Menachem Begin

Menachem Begin was the 6th Prime Minister of Israel, serving from 1977 to 1983. His surprising victory in the May 1977 national elections ended twenty-nine years of Mapai and Labor Party domination of the political process in Israel. This brought to power a government even more committed than Labor to the Samson Option and the necessity of an Israeli nuclear arsenal. Begin and his political followers represented a populist-nationalist view of a greater Israel with a right to permanent control of the West Bank.¹

Begin's successful Camp David summit with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978 was seen by some American intelligence officials as a reason for Jimmy Carter's decision to provide Israel with access to KH-11 satellite photographs.¹

Begin's decision to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak bombing in June 1981 was a significant event. Despite opposition from some within the Israeli intelligence community, including Yitzhak Hofi, the director of Mossad, and Major General Yehoshua Saguy, chief of military intelligence, Begin proceeded with the attack. He unilaterally announced the successful bombing, stunning his colleagues, and defended the operation by stating that another Holocaust would have occurred if the reactor had not been destroyed.¹

Following the Osirak bombing, Begin made a controversial statement at a British diplomatic reception, claiming that the Israeli planes had also destroyed a secret facility buried forty meters below the reactor at Osirak, which was intended for the assembly of Iraqi nuclear bombs. Israeli officials knew this description was not of a facility in Iraq, but rather of a secret underground facility in Israel at Dimona. They attempted to downplay his remarks by stating he had misspoken and that the facility was only four meters deep.¹

In August 1981, the newly reelected Begin government appointed Ariel Sharon as defense minister. Begin and Sharon traveled to Washington, D.C. in September to advocate for a U.S.-Israeli strategic cooperation against the Soviet Union.¹

Unlike many Israelis who had immigrated from Eastern Europe, Begin had a strong hatred of Communism and the Soviet Union. He and his family had fled to eastern Poland after the 1939 German blitzkrieg and, like many Zionists, were arrested by Soviet troops and expelled to a Siberian gulag, only to be released into a hastily assembled Polish contingent of the Red Army after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia.¹

By all accounts, Begin had never visited Dimona before becoming prime minister, nor was he especially well informed about it. His initial briefings on sensitive national security matters were provided by the outgoing prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli signals intelligence expert, recalled that Begin strongly endorsed Dimona's plans for the nuclear targeting of the Soviet Union. Begin went a step further, according to Ben-Menashe, by giving orders to target more Soviet cities. This increased targeting created a heightened demand for American satellite intelligence.¹