Word: menachem
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Middle East. As a much stronger supporter of Israel and the Camp David process than Giscard, Mitterrand will almost certainly back off from the overtly mercantile pro-Arab policy of his predecessor. In a rare moment of agreement, both Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and opposition Labor Party Leader Shimon Peres hailed Mitterrand last week as "a true friend of Israel...
...diplomacy tried to keep them apart, Israel and Syria exchanged bellicose threats and seemed to draw closer to all-out conflict. Israeli armored forces headed north for what many feared might be a combined land and air attack inside Lebanon. As if preparing for the worst, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin warned, "We have from time to time to take decisions to send our sons to war." Syrian forces were similarly mobilized. In Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, where most of Syria's 22,000 peace-keeping troops are stationed, Syrian armored units turned their guns southward to face...
...Israeli leaders could be more different from one another than the aging, pugnacious Menachem Begin, 67, and the vigorous if sometimes reticent Shimon Peres, 57. Begin was forged by the Holocaust, and carries his fury like the harpoon of Captain Ahab. Peres escaped the scar. The difference is crucial. Begin, looking backward to the genocide, vows with other Israelis: "Never again." But he seems to have little patience with the grievances of the Arabs or understanding of their rights, and too often he shapes a policy that invites attack. Peres, who observes the vow less flamboyantly, seems more open...
...Menachem Begin displayed his most aggressive streak last week in attacking his favorite enemy after the Arabs, the Germans. Irritated by statements from West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in support of the Palestinians, the Israeli Prime Minister fired off an incendiary salvo. Said Begin in an address to party leaders: "It seems the Holocaust has conveniently slipped his mind. The German debt to the Jewish people can never end-not in this generation and not in any other. Such words have not been heard since the end of World War II, when the world saw what was done...
Whether Israel's opposition Labor Party succeeds in recapturing power from Menachem Begin's Likud government depends very much on the performance in the next seven weeks of a low-keyed and surprisingly mild-mannered veteran political infighter: Shimon Peres, 57, a longtime political organizer who has been at the heart of the Labor organization for 30 years. Only five months ago, Peres defended his leadership against a challenge by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, with whom he had feuded bitterly-and publicly-for years. Since then he has spent almost all of his energies trying to repair...