The death of Menachem Begin, former Israeli prime minister, of a heart attack at the age of 78, has brought mixed reactions from those who remember him well - just as historians may well give him mixed reviews.
In many ways, his life was a mixture of stark contrasts. A Polish Jew who was wanted by the British as a terrorist during Israel's fight for independence, he later won a Nobel Prize for making peace with Egypt.Begin once bitterly responded to the terrorist label by noting Kenyan Mau Mau leaders were called freedom fighters by the British government. Others were called insurgents or revolutionaries - "Only I am a terrorist. Is that because I was a Jewish freedom fighter?"
Begin and his radical Irgun Zvai Leumi militia had been blamed for the 1946 bombing of Jerusalem's King David Hotel and the 1948 slaughter of more than 250 Arabs in the village of Deir Yassin.
When Israel achieved statehood, he was elected to a place in Israel's first parliament. Ironically, he achieved international respectability when he received the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Anwar Sadat for making peace with Egypt.
In doing so, Begin sacrificed the Sinai Desert, the largest territory seized in the 1967 Middle East war. But he held onto other captured territories, annexing Syria's Golan Heights and populating the West Bank with Jewish settlers.
Begin's road to peace was a shock to many observers, who expected his militant past to take him in more hawkish directions. Instead, he was praised for "widening the circle of peace." His harshest criticism came when he sent the army into Lebanon in 1982 to drive out the PLO.
In 1983, Begin resigned as prime minister without explaining his reasons. Only hours after his death, Yaakov Meridor, a friend from the days of Israel's fight for statehood, revealed what he said was a closely guarded secret - that Begin had resigned because he couldn't cope with the mounting death toll from the Lebanon invasion.
Begin told him he couldn't face the daily anti-war vigils in which protesters outside his home held up placards with the number of Israeli soldiers killed in Israel's least popular war.
So ironically, Begin will be remembered for making peace with Egypt - a major accomplishment no other Israeli leader has equaled - and for leaving office when he couldn't bear the consequences of what many thought was the tragic mistake of the Lebanon war.
Begin's life is a graphic illustration of the complexity of human beings and the mistake that can be made by trying to define someone by giving him a label. Everyone has many labels, and as Begin showed, these labels often can stand in contradiction to each other.