Netanyahu the Peacemaker
By ROGER COHEN, NYT
Jimmy Carter, as he pointed out in London a few days ago, dealt with a right-wing former terrorist and “the last person you would expect to make peace” in reaching the 1978 Camp David Accords that ended the conflict between Israel and Egypt.
The man in question was the former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, who noted in his memoir “The Revolt,” that he was known as “Terrorist Number One” in Britain as he led the fight to end British rule of Mandate Palestine and establish a Jewish state.
Begin acknowledges that he was driven by hatred of British rule. “We had to hate the humiliating disgrace of the homelessness of our people,” he wrote, adding that, “We had to hate the barring of the gates of our own country to our own brethren, trampled and bleeding and crying out for help in a world morally deaf.”
Yet, three decades after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Begin the warrior — a man as responsible as any other for the transformation of the meek, acquiescent Jew of the diaspora who went head bowed to the Nazi gas into a fighter — chose to set hatred aside to trade land for lasting peace.
(More here.)
Jimmy Carter, as he pointed out in London a few days ago, dealt with a right-wing former terrorist and “the last person you would expect to make peace” in reaching the 1978 Camp David Accords that ended the conflict between Israel and Egypt.
The man in question was the former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, who noted in his memoir “The Revolt,” that he was known as “Terrorist Number One” in Britain as he led the fight to end British rule of Mandate Palestine and establish a Jewish state.
Begin acknowledges that he was driven by hatred of British rule. “We had to hate the humiliating disgrace of the homelessness of our people,” he wrote, adding that, “We had to hate the barring of the gates of our own country to our own brethren, trampled and bleeding and crying out for help in a world morally deaf.”
Yet, three decades after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Begin the warrior — a man as responsible as any other for the transformation of the meek, acquiescent Jew of the diaspora who went head bowed to the Nazi gas into a fighter — chose to set hatred aside to trade land for lasting peace.
(More here.)
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