 died and over 100 were wounded.^[58] The British press reported in March 2004—days after Tony Blair, prime minister at the time, visited Tripoli—that Libya was behind the hijacking.^[59]

The attack had been organized by the head of Abu Nidal's foreign operations, Samih Muhammad Khudr, who had eight years earlier, in 1978, led the team that assassinated Egyptian journalist, Yusuf a-Siba'i. The hijacking had been practised at a training camp in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, run by Abu Nidal's Intelligence Directorate. The hijackers were told the aircraft would be flown to Israel and blown up over an important military installation, though in fact the intention was to blow it up as soon as it was airborne. It was only when the hijackers' photographs appeared in newspapers after the failed attack that other members of the ANO realized the operation had been one of theirs.^[60]

Relationship with Gaddafi[link]

Libya's Muammar Gaddafi shared with Abu Nidal a "dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that he was a man of great destiny", according to The Sunday Times.^[22]

Abu Nidal had started his move from Syria to Libya in the summer of 1986. He was persona non grata in Syria as a result of his operations, and particularly his involvement in the Hindawi affair, which had brought embarrassment and danger to the Syrian government. He would also repeatedly take credit for operations he had nothing to do with, adding to Syria's unease. Seale writes that he claimed responsibility for the Provisional IRA's attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher in the Brighton hotel bombing in October 1984. He did the same in March 1986 when the PFLP assassinated Zafir al-Masri, the mayor of Nablus. When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, he published a congratulatory note in his magazine and ordered sweets to be distributed to the ANO membership, leading new recruits to suppose he had had a hand in it.^[60]

His move to Libya was completed by March 1987. Settling in Tripoli, Abu Nidal and Libya's leader, Muammar Gaddafi, allegedly became great friends, Gaddafi sharing what The Sunday Times called "Abu Nidal's dangerous combination of an inferiority complex mixed with the belief that he was a man of great destiny". It was a relationship that Gaddafi and Abu Nidal both made good use of. Abu Nidal had a steady sponsor, while Gaddafi had a mercenary in place for any operations Libyan intelligence could not carry out directly.^[22]

Seale reports that Libya brought out the worst in Abu Nidal. Whereas before he had been dictatorial, in Libya, he became a tyrant. He would not allow members to socialize with each other; all meetings between members had to be reported to him, the prohibition applying to even the most senior members. An unreported meeting could mean death. He ordered all passports to be handed over to him. No one was allowed to travel without his permission. Ordinary members were not allowed to have a telephone; the leadership were allowed to make local calls only. Anyone traveling overseas had to stay away from duty-free stores. Even the purchase of a bar of chocolate at an airport could lead to trouble. Seale writes that the pettiness was Abu Nidal's way of consolidating his power through humiliation. His members did not know where he lived, knew nothing about his daily life. If he wanted to entertain a guest, he would commandeer the home of another member, whose wife was expected to cook and serve the meal at short notice.^[61]

It was while Abu Nidal was living in Libya that, according to Abu Bakr, Abdullah Senussi told Abu Nidal to supply a bomb. Libyan intelligence would arrange for it to be placed on a flight, as yet more retaliation for the American raids in 1986. Abu Bakr told Al Hayatt that the flight that was chosen was Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, on December 21, 1988, an attack for which a former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines was later convicted.^[62] Abu Nidal himself said of Lockerbie, "We do have some involvement in this matter, but if anyone so much as mentions it, I will kill him with my own hands!"^[63] Seale writes that this was nonsense. One of Abu Nidal's associates told him, "If an American soldier tripped in some corner of the globe, Abu Nidal would instantly claim it as his own work."^[63]

Banking with BCCI[link]

The Bank of England closed Bank of Credit and Commerce International after learning it had engaged in fraud and had allowed terrorist groups, including the ANO, to open accounts.

In the late 1980s, Britain's intelligence organizations, MI5 and MI6, discovered that the ANO held several accounts with the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). The bank was raided in July 1991 in seven countries because of concerns about fraud and its willingness to open accounts for dubious customers. The Bank of England asked financial consultants Price Waterhouse to conduct an investigation, and on June 24, 1991, the company submitted their Sandstorm report showing that the bank had engaged in widespread fraud, and had allowed organizations regarded as terrorist groups, including the ANO, to set up accounts in London. The report showed that the manager of the Sloane Street branch of BCCI, near Harrods, had passed information about the Abu Nidal accounts to MI5, and had told them Abu Nidal himself had visited London using the name Shakir Farhan; the manager did not realize who he was dealing with until he later saw a photograph of Abu Nidal. The manager reportedly drove Abu Nidal round London's most expensive stores, including Selfridges, a tailor's on Oxford Street, and a cigar store on Jermyn Street.^[64]

When Lord Justice Bingham completed his 1992 public inquiry into the closure of BCCI, he wrote a secret 30-page appendix, called Appendix 8, about the role of the intelligence services. The appendix shows that MI5 had learned in 1987 that Abu Nidal had been using a company called SAS Trade and Investment in Warsaw as a cover for ANO business deals, with the company director, Samir Najmeddin, based in Baghdad. All SAS deals went through BCCI in Sloane Street, where the balance in the SAS account always hovered around ₤50 million. Most of the deals involved the sale of guns, night-vision goggles, and armored Mercedes-Benz vehicles with concealed grenade launchers; many of them were worth tens of millions of dollars.^[65]

Bank records showed ANO arms transactions with many Middle Eastern countries as well as with East Germany. There was no shortage of European and American clients willing to sell equipment, including British companies, one of which unwittingly sold the ANO riot guns it believed were intended for an African state, though documents show half the shipment went to East Germany and half was kept by Abu Nidal. From 1987 until the bank was closed in 1991, British intelligence and the CIA monitored these transactions, rather than freezing them and arresting the ANO operatives and the suppliers.^[66]

Assassination of Abu Iyad[link]

On January 14, 1991, Seale writes that Abu Nidal achieved the biggest coup of his career with the assassination in Tunis of Abu al-Hol and Abu Iyad, Fatah's chiefs of security and intelligence, the night before U.S. forces moved into Kuwait. The deaths were a serious blow to Arafat. He abandoned his diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam Hussein and rushed back to Tunis. The killer, Hamza Abu Zaid, confessed that an ANO operative had hired him. At the moment he shot Abu Iyad, Hamza reportedly shouted, "Let Atef Abu Bakr help you now!", a reference to the senior ANO member Abu Nidal believed Abu Iyad had planted within the group as a spy.^[67] Abu Iyad had known that Abu Nidal nursed a hatred of him—in part because he had kept Abu Nidal out of the PLO and had later tried to engineer splits within the ANO, and in part because of their many attempts to kill each other. But the real reason he was hated, Abu Iyad had told Seale, was that he had helped protect Abu Nidal in his early years within the movement. Abu Nidal, given his personality, could not bear to acknowledge he was in debt to an enemy, so it had to be settled.^[67]

Death[link]

After Libyan intelligence operatives were charged with the Lockerbie bombing, Gaddafi tried to distance himself from terrorism. He expelled Abu Nidal, who returned to Iraq where he had planned his first terrorist attack 26 years earlier. The Iraqi government later said Abu Nidal had entered the country using a fake Yemeni passport and was not there with their knowledge, but by 2001, at the latest, he was living there openly, and in defiance of the Jordanian government, whose state security court had sentenced him to death in absentia in 2001 for his role in the 1994 assassination of a Jordanian diplomat in Beirut.^[22]

On August 19, 2002, al-Ayyam, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, reported that Abu Nidal had died three days earlier of multiple gunshot wounds in his home in the wealthy al-Masbah neighborhood of al-Jadriyah, Baghdad, where he had lived in a villa owned by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret service.^[22]

Iraq's chief of intelligence, Taher Jalil Habbush, held a press conference on August 21, 2002, at which he handed out photographs of Abu Nidal's bloodied body, along with a medical report purportedly showing he had died after a single bullet had entered his mouth and exited his skull. Habbush said that Iraq's internal security force had arrived at Abu Nidal's house to arrest him on suspicion of conspiring with the Kuwaiti and Saudi governments to bring down Saddam Hussein. Saying he needed a change of clothes, Abu Nidal went into his bedroom and shot himself in the mouth, Habbush said. He died eight hours later in intensive care. His brush with Iraqi intelligence apart, he was also believed to have been suffering from leukemia.^[68]

Other sources disagree about the cause of death. Palestinian sources told journalists that Abu Nidal had died of multiple gunshot wounds. Marie Colvin and Sonya Murad, writing in The Sunday Times, say he was killed by a hit squad of 30 men from Office 8, the Iraqi Mukhabarat^{[disambiguation needed ]} assassination unit.^[22] Jane's reported that Iraqi intelligence had been following him for several months, and had found classified documents in his home about a U.S. attack on Iraq. When they arrived to raid his house on August 14 (not August 16, according to Jane's), fighting broke out between Abu Nidal's men and Iraqi intelligence. In the midst of this, Abu Nidal rushed into his bedroom and was killed, though Jane's writes it remains unclear whether he killed himself or was killed by someone else. Jane's sources insist that his body bore several gunshot wounds. Jane's suggests Saddam Hussein had him killed because he feared Abu Nidal would act against him in the event of an American invasion.^[69]

In October 2008, a report from the former Iraqi "Special Intelligence Unit M4" was obtained by Robert Fisk, indicating that the Iraqis had been interrogating Abu Nidal as a suspected spy for Kuwait and Egypt, and indirectly for the U.S.; the documents say he had been asked by the Kuwaitis to find links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. It was shortly after the first series of interrogations, and just before he was to be moved to a more secure location, that he shot himself, the report says. He was buried on August 29, 2002 in al-Karakh's Islamic cemetery in Baghdad, in a grave marked only "M7".^[70]

Notes[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Incidents attributed to the Abu Nidal Organization on the START database
• Qaddafi's Link to Abu Nidal from the Dean Peter Krogh Foreign Affairs Digital Archives

Menachem Begin מנחם בגין
6th Prime Minister of Israel
In office 21 June 1977 – 10 October 1983
Preceded by	Yitzhak Rabin
Succeeded by	Yitzhak Shamir
Personal details
Born	(1913-08-16)16 August 1913 Brest, Russian Empire
Died	9 March 1992(1992-03-09) (aged 78) Tel Aviv, Israel
Political party	Likud
Spouse(s)	Aliza Arnold (1919–82)
Children	Benny Begin Hasia Begin Leah Begin
Religion	Judaism
Signature

 Menachem Begin (help·info) (Hebrew: מְנַחֵם בֵּגִין‎‎, Polish: Mieczysław Biegun, Arabic: مناحيم بيغن‎ Munahayyim Beeghin, Russian: Менахем Вольфович Бегин Menakhem Vol'fovich Begin, 16 August 1913 – 9 March 1992) was a politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of the State of Israel. Before independence, he was the leader of the Zionist militant group Irgun, the Revisionist breakaway from the larger Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah. He proclaimed a revolt, on 1 February 1944, against the British mandatory government, which was opposed by the Jewish Agency. As head of the Irgun, he targeted the British in Palestine.^[1]

Begin was elected to the first Knesset, as head of Herut, the party he founded, and was at first on the political fringe, embodying the opposition to the Mapai-led government and Israeli establishment. He remained in opposition in the eight consecutive elections (except for a national unity government around the Six-Day War), but became more acceptable to the political center. His 1977 electoral victory and premiership ended three decades of Labour Party political dominance. He probably served as Opposition Leader longer than anyone in the history of modern democratic politics.

Begin’s most significant achievement as Prime Minister was the signing of a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, for which he and Anwar Sadat shared the Nobel Prize for Peace. In the wake of the Camp David Accords, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, which was captured from Egypt in the Six-Day War. Later, Begin’s government promoted the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Begin authorized the bombing of the Osirak nuclear plant in Iraq and 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 Christian Phalangist militia allies of the Israelis, shocked world public opinion,^[2] Begin grew increasingly isolated.^[3] As IDF forces remained mired in Lebanon and the economy suffered from hyperinflation, the public pressure on Begin mounted. Depressed by the death of his wife Aliza in November 1982, he gradually withdrew from public life, until his resignation in October 1983.

Biography[link]

Begin reviews an Betar lineup in Poland in 1939. Next to Begin is Moshe (Munya) Cohen

Menachem Begin was born to Zeev Dov and Hassia Biegun in Brest-Litovsk (Brest), a town then part of the Russian Empire which was known for its Talmudic scholars. He was the youngest of three children.^[4] 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.^[5]

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 Socialist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, but soon switched to Betar. At 14, he was sent to a Polish government school, where he received a solid grounding in classical literature, and gained a lifelong love of classical works, which he was able to read in Latin.^[6]

Begin began studying law at the University of Warsaw where he learned the oratory and rhetoric skills that became his trademark as a politician, and viewed as demagogy by his critics.^[7] He graduated in 1935, but never practiced law. At this time, he became a disciple of Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, the founder of the nationalist Revisionist Zionism movement and its Betar youth wing. His rise within Betar was rapid: At 22, he shared the dais with his mentor at the Betar World Congress in Krakow. The pre-war Polish regime actively supported Zionist youth and paramilitary movements. Begin's leadership qualities were quickly recognised. In 1937 he was the active head of Betar in Czechoslovakia and became head of the largest branch, that of Poland. As head of Betar's Polish branch, Begin travelled among regional branches to encourage supporters and recruit new members. To save money, he stayed at the homes of Betar members. During one such visit, he met his future wife Aliza Arnold, who was the daughter of his host. On May 29, 1939, one month after they met, the couple married. They had three children: Binyamin, Leah and Hassia.^[8][9]

Living in Warsaw, Begin saw increasing antisemitism, and encouraged Betar to set up an organization to bring Polish Jews to Palestine. He unsuccessfully attempted to smuggle 1,500 Jews into Romania at the end of August 1939. Returning to Warsaw afterward, he left three days after the German 1939 invasion began, first to the southwest and then to Wilno.

In September 1939, after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, Begin, in common with a large part of Warsaw's Jewish leadership, escaped to Wilno, then eastern Poland, to avoid inevitable arrest. The town was soon occupied by the Soviet Union, but from 28 October 1939, it was the capital of the Republic of Lithuania. Wilno was a predominately Polish and Jewish town; an estimated 40 percent of the population was Jewish, with the YIVO institute was located there.

NKVD mugshots of Menachem Begin, 1940

As a prominent pre-war Zionist and reserve status officer-cadet, on 20 September 1940, Begin was arrested by the NKVD and detained in the Lukiškės Prison. He wrote about his experience of being tortured in later years. 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 Anders' Army as a corporal. He was later sent with the army to Palestine via the Persian Corridor, where he arrived in May 1942.^[10]

Upon arriving in Palestine, Begin, like many other Polish-Jewish soldiers of the Anders' Army, faced a difficult choice between remaining with the Anders' Army to fight Nazi Germany in Europe, or staying in Palestine to fight for establishment of a Jewish state. While he initially wished to remain with the Polish army, he was eventually persuaded to change his mind by his contacts in the Irgun, as well as Polish officers sympathetic to the Zionist cause. Consequently, General Michał Karaszewicz-Tokarzewski, the second in command of the Army issued Begin with a "leave of absence without an expiration" which gave Begin official permission to stay in Palestine. In December 1942 he left Ander's Army and joined the Irgun.^[11]

During the Holocaust, 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.^[8]

Jewish underground[link]

Begin quickly made a name for himself as a fierce critic of dominant Zionist leadership for being too cooperative with British ‘colonialism’ and a proponent of guerrilla tactics against the British, which he saw as a necessary means to achieve independence.^{[citation needed]} In 1942 he joined the Irgun (Etzel), an underground 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. Giving as reasons that the British had reneged on the promises given in 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. Soon after he assumed command, a formal 'Declaration of Revolt' was publicized, and armed attacks against British forces were initiated.

In 1944–48 the Irgun engaged in armed resistance, attacking British installations and posts. These operations were financed by demanding money from Jewish merchants and engaging in insurance scams in the local diamond industry.^[12]

Begin as "Rabbi Sassover", with wife Aliza and son Benyamin-Zeev, Tel Aviv, December 1946

Begin with Irgun members, 1948

For several months in 1945–46, the Irgun’s activities were coordinated within the framework of the Hebrew Resistance Movement. Begin ordered the bombing of the British administrative and military headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, in 1946. The attack was conducted as part of a joint response to the British Operation Agatha, during which many Jews were arrested, weapons were seized and the Jewish Agency, from which many documents were removed, was raided. Irgun later claimed that warnings to evacuate had been sent but were ignored. 91 people, British, Arab and Jewish, were killed.

The fragile partnership collapsed following the bombing, partly because contrary to instructions, it was carried out during the busiest part of the day at the hotel. Under Begin’s leadership, the Irgun continued to carry out operations such as breaking into Acre Prison, and the kidnapping and hanging of two British sergeants in order to prevent, and then in retaliation to, the execution of several Irgun members by the British. Growing numbers of British soldiers and policemen 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.

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 to create a Jewish state. In 1944, 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 General Assembly passed a resolution recommending a Partition Plan for Palestine and Britain announced its plans to fully withdraw from Palestine by May 1948. Begin, once again 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 hotly contested debate as different factions vied for control over the emerging narrative of Israeli independence.^[13] Begin resented his being portrayed as a belligerent dissident.^[14]

Altalena and the 1948 Arab–Israeli War[link]

Altalena on fire after being shelled near Tel-Aviv

As the 1948 Arab–Israeli War 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 Arab 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.^[15] On 1 June 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).^{[citation needed]}

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.^[16]

Political career[link]

Herut opposition years[link]

Begin; August 1948

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.^[17] The move countered the weakening attraction for the earlier revisionist party, Hatzohar, founded by his late mentor Ze'ev 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 preaching "racial superiority" and having "inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community".^[18][19]

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.^[20] While the agreement was debated in the Knesset in January 1952, he led a demonstration in Jerusalem attended by some 15,000 people, and gave a passionate and dramatic speech in which attacked the government and called for its violent overthrow. Referring to the Altalena Affair, Begin stated that "when you fired at me with cannon, I gave the order; 'Don't [return fire]!' Today I will give the order, 'Do!'"^[21] Incited by his speech, the crowd marched towards the Knesset (then at the Frumin Building on King George Street) and threw stones at the windows, and at police as they intervened. After five hours of rioting, police managed to suppress the riots using water cannons and tear gas. Hundreds were arrested, while some 200 rioters, 140 police officers, and several Knesset members were injured. 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. The vehemence of Revisionist opposition was deep; in March 1952, during the ongoing reparations negotiations, a parcel bomb addressed to Konrad Adenauer, the sitting West German Chancellor, was intercepted at a German post office. While being defused, the bomb exploded, killing one sapper and injuring two others. Five Israelis, all former members of Irgun, were later arrested in Paris for their involvement in the plot. Chancellor Adenauer decided to keep secret the involvement of Israeli opposition party members in the plot, thus avoiding Israeli embarrassment and a likely backlash. The five Irgun conspirators were later extradited from both France and Germany, without charge, and sent back to Israel. Forty years after the assassination attempt, Begin was implicated as the organizer of the assassination attempt in a memoir written by one of the conspirators, Elieser Sudit.^{[22][23][24][25]}

Begin's impassioned rhetoric, laden with pathos and evocations of the Holocaust, appealed to many, but was deemed inflammatory and demagoguery by others.

Gahal and unity government[link]

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. The day the Six-Day War started in June 1967, Gahal joined the 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. Rafi also joined the unity government at that time, with Moshe Dayan becoming Defense Minister. Gahal's arrangement lasted until August 1970, when Begin and Gahal quit the government, then led by Golda Meir due to disagreements over the Rogers Plan and its "in place" cease-fire with Egypt along the Suez Canal,^[26] Other sources, including William B. Quandt, note that the Labor party, by formally accepting UN 242 in mid-1970, had accepted "peace for withdrawal" on all fronts, and because of this Begin had left the unity government. On 5 August, Begin explained before the Knesset why he was resigning from the cabinet. He said, "As far as we are concerned, what do the words 'withdrawal from territories administered since 1967 by Israel' mean other than Judea and Samaria. Not all the territories; but by all opinion, most of them."^[27]

Likud chairmanship[link]

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 1974–77 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 finally allowed Begin to capture the center stage of Israeli politics.

Prime Minister of Israel[link]

1977 electoral victory[link]

Menachem Begin in 1978

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.

Begin and Moshe Dayan exit from an aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, United States

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[link]

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin acknowledge applause during a joint session of Congress in Washington, D.C., during which President Jimmy Carter announced the results of the Camp David Accords, 18 September 1978.

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 less resolute in implementing the section of the Camp David Accord calling for 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." During his term dozens of new settlements were built, and Jewish population in the West Bank and Gaza more than quadrupled.^[28]

Bombing Iraqi nuclear reactor[link]

Begin took Saddam Hussein's anti-Zionist threats seriously and therefore took aim at Iraq, which was building a nuclear reactor named Osirak or Tammuz 1 with French and Italian assistance. When Begin took office, preparations were intensified. Begin authorized the construction of a full-scale model of the Iraqi reactor which Israeli pilots could practice bombing.^[29] Israel attempted to negotiate with France and Italy to cut off assistance and with the United States to obtain assurances that the program would be halted. The negotiations failed. Begin considered the diplomatic option fruitless, and worried that prolonging the attack would lead to a fatal inability to act in response to the perceived threat.

The decision to attack was hotly contested within Begin's government.^[30] However, in October 1980, the Mossad informed Begin that the reactor would be fueled and operational by June 1981. This assessment was aided by reconnaissance photos supplied by the United States, and the Israeli cabinet voted to approve an attack.^[31] In June 1981, Begin ordered the destruction of the reactor. On 7 June 1981, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the reactor in a successful long-range operation called Operation Opera.^[32] 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 unanimously passed 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[link]

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. The objective of Operation Peace for Galilee 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 to bring security to Israel’s northern border and create stability in Lebanon. Begin referred to the invasion as an inevitable act of survival, often comparing Yasser Arafat to Hitler. However, public dissatisfaction reached a peak in September 1982, after the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. Hundreds of thousands gathered 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 and accused Defense Minister Ariel Sharon of gross negligence. Sharon was forced to resign, and 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.^[33]

Argentinian journalist Hernan Dobry has alleged that during this time Begin also supplied weapons to Argentina during the Falklands War, because he still hated the British decades after fighting them in the 1940s.^[34]

Retirement from public life[link]

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[link]

On March 3, 1992, Begin suffered a severe heart attack in his Tel Aviv apartment, and was rushed to Ichilov Hospital, where he was put in the intensive care unit. Begin arrived unconscious and paralyzed on the left side side of his body. His condition slightly improved following treatment, and he regained consciousness after 20 hours. For the next six days, Begin remained in serious condition. Begin was too frail to overcome the effects of the heart attack, and his condition began to rapidly deteriorate on March 9 at about 3:15 AM. An emergency team of doctors and nurses attempted to resuscitate his failing heart. His children were notified of his condition and immediately rushed to his side. Begin died at 3:30 AM. His death was announced an hour and a half later. Shortly before 6:00 AM, the hospital rabbi arrived at his bedside to say the Kaddish prayer.^[35][36]

Begin's funeral took place in Jerusalem that afternoon. His coffin was carried four kilometers from the Sanhedria funeral parlor to Mount of Olives in a funeral procession attended by thousands of people. In accordance with his wishes, Begin was given a simple Jewish burial ceremony and buried on the Mount of Olives. He had asked to be buried there instead of Mount Herzl, where most Israeli leaders are laid to rest, because he wanted to be buried beside his wife Aliza, as well as Meir Feinstein of Irgun and Moshe Barazani of Lehi, who committed suicide in jail while awaiting execution by the British.^[37] An estimated 75,000 mourners were present at the funeral. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Chaim Herzog, all cabinet ministers present in Israel, Supreme Court justices, Knesset members from most parties and a number of foreign ambassadors attended the funeral. Former members of the Irgun High Command served as pallbearers.^[38]

In 2005, he was voted the 4th-greatest Israeli of all time, in a poll by the Israeli news website Ynet to determine whom the general public considered the 200 Greatest Israelis.^[39]

Begin in fiction and on film[link]

A slightly fictionalized Menachem Begin appeared in the first edition of Land of Black Gold, but was removed from subsequent editions. He appears in the film Waltz with Bashir and in the novel The Fifth Horseman, by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre.

Begin was played by David Opatoshu in the 1977 TV film Raid on Entebbe and by Barry Morse in the 1983 miniseries Sadat.

Published work[link]

• The Revolt (ISBN 0-8402-1370-0)
• White Nights: The story of a prisoner in Russia (ISBN 0-06-010289-6)

Further reading[link]

• Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, The Toby Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-59264-278-6
• Ilan Peleg, Begin’s foreign policy, 1977–1983 : Israel’s move to the right, Greenwood Press, 1987
• Eric Silver, Begin: The Haunted Prophet, Random House, 1984^[5]
• Sasson Sofer, Begin: an anatomy of leadership, Basil Blackwell, 1988
• Avi Shilon, Begin , 1913–1992, 2007
• Harry Hurwitz, Yisrael Medad, "Peace in the Making", Gefen Publishing House, 2010

See also[link]

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates
• Menachem Begin Heritage Center

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Menachem Begin

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Menachem Begin

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Menachem Begin

Official sites[link]

• The Menachem Begin Heritage Center
• PM Sharon's Address at the Opening Ceremony for the Begin Heritage Centre Building 16 June 2004
• Menachem Begin – The Sixth Prime Minister Official Site of the Prime Minister's Office Menachem Begin Knesset website
• Menachem Begin's biography Knesset website (English)

Miscellaneous links[link]

• The Camp David Accords
• The Bombing of the King David Hotel
• Photo of Begin in Ultra-Orthodox garb while evading the British
• Irgun Web Page
• 1948 Letter of some Eminent Jews to New York Times
• Menachem Begin Obituary Editorial
• The Begin Biography, Nobel Foundation
• Bodies of murdered Clifford Martin and Marvyn Paice
• Menachem Begin Noble Peace Prize Speech – JInsider History Moment
• Menachem Begin Memorial Dedication in Brest, Belarus
• Prime Minister Menachem Begin on justice and the rule of law: selected documents on the 20th anniversary of his death:

http://www.archives.gov.il/NR/exeres/EA9B7FDB-4453-4849-B53C-B888DF23F8C3,frameless.htm?NRMODE=Published

Menachem Begin v t e Prime Ministers of Israel Ben-Gurion (1948–53) Sharett (1953–55) Ben-Gurion (1955–63) Eshkol (1963–69) Allon (acting) Meir (1969–74) Rabin (1974–77) Begin (1977–83) Shamir (1983–84) Peres (1984–86) Shamir (1986–92) Rabin (1992–95) Peres (1995–96) Netanyahu (1996–99) Barak (1999–2001) Sharon (2001–06) Olmert (2006–09) Netanyahu (2009–present) v t e Agriculture and Rural Development Ministers of Israel Zisling (1948–49) Yosef (1949–50) Lavon (1950–51) Eshkol (1951–52) Naftali (1952–55) Luz (1955–59) Dayan (1959–64) Gvati (1964–74) Uzan (1974–77) Sharon (1977–81) Erlich (1981–83) Begin (1983) Grupper (1983–84) Nehemkin (1984–88) Katz-Oz (1988–90) Eitan (1990–91) Tzur (1992–96) Eitan (1996–99) Oron (1999–2000) Barak (2000–01) Simhon (2001–02) Livni (2002–03) Katz (2003–06) Boim (2006) Simhon (2006–11) Noked (2011–) v t e Communications Ministers of Israel Nurock (1952) Burg (1952–58) Barzilai (1958–59) Mintz (1960–61) Sasson (1961–67) Yeshayahu (1967–69) Rimalt (1969–70) Peres (1970–74) Uzan (1974) Rabin (1974–75) Uzan (1975–77) Begin (1977) Amit (1977–78) Moda'i (1979–80) Aridor (1981) Tzipori (1981–84) Rubinstein (1984–87) Yaacobi (1987–90) Pinhasi (1990–92) Shahal (1992–93) Aloni (1993–96) Livnat (1996–99) Ben-Eliezer (1999–2001) Rivlin (2001–03) Sharon (2003) Olmert (2003–05) Itzik (2005) Hirschson (2006) Atias (2006–2009) Kahlon (2009–) v t e Defense Ministers of Israel Ben-Gurion (1948–54) Lavon (1954–55) Ben-Gurion (1955–63) Eshkol (1963–67) Dayan (1967–74) Peres (1974–77) Weizman (1977–80) Begin (1980–81) Sharon (1981–83) Arens (1983–84) Rabin (1984–90) Shamir (1990) Arens (1990–92) Rabin (1992–95) Peres (1995–96) Mordechai (1996–99) Arens (1999) Barak (1999–2001) Ben-Eliezer (2001–02) Mofaz (2002–06) Peretz (2006–07) Barak (2007–) v t e Foreign Affairs Ministers of Israel Sharett (1948–56) Meir (1956–66) Eban (1966–74) Allon (1974–77) Dayan (1977–79) Shamir (1980–86) Peres (1986–88) Arens (1988–90) Levy (1990–92) Peres (1992–95) Barak (1995–96) Levy (1996–98) Sharon (1998–99) Levy (1999–2000) Ben-Ami (2000–01) Peres (2001–02) Netanyahu (2002–03) Shalom (2003–06) Livni (2006–09) Lieberman (2009–) v t e Justice Ministers of Israel Rosen (1948–51) Yosef (1951–52) Cohn (1952) Rosen (1952–56) Ben-Gurion (1956–58) Rosen (1958–61) Yosef (1961–66) Shapira (1966–72) Meir (1972) Shapira (1972–73) Meir (1973–74) Zadok (1974–77) Begin (1977) Tamir (1977–80) Nissim (1980–86) Moda'i (1986) Sharir (1986–88) Meridor (1988–92) Libai (1992–96) Ne'eman (1996) Netanyahu (1996) Hanegbi (1996–99) Beilin (1999–2001) Sheetrit (2001–2003) Lapid (2003–04) Livni (2004–06)* Ramon (2006) Sheetrit (2006)* Olmert (2006)* Livni (2006–07) Friedmann (2007–09) Ne'eman (2009–) * entire or partial tenure as Substitute Justice Minister, until a replacement was found v t e Transportation Ministers of Israel Remez (1948–50) Yosef (1950–51) Pinkas (1951–52) Ben-Gurion (1952) Serlin (1952–53) Sapir (1953–55) Aran (1955) Carmel (1955–59) Ben-Aharon (1959–62) Bar-Yehuda (1962–65) Carmel (1965–69) Weizman (1969–70) Peres (1970–74) Yariv (1974) Yaacobi (1974–77) Begin (1977) Amit (1977–78) Landau (1979–81) Corfu (1981–88) Katsav (1988–92) Kessar (1992–96) Levy (1996–98) Yahalom (1998–99) Mordechai (1999–2000) Lipkin-Shahak (2000–01) Sneh (2001–02) Sharon (2002) Hanegbi (2002–03) Lieberman (2003–04) Sheetrit (2004–06) Mofaz (2006–09) Katz (2009–) v t e Welfare and Social Services Ministers of Israel Levin (1948–52) Shapira (1952–58) Naftali (1959) Burg (1959–70) Hasani (1970–74) Shem-Tov (1974) Hasani (1974–75) Rabin (1975) Burg (1975) Hammer (1975–76) Baram (1977) Begin (1977) Katz (1977–81) Abuhatzira (1981–82) Uzan (1982–84) Katsav (1984–88) Shamir (1988–90) Milo (1990) Shamir (1990–92) Rabin (1992) Namir (1992–96) Yishai (1996–2000) Cohen (2000–01) Benizri (2001–02) Sharon (2002) Benizri (2002–03) Orlev (2003–04) Olmert (2006–07) Herzog (2007–11) Kahlon (2011–)