‘A Moral War of Choice’: The Holocaust’s Impact on Menachem Begin’s National Security Perception

Abstract

This article focuses on one of Begin’s main lessons from the Holocaust – the need in certain historical situations to initiate a war: a moral war by choice.

Begin formulated his world view from the Holocaust in the 1940s. The main lesson was that the Jewish People should never again find themselves in a hopeless and desperate situation that could lead to extermination. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the face of Arab threats of annihilation, he stressed that a preventive attack against an enemy who is planning to annihilate you is the only way to thwart Israel’s destruction. The idea of a preventive attack is based on the legitimate right to national self-defense.

Thus, Begin described the First Lebanon War as a moral war by choice. In the cabinet meeting that voted to launch the war, Begin stated that the alternative to this was a ‘new Treblinka’. He drew a direct line from the Warsaw Ghetto to Beirut. This line was not mere rhetoric; it was Begin’s lessons from the Holocaust that led to the First Lebanon War.