They "Hated" Him and With Wrong Reasons

Uriel Ben-Ami, born and raised in Moshav Nahalal, the pride of the Mapai labour movement where Moshe Dayan grew up, published an op-ed today. Ben-Ami, who used to be a correspondent for the Davar Histadrut newspaper, recalls Menachem Begin in the article entitled, Are we beautiful or ugly?:-

And so, we hated Menachem Begin, a modest and wonderfully decent man, but not one of us – because he truly aspired for law and order, security, and peace, in that order. He proved it when he first dispatched Air Force planes to bomb the settlement of Elon Moreh and transferred it from private Palestinian land to state-owned land. Then, he dispatched fighter jets to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reaction. Later he evacuated the Sinai, using IDF bulldozers, to the last grain of sand in the peace deal with Egypt.

We couldn't forgive him for being the most genuine adherent to the law in our country, which is so accustomed to winks. We couldn’t digest his Polish pathos and impeccable manners. We, the influential Israelis of yesteryear, preferred to burp in public in true Sabra charm. We saw life only through the covered sights of Left or Right – an endless series of subjective arguments.