Menachem Begin, the founding father of the Likud and the Israeli right, ended his life in a long silence that contradicted his great speeches. The life of the former Irgun commander was turbulent, full of contradictions and its historical impact on current Israeli society is enormous. In this lecture we will review the significant events in his life, his disputes with Ben-Gurion, and his turbulent years as prime minister, in which he signed the first peace agreement with Egypt, ordered the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq and launched “Operation Peace for the Galilee” that became the first Lebanon war.
He was known for his modesty, but in his day the tension between right and left intensified and the ethnic tension between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim was exposed. Who was Begin? How can he be understood from a contemporary perspective and what is not known about it?
These and other questions will be discussed in this lecture by Shilon.
Avi Shilon, a historian whose main field of expertise is Israel politics and society, is the author of Menachem Begin: A Life (Yale University Press, 2012) and Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016). His new book, The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process has been published lately. Shilon is currently a visiting scholar at the Taub Center for Israel Studies, NYU, and also contributes op-ed pieces to Haaretz.