The story goes that when Jimmy Carter heard that a man named Menachem Begin had won the Israeli elections, he asked: “Menachem who?” Menachem Begin did not come out of nowhere. He directed one of the most stormy chapters of twentieth-, century history: the Jewish underground Irgun's war against British rule in Palestine in the 1940's. Afterwards he was for twenty-six years Israel's most prominent opposition leader and, for three years following the 1967 Six-Day War, a minister in the National Unity government. However, when the stunned world heard the news that Menachem Begin was about to become prime minister of Israel—a critical country in a critical region at a critical time—its governments and media had no idea who this man was. The frightened cry, “God Almighty, who is Begin?” echoed in a hundred languages in editorial offices, in foreign ministries, offices of heads of government, and intelligence headquarters.