Volume 30, Number 15 · October 13, 1983
The Turning Point in Israel
By Meron Benvenisti
During the six years when Menachem Begin was prime minister, his world view and style seemed so divergent from those of his Israeli opponents and of the prevailing political culture in the West that he was perceived as an aberration. Begin's mentality was shaped by Central Europe between two great wars. He was haunted by the nightmare of the Holocaust, was convinced of the power of grand gestures and the boldly spoken word. The mystical lawyer and populist orator was such a departure from the socialist, humanist, and pragmatic leadership of the opposing Israeli political culture that many Israelis and American Jews have wished to dismiss his regime as a mere episode in Israel's history.
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