A Back-handed Compliment

Gideon Levy of Haaretz, seeking to criticise Benjamin Netanyahu, awards a back-handed compliment to Menachem Begin:

During the state's infancy, when all was immeasurably more fragile and dangerous, governments knew how to instill hope and encourage action. They built and paved, settled and irrigated. Even when Menachem Begin was elected, he took power imbued with the joy of creation: building housing projects, making peace with Egypt, and, as futile as his philosophy was, establishing "many Elon Morehs," that settlement in the West Bank.