Slandering Menachem Begin

When, as Israel’s then-opposition leader, Menachem Begin first visited the U.S. in 1948, a group of Jewish intellectuals—among them Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt—wrote a fervid letter to the New York Times condemning him and comparing him with the Nazis. Milton Viorst has revived these charges and added fresh and still more preposterous ones in his recent book Zionism: The Birth and Transformation of an Ideal, arguing that Begin’s prime-ministership initiated Israel’s transformation from a bastion of peace and tolerance into a militaristic and belligerent state. To the contrary, writes Moshe Fuksman Shal: