Menachem Begin The Battle for Israel's Soul

" A fascinating biography of the sixth prime minister of Israel that explains how the pre-state terrorist became the first Israeli leader to sign a peace treaty with an Arab country.B>eviled as a fascist demagogue by his great rival Ben-Gurion, venerated by Israel's underclass, the first Israeli to win the Nobel Peace Prize, a proud Jew but not a conventionally religious one, Menachem Begin was a complex and controversial figure. Born in Poland in 1913, Begin was a youthful admirer of the Revisionist Zionist Ze'ev Jabotinsky, and soon became a leader within Jabotinsky's Betar movement. A powerful orator and mesmerizing public figure, Begin was imprisoned by the Soviets in 1940, joined the Free Polish Army in 1942, and arrived in Palestine as a Polish soldier shortly thereafter. Joining the underground paramilitary Irgun in 1943, he achieved instant notoriety for the organization's devastating bombings of British military installations and other violent acts. ntentionally left out of the newly established Israeli government, Begin's right-leaning Herut political party became a fixture of the opposition to the Labor-dominated governments of Ben-Gurion and h