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“The unavoidable lesson to be learned from abandoning the Gaza Strip, from the Oslo Agreements, and from the experiences of 2002 and 2008, is a solitary one: neither Hamas extremists nor PLO moderates see the two-state solution as the final culmination to the conflict. Instead, it is only one stage on the road to transforming the entire area from the sea to the river into one state. The extreme and bitter responses, in all languages, to the Prime Minister’s Bar Ilan speech testify to their speakers’ intentions, for these men do not accept the right of the Jewish People to sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael. They see Eretz Yisrael as Holy Palestine.”
These remarks were made by Minister Benny Begin in the “Jabotinsky Lecture,” which he delivered at the Jabotinsky Institute, marking the 69th anniversary of Zeev Jabotinsky’s death. A packed audience of over 150 men and women filled the museum to hear “the man who came in from the (geological) cold” four months ago to renew his political life as a senior Likud figure and a minister in the Netanyahu government.
In his lecture, On Recognizing the Reality, Minister Begin explained, “Had there been some sort of international competition on the topic of recognizing reality, Jabotinsky would have placed in the small group of grand-masters on the topic. He was a grand-master by virtue of his natural abilities, his knowledge, and his readiness to see the stark reality, with no whitewashing, with no illusions.”
The minister added, “Jabotinsky’s knack of recognizing reality in the sense of “reading” the reality was a phenomenon within itself. His opponents erred the entire way, yet he always spoke the truth. As a statesman, Jabotinsky knew how to clarify the details and thus how to comprehend the reality.”
Minister Benny Begin opened his remarks by praising the Jabotinsky Institute, where the staff “collects and disseminates the material–a task that demands great vigor, vision and attention to detail. When someone reads the distorted, others will come and read this to extract the truth.”
“Fifty years ago,” Benny Begin recalled, “at a memorial evening for Rosh Beitar, my blessed father cried, ‘Jabotinsky lives!’ And I said to myself, ‘Could this be? For indeed, the man is dead.’ Yet today, 69 years after his death, Jabotinsky is still being deliberated with, not as if he’s dead, but as if he were alive and with us. This is a rare phenomenon. Jacobinsky truly lives.”
Prior to his lecture, Minister Begin met with representatives of the Institute’s administration and discussed the institution’s needs. He gave his word to attend to all of the subjects that were raised.
In photo: Minister Benny Begin with Jabotinsky Institute chairman Peleg Tamir (l) and director general Yossi Ahimeir.
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