thumb|Menachem Begin em [[Acordo de Camp David|Camp David.]]
'''Menachem Begin''' (Acordos de Camp David com o presidente do Egipto Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat, pelo qual ambos receberam o Prémio Nobel da Paz em 1978.

==Notas biográficas==
Em sionista Betar. Em 1940-1941 foi prisioneiro da União Soviética, sendo libertado em 1941 após o Acordo Sikorski-Mayski para, em seguida, juntar-se ao Exército de Anders polaco. 

Não oficialmente libertado desse exército juntamente com outros soldados judaicos, em 1942 ele aderiu ao Irgun (também conhecido como ''Etzel'')e em 1947 assumiu a liderança. Ele foi responsável pelo atentado à bomba do hotel King David em Jerusalém, na altura a central administrativa e militar dos britânicos no Mandato da Palestina, um atentado que fez 91 mortos. Em 1948 ele esteve envolvido no transporte de armas para Israel, para o Irgun, o que acabou no afundamento do navio ''Altalena'', ordenado por David Ben-Gurion.

Após a fundação do estado de Israel em 1948, Begin fundou o partido político Herut (que mais tarde se tornaria o partido dominante na coligação Likud). 

thumb|left|300px|Menachem Begin, [[Jimmy Carter e Anwar Sadat em Camp David (1978).]]

Em 1979, Begin assinou o Tratado de Paz Israelo-Egípcio com Anwar Al-Sadat.
De acordo com os termos do tratado, Israel entregava a Península do Sinai ao Egipto. Isto significava também a demolição de todos os povoamentos israelitas na área (incluindo a cidade de Yamit). Begin defrontou uma forte oposição a esta medida, o que levou à divisão dentro do seu próprio partido Likud.

Em 1981, Begin ordenou o ataque ao reactor nuclear  Osiraq/Tammuz no Iraque (um reactor vendido a Saddam Hussein pelos franceses). Pouco depois, Begin afirmou que "De forma nenhuma iremos permitir que um inimigo desenvolva armas de destruição em massa contra o povo de Israel."  Esta posição quanto à política nuclear de Israel é agora conhecida como a doutrina Begin, apesar de até hoje não haver provas de que o reator serviria para a produção de armas de destruição em massa.

Em 1982, o governo de Begin decidiu a invasão israelita do sul do Líbano, argumentando a necessidade de acabar com o bombardeamento do norte de Israel por parte da OLP. Isto iniciou a presença israelita na Guerra Civil Libanesa, que continuou por mais três anos (com uma presença mais pequena continuando até ao ano 2000). De acordo com um repórter do Haaretz, Uzi Benziman, o então ministro da defesa Ariel Sharon enganou  Begin quanto ao objectivo da guerra, e estendeu-a sem autorização. Sharon processou o Haaretz e Benziman em 1991. O julgamento durou  11 anos, sendo um dos pontos altos a deposição de Benny Begin, o filho de Menachem Begin, em favor da defesa. Sharon perdeu o caso 
[http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=200568].

Begin retirou-se em Agosto de 1983, decepcionado e deprimido pela guerra, a morte de sua esposa e a sua própria doença. Faleceu em Jerusalém em 1992, ao que se seguiu uma cerimónia fúnebre simples, tendo sido enterrado no Monte das Oliveiras.

==Livros de sua autoria==

{{Infobox Prime Minister 
|name=Menachem Begin<br>מנחם בגין
</small> 
|image=Mbegin2.jpg
|order= 6th
|office= Prime Minister of Israel
|term_start    =21 June 1977
|term_end      =10 October 1983
|predecessor   =Yitzhak Rabin 
|successor     =Yitzhak Shamir
|birth_date    =
|birth_place   =Brest, then Russian Empire, now Belarus
|death_date    =
|death_place   =Tel Aviv, Israel
|party=Likud
}}
'''''' (, Polish: '''Mieczysław Biegun''', prime minister of the State of Israel. Before the establishment of the state, he was the leader of the Irgun, playing a central role in Jewish resistance to the British Mandate of Palestine. 

After eight consecutive defeats in the years preceding his premiership, Begin came to embody the opposition to the Ashkenazi Mapai-led Israeli establishment. His electoral victory in 1977 ended three decades of Labor Party political hegemony. 

Begin’s most significant achievement as prime minister was signing a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Peace together with Anwar Sadat. In the wake of the Camp David Accords, the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula and returned the Egyptian territories captured in the Six-Day War. Later, Begin’s government promoted the construction of Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories. In retaliation for Arab attacks from the north, Begin authorized the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, igniting the 1982 Lebanon War. As Israeli military involvement in Lebanon deepened, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre carried out by the Christian militia shocked world public opinion,<ref>Gwertzman, Bernard. [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0C17FC3B5C0C7A8DDDA00894DA484D81&scp=35&sq=massacre+lebanon&st=nyt Christian Militiamen Accused of a Massacre in Beirut Camps; U.S. Says the Toll is at Least 300]. ''The New York Times''. September 19, 1982.</ref> Begin grew increasingly isolated.<ref>Thompson, Ian. ''Primo Levi: A Life''. 2004, page 436.</ref> As IDF forces remained mired in Lebanon and the economy suffered from hyperinflation, the public pressure on Begin mounted. Further depressed by the death of his wife Aliza in November 1982, he gradually withdrew from public life, until his resignation in September 1983. 

==Early life==

Menachem Begin was born to an Jewish family of timber merchants in Zionist, and an admirer of Polish government school, where he was instructed in secular subjects.

From his primary education he retained a life-long private commitment to Jewish observance and alias "Rabbi Yisrael Sassover" when hiding from the British in Palestine as leader of the Irgun.)  From his secondary education, though in an antisemitic environment,<ref>Bernard Reich, ''Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa,'' Greenwood Press, Westport, 1990 p.71.</ref> he received a solid grounding in classical literature, and gained a lifelong love of classical works, which he was able to read in Latin, such as Virgil's ''Aeneid''. 

Begin began studying law at the Vladimir "Ze'ev" Jabotinsky, the founder of the militant, nationalist Betar youth wing.  His rise within Betar was rapid: in the same year he graduated, at age 22, he shared the dais with his mentor during Betar's World Congress in 1939 invasion. 

In September 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Begin escaped the Nazi round-up of Polish Jews by escaping to thumb|200px|[[NKVD mug shot of Menachem Begin, 1940]] On British imperialism''" and sentenced to eight years in the Soviet gulag camps of Siberia. On June 1, 1941 he was sent to the Pechora labor camps, where he lived until May 1942. Much later in life, Begin would record and reflect upon his experiences in Siberia in great detail in a series of autobiographical works. 

In June 1941, just after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, and following his release under the English translator. Begin was subsequently released from the Polish Army after the Irgun intervened unofficially on his behalf with senior Polish army officers.<ref>http://www.bicom.org.uk/background/biographies/former-israeli-prime-ministers/menachem-begin</ref> He then joined the Jewish national movement in the British Mandate of Palestine.

==In the British Mandate of Palestine==

===Insurgency against the British in Palestine===
Begin quickly made a name for himself as a fierce critic of mainstream Balfour Declaration, and that the White Paper of 1939 restricting Jewish immigration was an escalation of their pro-Arab policy, he decided to break with the Haganah, which continued to cooperate militarily with the British as long as they were fighting Nazi Germany. Soon after he assumed command, a formal 'Declaration of Revolt' was publicized, and armed attacks against British forces were initiated.

Begin issued a call to arms and from 1944–48 the Irgun launched an all-out armed rebellion, perpetrating hundreds of attacks against British installations and posts. Begin financed these operations by extorting money from Zionist businessmen, and running bogus robbery scams in the local diamond industry, which enabled the victims to get back their losses from insurance companies. <ref>Yehuda Bauer, ''From Diplomacy to Resistance: A history of Jewish Palestine,'' Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1970 p.325.</ref>

For several months in 1945–46, the Irgun’s activities were coordinated within the framework of the King David Hotel in Acre Prison, and the hanging of two British sergeants, Clifford Martin and Marvyn Paice, causing the British to suspend any further executions of Irgun prisoners. Growing numbers of British forces were deployed to quell the Jewish uprising, yet Begin managed to elude captivity, at times disguised as a rabbi. MI5 placed a 'dead-or-alive' bounty of £10,000 on his head after Irgun threatened 'a campaign of terror against British officials', saying they would kill Sir John Shaw, Britain's Chief Secretary in Palestine. An MI5 agent codenamed Snuffbox also warned that Irgun had sleeper cells in London trying to kill members of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Cabinet.<ref>"Agent Snuffbox and an Israeli threat to kill Cabinet", ''Mail on Sunday'' (London), 5 March 2006, p.40.</ref>

The Jewish community in Palestine. Ben-Gurion openly denounced the Irgun as the “enemy of the Jewish People”, accusing it of sabotaging the political campaign for independence. In 1944, and again in 1947, the Haganah actively persecuted and handed over Irgun members to the British authorities in what is known as Partition Plan for Palestine, and Britain announced its plans to fully withdraw from Palestine by May 1948. Begin, once again in opposition to the mainstream Zionist leadership, rejected the plan. In the years following the establishment of the State of Israel, the Irgun’s contribution to precipitating British withdrawal became a contested historic debate, as different factions vied for control over the emerging narrative of Israeli independence.<ref>Tom Segev, ''One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate'', Henry Holt and Co. 2000, p. 490</ref> Begin resented his being portrayed as a belligerent dissident.<ref>In his book ‘The Revolt’ (1951), Begin outlines the history of the Irgun’s fight against British rule. He quotes Colonel Archer-Cust, Assistant Chief Secretary of the British Government in Palestine, as having said in a lecture to the Royal Empire Society that 'The hanging of the two British Sergeants [an Irgun retaliation to British executions] did more than anything to get us out [of Palestine]'</ref>

===Altalena and the War of Independence===
As the Deir Yassin in April 1948, which resulted in the death of more than a hundred Palestinian civilians, remains a source of controversy. Some have accused the Jewish forces of committing war crimes, while others hold those were legitimate acts of warfare, however it is generally accepted that the Irgun and Lehi forces who took part in the attack carried out a brutal assault upon what was predominantly a civilian population. As the Irgun’s leader, Begin has been accused of being responsible for the atrocities that had allegedly taken place, even though he did not partake in them.

Within days of the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, Begin broadcast a speech on radio calling on his men to put down their weapons. It was the first time that the public had ever heard his voice. He reviewed some of his forces at a few public parades and repeated his command that they lay down their arms and join with the Haganah to form the newly established Israel Defense Forces (IDF). 

Shortly after the founding of the state of Israel, the Irgun formally disbanded.
However, tensions with the IDF persisted over Altalena cargo ship, which secretly delivered weapons to the Irgun in June 1948. The government demanded that the cargo be handed over to it unconditionally, however Begin refused to comply. Rather than negotiating, Ben-Gurion was determined to make this event an exemplary demonstration of the state’s authority. He eventually ordered the IDF to take the ship by gunfire, and it sank off the shore of Tel Aviv. Begin, who was on board as the ship was being shelled, ordered his men not to retaliate in an attempt to prevent the crisis from spiraling into civil war. The Altalena Affair established Ben-Gurion as Israel’s indisputable leader, condemning Begin to political wilderness for almost 30 years.

==Enters Israeli politics==
===The Herut opposition years===
In August 1948, Begin and members of the Irgun High Command emerged from the underground and formed the right-wing political party Herut ("Freedom"), which later began the Likud party. <ref>[http://www.knesset.gov.il/lexicon/eng/begin_eng.htm Menahem Begin (1913-1992)<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> The move countered the weakening attraction for the earlier revisionist party, Hatzohar, founded by his late mentor Vladimir Jabotinsky. Revisionist 'purists' alleged nonetheless that Begin was out to steal Jabotinsky's mantle and ran against him with the old party.

In November 1948, Begin visited the US on a campaigning trip. During his visit, a letter signed by Revisionists in 1939; at the same time Rabbi Stephen Wise denounced the movement as, "Fascism in Yiddish or Hebrew."   See Rosen, Robert N., ''Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust'', Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, 2006, p. 318.</ref>

In the first elections in 1949, Herut, with 11.5 percent of the vote, won 14 seats, while Hatzohar failed to break the threshold and disbanded shortly thereafter. This provided Begin with legitimacy as the leader of the Revisionist stream of Zionism.

Between 1948 and 1977, under Begin, Herut formed the main opposition to the dominant Alignment (the forerunners of today's Labour Party) in the irredentist idea of Ben-Gurion who refused to either speak to or refer to him by name. Ben-Gurion famously coined the disparaging phrase 'without Herut and Maki', effectively pushing both parties and their voters beyond the margins of political consensus. 

The personal animosity between Ben-Gurion and Begin, going back to the hostilities over the coercive socialist informality of Mapai, as a means of accentuating their differences.  

One of the most energetic confrontations between Begin and Ben-Gurion centered on the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in the same year, an act which appeared to be another effort to sabotage the agreement. His behaviour was strongly condemned in mainstream public discourse, reinforcing his image as an irresponsible provocateur. Laden with pathos and evocations of the Holocaust, Begin's trademark of impassioned rhetoric appealed to many, while being denounced by his critics as inflammatory language of a demagogue.

===Gahal and the Six Day War unity government===
During the following years, Begin failed to gain electoral momentum, and Herut remained far behind Labor with no more than 17 seats in the four elections held up until 1961. In 1965, Herut and the Liberal Party united to form the national unity government under Prime Minister cabinet for the first time, as a Minister without Portfolio. The arrangement lasted until 1970, when Begin and Gahal left the government (by this time led by Golda Meir) due to disagreements over policy.

===Likud and Mizrahi support===
In 1973, Begin agreed to a plan by Ariel Sharon to form a larger bloc of opposition parties, made up from Gahal, the Free Centre, and other smaller groups. They came through with a tenuous alliance called the Likud ("Consolidation"). In the elections held later that year, the Likud won a considerable share of the votes, though with 39 seats still remained in opposition. Held only two months after the Yom Kippur War, this election was too close to the war's events to allow its devastating consequences to be translated into political transformation. 

Yet the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War saw ensuing public disenchantment with the Alignment. Voices of criticism about the government's misconduct of the war gave rise to growing public resentment toward the dominant Ashkenazi elite. Personifying the antithesis to the Alignment's Jewish immigrants from Arab countries, who felt they were continuously being treated by the establishment as second-class citizens. His open embrace of Judaism stood in stark contrast to the Alignment's secularism, which alienated Mizrahi voters. The Alignment's failure to address the protest about its institutional discrimination of Mizrahi Jews drew many of them to support Begin, becoming his burgeoning political base. Numerous corruption scandals which mired Yitzhak Rabin's government signalled that Begin was finally poised to capture the center stage of Israeli politics.

==Prime Minister of Israel==
===1977 Electoral victory===
thumb|Menachem Begin in 1978

On Knesset elections by a landslide, becoming the biggest party in the conservative and economically liberal agenda. 

thumb|Begin and [[Moshe Dayan exit from an aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, USA]]
The Likud campaign leading up to the election centered on Begin's personality. Demonized by the Alignment as centrist Democratic Movement for Change ("Dash") headed by Yigael Yadin. Dash won 15 seats out of 120, largely at the expense of the Alignment, which was led by Shimon Peres and had shrunk from 51 to 32 seats. Well aware of his momentous achievement and employing his trademark sense for drama, when speaking that night in the Likud headquarters Begin quoted from the Gettysburg Address and the Torah, referring to his victory as a 'turning point in the history of the Jewish people'. 

With 43 seats, the Likud still required the support of other parties in order to reach a parliamentary majority that would enable it to form a government under Israel's proportionate representation parliamentary system. Though able to form a narrow coalition with smaller Jewish religious and ultra-orthodox parties, Begin also sought support from centrist elements in the Knesset to provide his government with greater public legitimacy. He controversially offered the foreign affairs portfolio to IDF Chief of Staff and Defense Minister, and a prominent Alignment politician identified with the old establishment. Begin was sworn in as Prime Minister of Israel on June 20, 1977. Dash eventually joined his government several months later, thus providing it with the broad support of almost two thirds of the Knesset.

===Camp David Accords===
:''main articles: Camp David Accords (1978) and Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty

 thumb|Menachem Begin, [[Jimmy Carter, Anwar Sadat at Camp David, 1978]]

In 1978 Begin, aided by Foreign Minister Camp David Accords, and in 1979 signed the geopolitical implications. 

Almost overnight, Begin’s public image of an irresponsible nationalist radical was transformed into that of a statesman of historic proportions. This image was reinforced by international recognition which culminated with him being awarded, together with Sadat, the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. 

Yet while establishing Begin as a leader with broad public appeal, the peace treaty with Egypt was met with fierce criticism within his own Likud party. His devout followers found it difficult to reconcile Begin’s history as a keen promoter of the Revisionist ideology. Several prominent Likud members, most notably Yitzhak Shamir, objected to the treaty and abstained when it was ratified with an overwhelming majority in the Knesset, achieved only thanks to support from the opposition. A small group of hardliners within Likud, associated with Gush Emunim Jewish settlement movement, eventually decided to split and form the Tehiya party in 1979. They led the ''Movement for Stopping the Withdrawal from Sinai'', violently clashing with IDF soldiers during the forceful eviction of Yamit settlement in April 1982. Despite the traumatic scenes from Yamit, political support for the treaty did not diminish and the Sinai was handed over to Egypt in 1982. 

right|thumb|Prime Minister Menachem Begin engages [[Zbigniew Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David, 1978]]
Begin was far less resolute in implementing the section of the Camp David Accord, which defined a framework for establishing autonomous Agriculture Minister Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories, a policy intended to make future territorial concessions in these areas effectively impossible. Begin refocused Israeli settlement strategy from populating peripheral areas in accordance with the Allon Plan, to building Jewish settlements in areas of Biblical and historic significance. When the settlement of Elon Moreh was established on the outskirts of Nablus in 1979, following years of campaigning by Gush Emunim, Begin declared that there are "many more Elon Morehs to come". Indeed during his term as Prime Minister dozens of new settlements were built, and Jewish population in the West Bank and Gaza more than quadrupled.<ref>According to data published by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, and collated by [http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=51 Peace Now], the number of settlers in the West Bank grew from 5000 in the early seventies to more than 20000 in 1983</ref>