When, as Israel’s then-opposition leader, Menachem Begin first visited the U.S. in 1948, a group of Jewish intellectuals—among them Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt—wrote a fervid letter to the New York Times condemning him and comparing him with the Nazis. Milton Viorst has revived these charges and added fresh and still more preposterous ones in his recent book Zionism: The Birth and Transformation of an Ideal, arguing that Begin’s prime-ministership initiated Israel’s transformation from a bastion of peace and tolerance into a militaristic and belligerent state. To the contrary, writes Moshe Fuksman Shal:

[Begin’s] Ḥerut party, [the precursor to the Likud], became a principal voice for democracy and liberty in Israeli politics. It was Ḥerut that was one of the leading opponents of the martial law that had been imposed on Israel’s Arab population until 1966. This opposition was consistent with Begin’s principled belief in equal rights for all of the country’s citizens.

The party also played a major role in defending freedom of the press, [including for] media outlets on the opposite side of the political map. . . .

Contrary to Viorst’s assertion that Begin was somehow the instigator of a new anti-peace Israel, when Begin agreed to hand over the Sinai peninsula to Anwar Sadat he demonstrated his commitment to peace as an ideal, even at the cost of giving up a key territorial asset. This can be contrasted with the famous statement from the previous Labor government that it would be “better to have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh.”

To Elliott Abrams, Donald Trump’s plan to remove the entire population of Gaza while the Strip is rebuilt is “unworkable,” at least “as a concrete proposal.” But it is welcome insofar as “its sheer iconoclasm might lead to a healthy rethinking of U.S. strategy and perhaps of Arab and Israeli policies as well.” The U.S., writes Abrams, must not only move beyond the failed approach to Gaza, but also must reject other assumptions that have failed time and again. One is the commitment to an illusory stability:

For two decades, what American policymakers have called “stability” has meant the preservation of the situation in which Gaza was entirely under Hamas control, Hizballah dominated Lebanon, and Iran’s nuclear program advanced. A better term for that situation would have been “erosion,” as U.S. influence steadily slipped away and Washington’s allies became less secure. Now, the United States has a chance to stop that process and aim instead for “reinforcement”: bolstering its interests and allies and actively weakening its adversaries. The result would be a region where threats diminish and U.S. alliances grow stronger.

Such an approach must be applied above all to the greatest threat in today’s Middle East, that of a nuclear Iran:

Trump clearly remains open to the possibility (however small) that an aging [Iranian supreme leader Ali] Khamenei, after witnessing the collapse of [his regional proxies], mulling the possibility of brutal economic sanctions, and being fully aware of the restiveness of his own population, would accept an agreement that stops the nuclear-weapons program and halts payments and arms shipments to Iran’s proxies. But Trump should be equally aware of the trap Khamenei might be setting for him: a phony new negotiation meant to ensnare Washington in talks for years, with Tehran’s negotiators leading Trump on with the mirage of a successful deal and a Nobel Peace Prize at the end of the road while the Iranian nuclear-weapons program grows in the shadows.