Begin at the Beginning

...Reform and Conservative Judaism are not peripheral expressions of American Jewish perspective...

...One was a breakfast meeting with twenty very sophisticated journalists, including half a dozen who must be counted among the most important anywhere...

...as do his advisors...

...If he does not believe it...

...Indeed, many people were comparing him favorably to his predecessors, whose characteristic response to questions of peace had come to be a kind of resigned shrug of the shoulders, whose fatigue was almost palpable, and whose imagination had long-since been exhausted...

...Yet his failure to do so, we realized, would drive a wedge between ourselves and Israel, despite all our instincts and our efforts...

...And full citizenship, given present demographic trends, would mean that we are a decade away from a Jewish state with an Arab majority, hence a decade away from the end of the Jewish state...

...His rhetoric in both settings was replete with references to his own European past and to our people's...

...Begin's tenure began with a number of statements and symbolic acts which clearly portended a collision course not only with the American government, but also with large segments of American Jewry...

...It is an evil decree...

...Here and there, the stimuli to its happening were clear: the extravagant and excessive condemnation of Begin in his first days elicited a stiff-necked reaction from most of us...

...I am not blessed with amnesia, and I grew up in a Zionist atmosphere in which Begin was generally regarded as just this side of anathema...

...If he believes it...

...the chances in fact are that full citizenship would be granted them...

...One presumes that most of the people in attendance were rather more comfortable with free enterprise than with democratic socialism...

...I have in mind—would that we could forget it, that it would fade away in the euphoric glow of Be-gin's visit—the specific issue of the West Bank, and Begin's announced intention that Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank will not be relinquished...

...Plus, of course, the constant: our love and concern for Israel, our determination to give its leaders the benefit of every doubt...

...Still, all this is not enough to account for so dramatic a shift in mood...

...For all I had to offer as a substitute for his theory was the ' certain knowledge that this thing had happened rather than been caused to happen...

...Is it we who changed, or he, or what...

...That has been the position of Israel's Labor Party, and it is the view of some of Israel's closest friends in this country...

...And two months later, just two months—on the Lower East Side and in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, in the pages of our newspapers and from our pulpits—a welcome so warm, so genuine, so enthusiastic that one has a hard time recapturing June's trepidations...

...Would American Jews still be obliged to endorse Israeli policy...

...Folly...

...There lay the threat, just beneath the emergent consensus of support...

...A year ago, debating the limits of dissent, it was easy to overheat an argument instantly by positing the following (utterly implausible) hypothetical: "Suppose that Begin were to come to power in Israel...

...He persisted: here was manifest evidence of the precision of Jewish hierarchical organization...

...a liberated land, perhaps, to some Israelis, but scarcely to its Arab residents...

...Begin may be entirely correct in his assessment that an autonomous Palestinian state in the West Bank is a prescription for permanent war...

...That is Meir Kahane's "solution"—but Begin is not Ka-hane...

...And / persisted, unconvinc-ingly...

...It will no doubt seem somewhat sour-grapesish to intrude upon the present euphoria with so mundane and critical an observation...

...Begin has accomplished the transition from politician to statesman without missing a step...

...Begin knows it...

...we were, if anything, even less prepared than the Israelis for the results...

...Not through harangue— there was none of that—not through implacability, nor through oratorical flourish...

...he cast no spells...

...Wary, and eager to be as helpful as possible in getting on with the job Menahem Begin has so energetically taken up...

...A small, somewhat pasty man, hoarse and tired, yet manifestly a prime minister, manifestly the preeminent leader of the Jews...

...the other, a UJA luncheon with a hundred times that number of enthusiastic Jews...

...It could easily prove a staging-ground for Soviet subversion, a central address for terrorist activity...

...Begin, with a good grace lamentably absent from any number of Israeli leaders, promised that Israeli children would be taught of the generosity of American Jews...

...He did not mesmerize his audiences...

...and we all...

...This is not news...

...be as graceful in the pursuit of our common goal, and as successful in its achievement...

...They are as central to our ways as is Orthodox Judaism...

...It is folly to base the future of the Jewish state on that prospect...

...Simple, he says: in conditions of peace, large numbers of American Jews will come to live in Israel, thus insuring a Jewish majority...

...should not inhibit our opposition to it...

...And, happily, impossible...

...Begin was viewed as a bumptious upstart when he was elected...

...The early omens were not encouraging...

...what does he believe...

...Chancey...

...Here, instead, was a restless, ambitious, energetic man, a man clearly eager to get on with the job...

...Further, the immediate and diplomatic efforts of some of our more important leaders—most notably, Alex Schindler, Chairman of the Presidents' Conference—who sought to interpret our concerns to Begin and Begin's perspectives to us...

...It is possible, for example, to endorse (as Mr...

...Ridiculous...

...are the stakes—our stakes, especially—in Israel's religious development...

...He charmed both groups, and the surprise in both performances was that he appeared without question to have been to the manor born...

...Indeed, it had always been something of an anomaly that America's most successful capitalists got on so well with Israel's devoted socialists, leaders of Israel's government these past 29 years...

...by mid-summer, he was perceived as a statesman of stature...

...And what, according to the new Prime Minister, is the answer...

...It did not seem likely that this practiced oppositionist, this inexperienced leader, with so little knowledge of the American temper, with so few contacts with American Jews, with so general a reputation for clever demagoguery, could relate to his new responsibilities, still less likely that he could relate to the sensibilities of the American Jewish community...

...But the job is still a long way from being done...

...Sitting at the UJA luncheon, listening to Begin describe his economic policies— his commitment to free enterprise, his desire for private investment—the aesthetic of this man setting forth these policies before this audience was manifest...

...It could easily be seen by the Palestinians as the first stage in the eventual dismantling of the Jewish state...

...That is why the creative statesmanship of all interested parties must focus on a redefinition of the choice...

...It was as if here George Wallace and the crazies had won...

...were its victims, and, in extremis, they would not let things get worse...

...I have in mind something more than the obvious fact that there remain very important differences between Mr...

...On the one side—whether through retention or through autonomy—permanent war...

...How else describe the response of American Jews to Menahem Begin's accession to Israel's prime ministership...

...If it is disconcerting to imagine an Israel with an Arab majority consigned to second-class citizenship, is it less disconcerting to imagine a Jewish people with a vast number—indeed, a majority—of second-class members...

...Gratuitous killing was no part of the Irgun's strategy...

...perhaps, we said, Begin had been a terrorist—but if so, terrorism then surely meant something very different from what terrorism has since come to mean...

...But in a different sense, a new impropriety had been introduced...

...How, he asked, had the pro-Begin consensus been engineered...

...To which all heads nodded assent, including some very senior UJA heads...

...Just as it is possible that, in the course of negotiations on these matters, Begin will be prepared to compromise on the issue of withdrawal...

...therefore, give Begin the chance to see whether he can persuade the others...

...That was a spectacular achievement...

...Times change, people change, policies change...

...Not just unexpected, but disreputable, embarrassing...

...It may seem a bit ludicrous to argue that the global crisis in the Middle East, which preoccupies the world's leading statesmen and raises the risks of major-power confrontation, should boil down, in the end...

...May he...

...But is it any less likely that continuing Israeli control of the West Bank is, in equal measure at least, a prescription for permanent war...

...Permanent war is intolerable...

...And so long as the choice is framed as a choice between retention of the entire West Bank, on the one hand, and the creation of an autonomous Palestinian state, on the other, it is no choice at all...

...To the manor born...

...he actually expressed Israel's thanks to the assembly, an expression which was not required, but was surely fitting...

...we are discussing the real world, not bizarre fantasies that would obviously change all the rules...

...He was, in all respects, an absolute anachronism, utterly unlike Rabin, Peres, Allon, the "younger" generation we had grown accustomed to, different even from the older generation, from Golda and Eshkol and Ben-Gur-ion, all those who had so thoroughly reviled him—and taught us to...

...It was incomprehensible to him that it could have happened spontaneously...

...Begin...at the Beginning check one: The Prime Minister of Israel is ? a superhawk ? a freedom fighter ? a courtly gentleman ? a zealot ? a statesman ? all of the above ? none of the above ? not sure LEONARD FEIN Astonishing...

...Only Begin himself could provide the solution...

...It is hard to imagine Begin moving in that direction, for reasons both moral and tactical...

...The economic perspectives may now be more compatible, but the religious perspectives are more discordant...

...Disagreeable...

...But I can add that I would much prefer to say "I was wrong" than to say "I told you so...

...Would that not be a good thing, and shouldn't we...

...it is scarcely begun, and it does not take away one whit from the success of its beginning to propose that we are obliged to be wary in the weeks and months ahead...

...he should be better informed...

...Now, one can be adamantly opposed to an autonomous Palestinian state without necessarily being adamantly opposed to Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank...

...on the other side, with some withdrawal, with some response to Arab Palestinianism, a chance—perhaps no more than that—for peace...

...Carter apparently does) a West Bank "entity," tied somehow to Jordan, that would be something other than a Palestinian state...

...I was asked that question, in rather more sinister phrasing, just a week ago by a friend of mine, an official of the American government...

...Speaking to the UJA...

...In this regard, he showed what seemed a genuine respect and admiration for American Jewry...

...I suppose that I am bound to confess that I have had to learn to deal with my own instinctive antipathy to the new Prime Minister...

...And the response, more often than not, went, "Shame on you for using a debater's trick...

...In mid-July, I watched the answer—Menahem Begin—in two virtuoso performances...

...So a historic impropriety was now being corrected...

...And the day after Israel's elections, therefore, total shock...

...signals, perhaps, but hardly marching orders, not even instructions...

...Through all these 29 years, the non-Orthodox among us knew that Israel's leaders were as distressed by the Orthodox hegemony in Israel as we ourselves were...

...Yet that is a real prospect, and the current tide of good feelings should not lead us to neglect it...

...In his emphatically stated view, the introduction of a Palestinian state into the region would be a prescription for permanent war...

...they...

...He combined a somewhat studied self-deprecatory humor with an aggressive reasonableness, and he accomplished his first and most important goal: he established his credentials as a fit incumbent of his new office...

...A center of revan-chism, of resentment, of resistance...

...We were playing for time, hoping against hope for the one solid answer to our new problem...

...to the question of whether more rather than less of us choose to make our homes in Israel...

...And it is possible that Begin's adamant opposition to Palestinian autonomy is merely tactical, a clever political hard line intended to push the point of compromise towards a Jordanian solution...

...No, I said, nothing like that...

...It is intolerable whether it results from Palestinian autonomy or from Israeli immobility...

...Richard Nixon was President of the United States, and I never felt bound to admire him...

...Six months ago, in a discussion of Israel-Diaspora relations, someone observed that it would enormously complicate our lives were Begin to come to power...

...Possible, but against the background of his statements thus far, not very likely...

...He spoke, instead, confidently (not stridently), carefully, and in some measure convincingly...

...And he was, to use the over-used word, wholly charismatic...

...The fact that he is Israel's Prime Minister matters, but not all that much— after all...

...Will they, for example, be encouraged to leave...

...the task of bringing peace and tranquility to Israel...

...As if he'd been in daily touch with American Jewish leadership for decades, rather than a person many American Jews had regarded as a kind of Israeli version of Meir Kahane...

...Was it really the case, he wanted to know, that the word had been passed from the Presidents' Conference to the rabbis, from the rabbis to the congregants, thence throughout the community...

...Carter and Mr...

...The stakes here are entirely too large to seek personal vindication...

...but it must be said: short of events so horrible that they ought not be spoken out loud, there is no prospect whatsoever for such large-scale aliyah...

...That is no longer the case...

...Edmund Burke once said, and wisely, that most political decisions involve a choice "between the intolerable and the disagreeable...

...Could one really imagine, for example, Menahem Begin addressing the annual conference of the United Jewish Appeal...

...For what becomes of them determines, in central measure, what becomes of Israel...

...There are approximately one million Arabs who live in the West Bank and in Gaza, and one must ask what would become of them if Begin's proposals were accepted...

...Curious, that...

...Will they be granted something less than full citizenship...

...Then what is to be done...

...It gives me no special pleasure to say it...

...But let us suppose that Mr...

...therefore, the answer could only come from there...

...But that is what Begin has told us...

...Be wary...

...But the exigencies of coalition building in Israel, and Mr...

...His language was studded with apt Biblical citations...

...As if he'd been receiving leading journalists all his life, instead of living most of it as an ignored leader of what was commonly regarded as a fringe group rather than an opposition party...

...And that is why we must be wary, we who care for Israel...

...Begin and his advisors know something we do not know, and believe that somehow they can persuade the Arabs, the Palestinians, and the Americans to accept permanent Israeli control over the West Bank...

...on both occasions, it rose when he left to greet Menahem Begin...

...But intolerable only to those who would stay blind to the fact that Israel's primary claim and primary need is to life, not to land...

...And finally, President Carter's own blunders during the weeks immediately following the Israeli election, a series of statements so ill-advised that our attention was diverted from the "Begin problem" to the American problem...

...The first evidence convinces us that Mr...

...It's not quite so simple as that...

...Begin's own predispositions, give rise to proper concern that in another and surely not less critical respect, we are in for hard times...

...On each of the two occasions, the audience rose on Begin's entry to greet Israel's Prime Minister...