Menachem Begin's Leadership

Menachem Begin often wrestled with depression. His condition became worse once he had attained the premiership in 1977, when decision-making was sometimes defined by his highs and lows. His autocratic nature led many opponents to either voluntarily leave his circle or be ousted. From the old Revisionists loyal to Jabotinsky's memory (1951) to young upstarts such as Ehud Olmert (1966), to military men Ezer Weizmann (1972) and Moshe Dayan (1979), the pattern of eventual exit remained the same. Begin's need to be respected but unchallenged by his colleagues was reflected in the fact that he was probably the only democratic leader ever to have lost eight consecutive elections, but still continued in office. One former Israeli ambassador to Great Britain commented that while he swayed from ‘elation to depression, from stagnation to hyperactivism, from chaotic disarray to monolithic uniformity’, he was endowed with tremendous stamina and ‘the patience of a hunter in ambush’:

Mapai, too, for its own political interests, had heaped a fair amount of opprobrium on Begin. Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary that the very existence of Herut was ‘a black stain on Israeli democracy’. Yet Begin was an astute practitioner of the black arts of Israeli politics. Until his election, Begin had repudiated most peace proposals and many conciliatory statements.