Menachem Begin Quotes

Menachem Begin was an Israeli politician, founder of Likud and the sixth Prime Minister of Israel. Before the creation of the state of Israel, 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. Later, the Irgun fought the Arabs during the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine.

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 , but became more acceptable to the political center. His 1977 electoral victory and premiership ended three decades of Labor Party political dominance.

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 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, Begin grew increasingly isolated. 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. Wikipedia  

✵ 16. August 1913 – 9. March 1992
Menachem Begin photo
Menachem Begin: 9   quotes 2   likes

Famous Menachem Begin Quotes

“In June 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian Army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

(21 August 1982) http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/21/world/excerpts-from-begin-speech-at-national-defense-college.html

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

The much less verbose true quote, from Begin's "acerbic" visit to the US Congress in 1982 (during the Lebanon War), as found in Time Magazine's contemporary report http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,925497-6,00.html (George J. Church, July 05, 1982):
"Don't threaten us with cutting off aid to give up our principles!"
"Sir, do not threaten us with cutting aid. First of all, you should know that this is not a one-way street. You help us, and we are very grateful for your help; but this is a two-way street: We do a lot for you. And also in recent battles we did a lot for the United States; and I gave some examples, but this is not the place to go into them. Therefore, do not threaten us with cuts in aid, but take note: That if at any time you demand of us to yield on a principle in which we believe, while threatening to cut aid, we will not abandon the principle in which we believe - and propose cutting aid. The argument went approximately thus."
On the other hand, contemporary reports give the true quote as also being far less verbose.
Source: attributed as alleged reply to Senator Joe Biden in Ronn Torossian's op-ed "Menachem Begin To Joe Biden: I Am Not A Jew With Trembling Knees" https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/menachem-begin-to-joe-biden-i-am-not-a-jew-with-trembling-knees/2015/04/03, in 2015 without source. Possibly of earlier origin.
Source: As found in Time Magazine's contemporary report http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,925497-6,00.html

“We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents.”

Knesset address (June 8, 1982) per 4 October 2004 article "Exposing False Zionist Quotes II" by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=7&x_issue=21&x_article=775

“Israel is still the only country in the world against which there is a written document to the effect that it must disappear.”

Address in Washington D.C. (22 March 1978) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/Carter_Begin5.html

Similar authors

Golda Meir photo
Golda Meir 38
former prime minister of Israel
Indíra Gándhí photo
Indíra Gándhí 35
Indian politician and Prime Minister
Winston S. Churchill photo
Winston S. Churchill 601
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Vladimir Putin photo
Vladimir Putin 110
President of Russia, former Prime Minister
David Grossman photo
David Grossman 1
Israeli author
Margaret Thatcher photo
Margaret Thatcher 348
British stateswoman and politician
Jawaharlal Nehru photo
Jawaharlal Nehru 110
Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister …
Amos Oz photo
Amos Oz 12
Israeli writer, novelist, journalist and intellectual
Václav Klaus photo
Václav Klaus 3
2nd President of the Czech Republic
Daniel Kahneman photo
Daniel Kahneman 51
Israeli-American psychologist