On March 9, 1992, Menachem Begin passed away. Begin, who was born in 1913 in what is now Belarus, immigrated to British Mandatory Palestine in 1913 and was trained under revisionist Zionist and Jewish Legion co-founder Ze'ev Jabotinsky. He became a combat soldier in the Haganah at an early age, but eventually separated and joined the Irgun. A militant Jewish organization known for its harsher tactics, the Irgun was labeled a terrorist organization by the British.In 1977, Begin became Prime Minister of Israel; one of his first official actions was to sign the Peace Treaty with Anwar Sadat of Egypt. He also ordered Operation Opera in 1981, which was the bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Baghdad, Iraq, a move that eliminated Saddam Hussein’s nuclear threats against Israel. In 1982, Begin ordered Operation Peace in Galilee, deploying the Israel Defense Forces to Lebanon in an effort to crush Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) forces that had been raining down rockets and launching terror attacks on northern Israeli cities. His aggressive strategies in Lebanon led to harsh global condemnation of Israel.Begin gained a lot of media attention for his openly harsh criticism of the Zionist leadership’s cooperative approach with the British government. Both Begin and David Ben-Gurion wanted the same thing: a free and independent Jewish state. But they bitterly opposed each other over how they would achieve that goal. The implementation of the British White Paper, which sought to restrict Jewish immigration to Palestine, only further escalated Begin’s and the Irgun’s fervor in their war. While the Haganah fought the Arabs defensively, they also played a diplomatic role with Great Britain; meanwhile, the Irgun had no qualms about fighting both the Arabs and the British, even joining Lehi for some of their operations. The objective was to draw enough international attention to stir sympathy for the Jews and put pressure on the British government. On March 9, 1992, Menachem Begin died after suffering a massive heart attack a few days earlier. He was not buried on Mount Herzl like other Zionist leaders because he had requested to be buried alongside his beloved wife Aliza’s grave on the Mount of Olives facing Jerusalem.