STAGE

A new play about Menachem Begin has been rejected by Jerusalem’s upcoming Israel Festival because its treatment of the 75-year-old former Israeli leader was considered too fanciful. In one controversial scene, Begin fantasizes about ordering a strike against Germany in retaliation for the Nazi Holocaust in which 6 million Jews, including his parents and brother, were killed. In another, he imagines being mobbed by admirers after ending his self-imposed seclusion. In reality, Begin unexpectedly resigned as prime minister six years ago and shut himself in his two-story apartment at the edge of the Jerusalem pine forest.