In advance of the 46th anniversary on March 26 of the signing of the Peace Agreement between Israel and Egypt, the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem hosted a commemorative address by Dr. Binyamin Ze’ev (Benny) Begin, the son of Israel’s first right-wing prime minister Menachem Begin, who was also the first Israeli prime minister to sign a peace agreement with an Arab country, without which Israel might never have reached the stage of the Abraham Accords.
If anyone expected Benny Begin to have the inside story on how it all came about, they quickly learned that Menachem Begin had discussed very little on the subject with his son and that in preparation for the lecture, Benny Begin had to do considerable research.
There were some things that, until a year ago, were unknown to him, he said, and other things that he had discovered as recently as three or four months ago.
Inasmuch as his compelling lecture in excellent English was a history lesson, it was more of a lesson about the character of his father, who was a man of principle whose values and behavior were quite different from those demonstrated by the current leader of the Likud party.
In addition, the lecture illustrated the importance of a single word in any kind of legal document.
For instance, the expression peace agreement was changed to peace treaty, in that a treaty carries much more weight than an agreement, and in formulating the text for the document related to autonomy for the Palestinians, Menachem Begin did not refer to the areas of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, but to the inhabitants of those places, leaving the sovereignty issue out of the wording, because sovereignty was a matter of contention, whereas inhabitants was a word on which agreement could be reached.
Benny Begin inherited his father’s gift for oratory, and he used it effectively to introduce his audience to a modest man who believed in human rights – including those of the Palestinians – and who firmly adhered to solving disputes through negotiation.
Though always aware of these qualities in his father, Benny Begin may have been spurred to research them further in light of events in Israel since October 7.
One of the principles that Menachem Begin lived by and repeated in speech and in writing in his dealings with Israelis and Arabs was, “We have no right to impose our principles on you, and you have no right to impose your principles on us.”
He also believed in and maintained the principle of negotiating without pre-conditions.
How Herut merged to for Likud
Thus, when Herut, which had been founded by Menachem Begin as a successor to the Irgun in June 1948, merged with the Liberal Party in 1965 to found Gahal, which later evolved into Likud, the text of the agreement allowed for each party to maintain its own principles, with Herut continuing to publicly express the principle of the integrity of the Land of Israel, while the Liberal Party refused to include the integrity of the Land of Israel in the merger agreement.
The Biblical map of the Land of Israel was the symbol of the Herut badge, and for many years, the Jewish National Fund featured the Biblical map on the Blue Box, where Jews around the world put coins every Friday before Sabbath candle lighting.
While he believed with all his heart in the integrity of the Land of Israel, Menachem Begin never insisted on including it in agreements because he understood the importance of compromise in turning practical ideas into action.
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol recognized this, and when Begin joined Eshkol’s national unity government in 1967, Eshkol asked him to write the drafts for resolutions.
Begin, who arrived in the Land of Israel in 1942 with the Polish Army Army led by General Wladyslaw Anders, had a 40-year career as a leader – first of the Irgun, then Herut, and finally as prime minister.
One of the things that endeared him to the public was his modesty.
An example of this was related by his son, who said that after the signing of the Camp David agreement, Begin said to US President Jimmy Carter and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat that he had grandchildren to whom he would like to give a photograph of all three of them together, and asked the two presidents to write an autographed inscription.
Carter wrote one in English, and Sadat wrote one in Arabic.
Begin himself wrote a single word in Hebrew – Saba – grandpa.” He was a very good grandfather,” said Benny Begin.
At the conclusion of his address, Benny Begin answered some questions from the audience but declined to answer one, which queried what his father would have done in the present crisis.
Instead, he referred the audience to a post that he had written earlier in the day on one of his social media accounts in which he recalled that as far back as 2016, he had warned Netanyahu, whom he then admired and with whom he was on good terms, that changes that Netanyahu wanted to implement would be to the detriment of Likud.
But he had never anticipated that the situation would deteriorate to such a low level as to be “without limits and without wisdom”.
