Born in Belarus (Russia). At the University of Warsaw, he organized a self-defense group of Jewish students to counter harassment by anti-Semites on campus. He be- came a disciple of Jabotinsky and after arriving in Pales- tine, he became the leader of the Irgun (an underground Zionist paramilitary organization). On February 1, 1944, he proclaimed a revolt against the British mandatory government in Palestine seeking an independent Jew- ish state. He became Israel’s prime minister in 1977, and in 1979 signed a historic peace treaty with Egypt, for which he and Anwar Sadat shared the Nobel Prize for Peace. In 1981 he ordered the successful destruction of the Iraqi nuclear facility.
