Menahem Begin’s Speech and the Mizrahi Turn to Likud

Menachem Begin was the founder of Israel’s right-wing Herut and Likud parties and served as prime minister of Israel from 1977 to 1983. 

Born into a religious Zionist family in Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire (now Brest, Belarus), Begin was a member of the socialist Zionist youth movement Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa‘ir and then joined the revisionist Zionist youth movement Betar, founded by Vladimir Jabotinsky. Begin eventually became the head of Betar Czechoslovakia and then Betar Poland and was active in the effort to bring Polish Jews to British Mandate Palestine. In 1940, Begin was arrested by the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) and subjected to forced labor and torture. He was freed in 1941, along with thousands of other Polish prisoners, and joined the Free Polish Anders’ Army, which sent him to Palestine for training. 

In 1942, Begin joined the Irgun, a Jewish paramilitary organization devoted to forcing the British out of Palestine, and he became its leader in 1944. He ordered a series of major attacks on the British government in Palestine, including the 1946 bombing of the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel.

Upon the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Irgun disbanded and merged with the Israel Defense Forces. Along with other former leaders of the Irgun, Begin formed the right-wing Herut party and became leader of the opposition, a role that he retained through three decades of Labor party rule. In 1965, Herut joined the Liberal party to form Gahal, which in turn merged with other right-wing parties in 1973 to form the Likud. In 1977, under Begin’s leadership, Likud won a landslide victory, and Begin became the prime minister, head of Israel’s first right-wing government. 

As prime minister, Begin signed the Israel-Egypt peace treaty with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, for which the two leaders won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. In 1982, he authorized the invasion of Lebanon to drive out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). The ensuing war led to large public protests in Israel. Begin resigned from office in 1983 and was succeeded by Yitzhak Shamir.