The Retelling of a Begin Vignette

By Rabbi Stewart Weiss:-

...So what happened at Sinai?

I WOULD LIKE to respond to this classic question with a story from our recent history, one that is as relevant today - perhaps even more relevant - than when it first occurred. In 1978, the Camp David summit with Egypt resulted in the return of the entire Sinai Peninsula. US president Jimmy Carter, delirious with joy that Israel had decided to give two-thirds of its land mass to an enemy nation, decided he would try to push the envelope. He told prime minister Menachem Begin that, before ending the summit, he would like to discuss the issue of Jerusalem, that he wanted Israel to consider either ceding part of it, or internationalizing all of it.

Begin flatly refused Carter's request.



"At least think about it for a few days," said Carter.

"No!" said Begin defiantly.

"What?!" answered an incredulous Carter, "You won't even think about it? Why not? How can you be so obstinate?"

Begin replied: "I think it's time to tell you about Rabbi Amnon."

He then proceeded to relate to Carter the story of Rabbi Amnon of Mainz. Pressured incessantly by the bishop of that city to convert to Christianity, he finally asked for three days to think about it. He was then so overcome with guilt that he begged God for forgiveness. "How could I ever even contemplate such an act of heresy?" he lamented.

When he did not return to the bishop, Rabbi Amnon was cruelly tortured, his limbs amputated one by one. Yet through it all he did not relent. Maimed and mutilated, he was finally brought home. Three days later, on Rosh Hashana, he asked that he be brought to the synagogue and placed before the Holy Ark. There he uttered his famous prayer that has become the centerpiece of the High Holy Day liturgy - Un'taneh Tokef, Who shall live, and who shall die - and there he expired.

When Begin finished the story, he turned to Carter: "There are some things in life, Mr. President, that a Jew cannot even think about - and relinquishing Jerusalem in any way, shape or manner is one of them." With that emphatic statement, Begin returned home.

It is true that, normally, we weigh our important decisions with great deliberation and give pause to consider all the pros and cons.

The Writings and Words of Menachem Begin

In a book review of a volume of Moshe Sharett, we found this observation:

The fact that the writings and sayings of other Israeli prime ministers - including David Ben-Gurion, the most important and influential of all - have not been published so extensively creates a certain feeling of disproportion. Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and even Menachem Begin - all prime ministers of considerable importance - have not had even a fraction of their written and spoken words issued in print.

At present, the State Archives are editing a volume of Menachem Begin's words in print and speech with professor Aryeh Naor in charge.

Mandate History

Here is a Makor Rishon item, reporting on the fact that the Menachem Begin Heritage Center received a cloth banner that had been strung up on wires over Tel Aviv streets back in 1946.



The banner, made out of what appears to be sheet material, was taken by a British policeman and upon his death, his daughter bequeathed it to a Dr. Michael Bloch living in Germany who then passed it on to the Center.

The newspaper item shows the original picture taken actually by an Irgun activist and the banner today. On the left is Yisrael Medad, Director of Information Resources who located the 1946 photograph and Rami Shtivi of the Archives on the right.

Center Bulletin, Vol. 5, No. 31

Menachem Begin Heritage Center Bulletin Vol. 5, No. 31 | 28 May 2009


TOTAL NUMBER OF VISITORS SINCE OCTOBER 2004: 491,979


ALL NIGHT LEARNING FOR SHAVUOT

It has become an annual tradition for the Begin Center to sponsor all-night learning on the evening of Shavuot and usually filling the whole Center to capacity. The Begin Center is located a short walk from the Old City of Jerusalem which allows participants to walk to the Kotel (Western Wall) for sunrise prayers in the morning.
The schedule for Shavuot 2009/5769, May 28-29, is as follows:

The main lectures, with simultaneous sign language translation, will be held in the Reuben Hecht Auditorium from 11:00pm until 3:00am. Lecturers will be Herzl Makov, Chairman of the Begin Center; Mrs. Bilha Ben Eliyahu; Dr. Aviad HaCohen; Dr. Ido Chevroni; and author, Chaim Be'er. Other lectures will be given in the Seminar Room by Jessica Sacks, Eliezer Schwartz and Baruch Barzel. Also, three locations will be set aside for learning groups.

At 3:30am, two guides will take groups to the Kotel for sunrise prayers.

(*Note: The Menachem Begin Heritage Museum is only open for a half day on May 28 and will be closed May 29.)


NEWS FROM THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

These early days of summer are the time for schools from around Israel to come to the Begin Center to participate in the concluding reenactments of the Junior Knesset, taking everything that they have learned over the past semester and putting it into practice. Most of the schools participate in the program in Hebrew, but this year the program was translated for the Alexander Muss School in Hod HaSharon to be done in English.

Many workshops were conducted for the Army leadership training program. The program continues to grow utilizing the Begin Center's unique location for historical tours of the area. There is now a tour for the soldiers called From the Underground to Independence. They visit the former train station, the King David Hotel, the Jabotinsky House, the Underground Prisoner's Museum and Heroism Shrine. This tour is different from the one in Yemin Moshe that reviews the defense of that neighborhood.

In recent weeks, we have had leadership workshops for a commando unit of the Navy and coordinators from a logistics base, among other regular army and military police groups.


VISITORS AND RESEARCH REQUESTS

Marc and Sheila Moller visited the Menachem Begin Heritage Center and toured the museum.

Ella Gurevich visited the Menachem Begin Heritage Center and museum with her son, Mitch.

American Friends of Likud hosted a breakfast meeting with Col. Bentzi Gruber who spoke about ethics in the field as well as touching on the situation in Gaza with the smuggling tunnels.

The Begin Center was notified that a quote attributed to Menachem Begin is floating around the internet. The quote is blatantly falsified and grossly misleading. The Information and Content department researched the source and directed the questioner to a research site that sheds more light on this specific instance of manufactured quotation.

A documentary filmmaker visited the Center to do some research about the Altalena.

Target of Jews, Sorry, of Muslims is World Domination

My, oh my.

...The evidence showed that HLF was part of a broad Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy in the United States called the Palestine Committee, which was to serve Hamas with "media, money and men." Those exhibits show the depth of Muslim Brotherhood activity here, which at its height included a think tank in Virginia, a propaganda arm in Texas and Chicago, and a political operation that continues to exert influence today.

It also led to the discovery of a Brotherhood memorandum from 1991 that describes the group's goal in America. It called for a "civilization-jihadist process" and a "grand jihad" that aimed at "eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within … so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Source

On p. 18 of that memorandum, and on top of p. 19, funnily enough, I found this:

2- The priority that is approved by the Shura Council for the work of the Group in its current and former session which is "Settlement".
- - -
5- Presenting Islam as a civilization alternative
6- Supporting the establishment of the global Islamic State wherever it is].

"Settlement"? Isn't that something Muslims believe to be illegal?

Almost. On the next page, 19, it reads:

The Concept of Settlement:

This term was mentioned in the Group's "dictionary" and documents with various meanings in spite of the fact that everyone meant one thing with it. We believe that the understanding of the essence is the same and we will attempt here to give the word and its "meanings" a practical explanation with a practical Movement tone, and not a philosophical linguistic explanation, while stressing that this explanation of ours is not complete until our explanation of "the process" of settlement itself is understood which is mentioned in the following paragraph. We briefly say the following:

Settlement: "That Islam and its Movement become a part of the homeland it lives in".

Establishment: "That Islam turns into firmly-rooted organizations on whose bases civilization, structure and testimony are built".

Stability: "That Islam is stable in the land on which its people move".

Enablement: "That Islam is enabled within the souls, minds and the lives of the people of the country in which it moves".

Rooting: "That Islam is resident and not a passing thing, or rooted "entrenched" in the soil of the spot where it moves and not a strange plant to it".

So, there's a world conquest campaign of religious domination - and the Jews aren't involved. Too bad for those anti-semites.


(Kippah tip: Pam at AtlasShrugs)

Correcting A Misquotation Reputedly By Menachem Begin

This past week, the Begin Center received this request for information:

Can you please help me with this?

This quote

"Our race is the Master Race. We are divine gods on this planet. We are as different from the inferior races as they are from insects. In fact, compared to our race, other races are beasts and animals, cattle at best. Other races are considered as human excrement. Our destiny is to rule over the inferior races. Our earthly kingdom will be ruled by our leader with a rod of iron. The masses will lick our feet and serve us as our slaves."

is attributed to Begin and it is all over the web.

Do you know where it came from?

This was our reply:

Dear S_____,

I gave your request to our director of information and content and after some thorough research, I have the following for you:

First of all, Mr. Begin never said those words and there is no factual basis for that quote. When we searched for the quote, we found that it looped back to the same text by Texe Marrs, who does not say that he is quoting Begin.

Further research at this site showed that the quote was attributed to "Amnon Kapeliouk's article "Begin and the Beasts" (New Statesman, June 25, 1982) which was infamous for having misrepresented some remarks Menachem Begin said in a speech to the Knesset, and there are legitimate sources all over the net that make reference to that incident.

However, the misrepresented quote is not the one cited ("Our race is the Master Race", etc.), but another one entirely (see below). Clearly, someone invented the "Master Race" quote and then tacked on Amnon Kapeliouk as the source, to give it credibility. However, even the REAL (and far less offensive) quote has now been proven to have been misrepresented by Kapeliouk.

The REAL story involving Kapeliouk's article is provided by a media-watch group called CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), which regularly debunks bogus news reports and misquotes.

Here:

...Internet hate sites, as well as Fisk, attribute the derogation of Palestinians as “two-legged beasts” to former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. The source generally given is:

Menachem Begin, as quoted in Amnon Kapeliouk, "Begin and the Beasts, "New Statesman, June 25, 1982

Indeed, the radical French-Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, did attribute such a quote to Begin in his New Statesman article criticizing Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The author posited:

For this reason the government has gone to extraordinary lengths to dehumanize the Palestinians. Begin described them in a speech in the Knesset as "beasts walking on two legs

However, further investigation by CAMERA reveals that the actual speech upon which Kapeliouk based his quote, as well as news reports at the time demonstrate that the journalist distorted the quote, giving it a completely different tone and meaning. Begin was referring not to "the Palestinians" in a general sense but very specifically, he was referring to terrorists who target children within Israel...Kapeliouk neither recanted nor apologized for his deception...

I hope that helps.

Moreover, we will be conferring with others in Israel and abroad to attempt to verify that the no one has ever heard or seen this quote and whether it is authentic. At present, we understand that there is no reliable source and until proven otherwise, which we doubt can be done based on our archival mateiral and personal familiarity with Mr. Begin, we reject the veracity of the words supposedly either spoken or conveyed.

The quotation is bogus.

_________________--


P.S.

In the context of talking about defending the children of Israel from terror attacks, he said the following:

The children of Israel will happily go to school and joyfully return home, just like the children in Washington, in Moscow, and in Peking, in Paris and in Rome, in Oslo, in Stockholm and in Copenhagen. The fate of… Jewish children has been different from all the children of the world throughout the generations. No more. We will defend our children. If the hand of any two-footed animal is raised against them, that hand will be cut off, and our children will grow up in joy in the homes of their parents.

But, here there are Katyushas, missiles and artillery shells day and night, with the sole intention of murdering our women and children. There are military targets in the Galilee. What a characteristic phenomenon, they are protected, completely immune to these terrorists. Only at the civilian population, only to shed our blood, just to kill our children, our wives, our sisters, our elderly. 

He clearly wasn’t characterizing ‘Palestinians’ as two-legged/footed beasts/animals, only those who would murder innocent children.

^

Center Bulletin, Vol. 5, No. 30

Menachem Begin Heritage Center Bulletin Vol. 5, No. 30 20 June 2009

TOTAL NUMBER OF VISITORS SINCE OCTOBER 2004: 490,161


JERUSALEM DAY AT THE BEGIN CENTER

The Menachem Begin Heritage Center, located on the Hinnom Ridge overlooking the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, will be sponsoring and hosting four events leading up to the celebrations of Jerusalem Day.

The first event took place on May 13 at 5:30pm with 90 people filling the seminar room at the Begin Center to capacity. The event was co-sponsored by the Movement for Strengthening Jerusalem which is an organization established by the Zionist Council in Israel. The panel discussion was on the topic of strengthening Jerusalem as a national mission. On the panel were Minister Beny Begin, Prof. Ephraim Inbar, head of the BESA Center at Bar Ilan University and Avi Ro'e, head of the municipality of Mateh Binyamin.

On May 17, more than 200 people attended a special commemorative evening for Ethiopian Jews. Jerusalem Day has been designated as a national commemoration day for Ethiopian Jews who died trying to make the journey from Ethiopia to Israel via the Sudan by foot. At the ceremony survivors spoke movingly of the lengthy and dangerous journey. Tzipi Livni, Head of the Opposition in the Knesset; The Minister of Immigration and Absorption, Sofa Landver; former head of the Mossad during Menachem Begin's second term, Nahum Admoni and representatives from the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews all spoke during the evening. Part of the evening was dedicated to a very interesting panel discussion and traditional Ethiopian music was played on traditional instruments. The evening concluded with a special prayer sung by the "Kaysim" (Elders) of the Ethiopian community which was dedicated to those Ethiopians that died on the way to Israel.

On May 19 at 8pm, the Reuben Hecht Auditorium was filled to capacity with a boisterous and enthusiastic crowd for another evening of songs, poems and sing-a-longs with Nahum Heyman, recipient of this year's Israel Prize. The first half of the evening was dedicated to songs about Jerusalem and the second half was dedicated to the songs of David Zahavi and Mattiyahu Shalem, as representatives of the Labor-affiliated cooperative settlement movement.

Upcoming Events:

On May 21, Jerusalem Day, the Menachem Begin Heritage Center will launch its newest program National Films at the Begin Center, in coordination with the 12 Tribes Foundation. Films will be on the subjects of Judaism, Zionism, History of Israel and the Jewish People. There are 6 films in the series and will be shown every three weeks after the Parashat HaShavua program. All films will be subtitled in English, but discussions will take place in Hebrew with either the director of the film or people who are related in some way to the subject matter of the film. Dates for the program are as follows: May 21; June 11; July 2; July 23; August 13; August 27.

The first film will be shown at 8:30pm, May 21, and is called Alone on the Walls. This is a documentary about the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem in 1948 using interviews from the participants in the battle. Natan Gini, a fighter in that battle, will speak after the film. The film is in Hebrew with English subtitles and the discussion afterward is in Hebrew. The admission is 30 NIS and reservations are required (02) 565-2020.

Details of other films will be featured in future bulletins.



ALL NIGHT LEARNING FOR SHAVUOT

It has become an annual tradition for the Begin Center to sponsor all-night learning on the evening of Shavuot and usually filling the whole Center to capacity. The Begin Center is located a short walk from the Old City of Jerusalem which allows participants to walk to the Kotel (Western Wall) for sunrise prayers in the morning.
The schedule for Shavuot 2009/5769 is as follows:

The main lectures, with simultaneous sign language translation, will be held in the Reuben Hecht Auditorium from 11:00pm until 3:00am. Lecturers will be Herzl Makov, Chairman of the Begin Center; Mrs. Bilha Ben Eliyahu; Dr. Aviad HaCohen; Dr. Ido Chevroni; and author, Chaim Be'er. Other lectures will be given in the Seminar Room by Jessica Sacks, Eliezer Schwartz and Baruch Barzel. Also, three locations will be set aside for learning groups.

At 3:30am, two guides will take groups to the Kotel for sunrise prayers.



BEGIN AND SADAT SLIGHTED BY JAFFA MUNICIPALITY

Citizens of the city of Jaffa, south of Tel Aviv, wanted to name the main square with their famous clock tower after Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat, but were thwarted by the City Council who decided to name the square after one of the founders of Tel Aviv University.

The naming of the square at the entrance to Jaffa for Yossi Carmel, the late military attaché and one of the founders of Tel Aviv University, has angered local residents, who want the square be named in honor of the Nobel Peace Prize winners Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. The square, to be dedicated tonight, abuts the well-known Jaffa clock tower. Residents say they want the landmark to bear a name that represents co-existence between Jews and Arabs.

(To read more, please click the link to our blog.)



BEGIN CENTER TRIP NORTH OF JERUSALEM

The annual Begin Center employees' trip took place on Tuesday, May 19, with 25 persons visiting the Achiyah community in the Benjamin Region and listening to the emotional story of Ronit Schuker, the olive factory at Shiloh, Tel Shiloh including a weaving workshop and wine tasting at the Psagot Winery at Migron. A good time was had by all.