Word: menachem
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...That one meeting in London would lead to more than a dozen secretive sessions in Norway that would not only surprise Washington but produce the biggest breakthrough in Middle East negotiations since Anwar Sadat made peace with Menachem Begin in 1979. Only about two dozen people were aware of the proceedings. Within the Israeli Cabinet, just two people knew; among the Palestinians, even the P.L.O.'s foreign minister, Farouk Kaddoumi, was kept in the dark...
...saying peace would make cutting aid to Israel easier, right? Wrong. It's just the opposite. "Consider the northern front," explains Ze'ev Chafets, an Israeli journalist who served as spokesman for the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin. "If we give the Golan Heights back to Syria, we'll have to build expensive new defenses close by." Never mind that Israel could finance such projects itself; the post-peace game would be played differently. "If peace happens," says Chafets, "we'll be looking for more American money, not less -- just like we got from Jimmy Carter after we made peace...
...this, the Administration deserves considerable credit. "Shamir was the roadblock, and the loan guarantees were Bush's stick," says Ze'ev Chafets, an Israeli journalist who served as Menachem Begin's spokesman. "Had Bush caved in to American Jewish pressures, Shamir would have been strengthened immeasurably. He would probably still be in power, and we'd still be stalemated...
...Menachem Begin came early to his Zionist zeal. He was born in a Polish town where his father was a leader in the Jewish community. After earning a law degree at the University of Warsaw, he became national commander of Betar, a right-wing paramilitary group that advocated the violent ouster of the British from Palestine. When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, he fled to Lithuania, leaving behind his parents, who died under the Nazis. A year later, he joined the anti-German Free Polish Army and served with a unit that was attached to British forces in Palestine...
More than three decades ago, Begin wrote that the struggle to create the state of Israel could be summed up in a single sentence: "We fight, therefore we are." If the fighter had finally laid down his sword, Menachem Begin's role in the battle would be remembered -- and hotly debated -- for years to come...