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When Jimmy Carter Met Menachem Begin

(Jerusalem Post) Yehuda Avner - When Menachem Begin met with Jimmy Carter at the White House in July 1977, Begin gave a detailed presentation on the inalienable rights of the Jewish people to Eretz Yisrael. This being the first summit between a Likud premier and an American president, Begin was determined that Carter hear firsthand what he stood for. Carter responded: "Mr. Prime Minister, my impression is that your insistence on your rights over the West Bank and Gaza would...close off all hopes of negotiations." But Begin had readied himself for this encounter and he knew that he and the president were on vastly different trajectories, a no-exit confrontation on the settlement of the biblical heartland. "Mr. President," he said, "I wish to tell you something personal - not about me, but about my generation. What you have just heard about the Jewish people's inherent rights to the Land of Israel may seem academic to you, theoretical, even moot. But not to my generation. To my generation of Jews these eternal bonds are indisputable and incontrovertible truths, as old as recorded time. They touch upon the very core of our national being. For we are an ancient homecoming nation. Ours is an almost biblical generation of suffering and courage. Ours is the generation of Destruction and Redemption. Ours is the generation that rose up from the bottomless pit of Hell." Begin then displayed a map showing the old armistice line as it existed until the 1967 Six-Day War, the so-called "green line." Pointing to Haifa: "The armistice line is hardly 20 miles away from our major port city," and then Netanya: "Our country here was reduced to a narrow waist nine miles wide....Nine miles, Mr. President. Inconceivable! Indefensible!" Then Begin pointed to Tel Aviv: "Here live a million Jews, 12 miles from that indefensible armistice line. And here, between Haifa in the north and Ashkelon in the south" - his finger ran up and down the coastal plain - "live two-thirds of our total population. And this coastal plain is so narrow that a surprise thrust by a column of tanks could cut the country in two in a matter of minutes. For whosoever sits in these mountains" - his fingertips tapped the tops of Judea and Samaria - "holds the jugular vein of Israel in his hands." "Gentlemen, there is no going back to those lines. No nation in our merciless and unforgiving neighborhood can be rendered so vulnerable and survive." "Mr. President," continued Begin, "This is our map of national security, and I use that term in its most unembellished sense. It is our map of survival. And the distinction between the past and the present is just that: survival. Today, our menfolk can defend their women and children. In the past they could not. Indeed, they had to deliver them to their Nazi executioners." And then Begin declared, "Sir, I take an oath before you in the name of the Jewish people - this will never ever happen again."
2003-09-12 00:00:00
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