Yitzhak Shamir -- underground leader, spymaster, parliamentarian and the seventh Prime Minister of the State of Israel – died yesterday. The following description of his life is an edited excerpt from the website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry:
He was born Yizhak Yzernitzky in Ruzinoy, Poland in 1915. He attended Bialystok Hebrew secondary school and at age 14 joined Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Betar youth movement. In 1935 he left Warsaw, where he was studying law, moved to Palestine and enrolled at the Hebrew University.
In 1937, opposing the mainstream Zionist policy of restraint vis-à-vis the British Mandatory administration, Shamir joined the Irgun Tzeva'i Le'umi (Etzel) -- the Revisionist underground organization -- and in 1940 became a member of the small, but more militant, faction led by Avraham Stern, the Lehi (Lohamei Herut Israel -- Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), that broke away from the larger body. There, as part of the leadership troika, he coordinated organizational and operational activities.
Twice arrested by the British -- during and after World War II -- Shamir escaped both times, the second time in 1947 from the British prison camp in Eritrea to neighboring French Djibouti. Granted political asylum in France, he returned to Palestine in 1948 and resumed command of the Lehi until it was disbanded following the establishment of the State of Israel.
Shamir joined Israel's security services in the mid-1950s and held senior positions in the Mossad. He returned to private commercial activity in the mid-1960s and became involved in the struggle to free Soviet Jewry. In 1970 he joined Menachem Begin's opposition Herut party and became a member of its Executive. In 1973 he was elected a Member of Knesset for the Likud party -- a position he held for the next 23 years. Shamir served as Minister of Foreign Affairs between 1980 and 1983. Following the resignation of Menachem Begin in October 1983, Yitzhak Shamir became Prime Minister.
Here are the final two paragraph of a February 16, 1984 address by Prime Minister Shamir to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations:
Sometimes when we are caught up in the problems of the day and weighted down by burdens and anxieties, we should pause and reflect on the great transformation that has taken place in our own lifetimes. Perhaps our greatest source of faith in the future is the knowledge that we have a wonderful and dedicated young generation that is ready and willing to defend the State and to develop it; that is capable of taking the helm in the constant striving to make Israel strong, secure and successful.
We are after all an ancient people with a rich experience both in our own land and in the
dispersion. In the course of our long history, we have experienced Jewish sovereignty over many hundreds of years and its destruction, once and twice. We have behind us an impressive record of achievements, and some blunders as well. This immense wealth of experience provides us with an exceptional guide in our inevitable march toward realizing the age-old Jewish dream of securing the permanent existence of the third Jewish commonwealth. We will continue to build it and strengthen it with confidence, tenacity and wisdom.
Thanks, Rick: A worthy tribute to a worthy Jew. I was always impressed with Mr. Shamir's freedom from humbug and fakery. He was one of a generation of Zionists with an aversion to pious niceties and empty gestures. They knew that meaningless platitudes and demagogic speechifying were luxuries that a people living under the constant threat of pogrom could not afford. So -- very much in the mode of Jabotinsky -- Mr. Shamir became a truth-teller, something the lying schemers with whom he often had to deal and the equally mendacious journalists who reported on him could neither cope with nor appreciate. He was an honorable man in a perverse world that often chooses to dishonor honorable men. There is a line in the Talmud that says, "The place does not honor the man; the man honors the place." Yitzhak Shamir honored every place upon which he stood. May his memory be a blessing.
Posted by: Mannie Sherberg | July 01, 2012 at 07:32 AM
Mannie -- Jabotinsky, Begin, and Shamir shared a common trait: they not only were not afraid to speak the truth as they saw it, but had the courage to risk their lives in support of it, Jabotinsky in the Jewish Legion in WWI that helped produce the Balfour Declaration; Begin in the Irgun; and Shamir in the Lehi. Their combination of words and deeds helped create and then sustain the modern Jewish State. In varying degrees, none of them has yet received his full historical due, and Shamir has received the least thanks of all for his uncharismatic courage. May his memory be not only a blessing but a lesson.
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Just as a human face is only an outer layer and yet is able to reveal that which is within... so too the world reveals its depth to the one who studies it carefully."
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