Yitzhak Shamir, z”l, 96, fighter, leader, true Zionist

Called a tiger, a rock and a giant, by admirers as well as adversaries, Yitzhak Shamir, the seventh prime minister of Israel, was at the forefront of much of recent Jewish and Israeli history and garnered respect for his honesty, stability, and beliefs.

He died this past Shabbat at the age of 96.

Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel from 1983 to 1984 and from 1986 through 1992, and Foreign from 1980 to 1986.

“He was a great man,” said Rabbi Pesach Lerner, Executive Vice President, Emeritus, National Council of Young Israel. “He was an integral part of the modern State of Israel. He fought for the freedom of Israel throughout his life…part of the underground, the IDF, a leader in the government. He was a visionary, but pragmatic and realistic. He will be remembered as a true Jewish leader.”

“Of all the prime ministers of Israel, Yizhak Shamir was the most principled,” said Rabbi Hershel Billet, Rav of the Young Israel of Woodmere. “He never bowed to external pressure. He was prescient when he said, even before the Oslo accords, that the Israelis do not have a “partner” in the Palestinians. Decades of Israeli leaders including members of Mr. Shamir’s own Likud party, including PM Ariel Sharon and the current PM Binyamin Netanyahu, continued to treat the Palestinians as partners. We paid a heavy price in Jewish blood because Shamir’s views were rejected.”

“Shamir was a Jew and a Zionist,” said Naftali Bennett, formerly Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff and co-founder of the movement MyIsrael. “He never wavered, never folded under pressure. He wasn’t religious, but he had a profound belief in the eternity of Am Yisrael and in protection of the land of Israel.” 

Born Yizhak Yzernitzky in 1915 in Ruzhany, Belarus, Shamir studied in a Hebrew school in Bialystok, Poland, joined the Betar youth movement and then studied law at Warsaw University. He left early in 1935 for what was then the British Mandate of Palestine and enrolled in Hebrew University. His parents and two sisters were murdered in the Holocaust; his father was stoned to death by childhood friends in Poland after he escaped from a German death camp train transport. He took on the name Shamir, a substance used to cut the stones of the Temple, that he had used on a forged underground identity card. He met his wife, Shulamit, in a detention camp; they married in 1944 and had two children, Yair and Gilada. Shulamit died in 2011.

In 1937, Shamir joined Etzel (Irgun Tzeva’i Le’umi), an underground organization opposing British rule, and then joined a break away faction led by Avraham Stern, the Lehi (Lohamei Herut Israel-Fighters for the Freedom of Israel) becoming one of the three leaders. He was arrested and escaped twice from the British, the second time from Eritrea. He returned in 1948 to Palestine to the command of Lehi until it was absorbed into the IDF when the State of Israel was established.

He worked in a managerial role in private industry and then served in the Mossad from 1955-1965, and later worked to liberate Jews from the Soviet Union. He joined Menachem Begin’s Herut party in 1970 and in 1973 was elected a member of Knesset for the Likud; remaining there for 23 years. He held various government and ministerial positions. Shamir abstained over the vote for the Camp David Accords because of its proposal to dismantle settlements. As Minister of Foreign Affairs, he achieved closer ties with Washington and initiated diplomatic contacts with many African countries. He became Prime Minister after Menachem Begin resigned in 1983 and then again in 1986 through 1992. During that time, he dealt with the 1991 Gulf War and held off defending against Iraqi missile attacks to population centers in Israel when the U.S. claimed that Israeli attacks would undermine the Arab-U.S. effort, albeit warning the U.S. that there were limits to Israel’s restraint. In October 1991, Shamir attended the Madrid Conference, the initiation of talks between Israel and her neighbors, over his objections and only in exchange for President George H.W. Bush’s approval of loan guarantees to help absorb Soviet Jews. Shamir did not permit the PLO in, Arabs living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza participated jointly with Jordan and the talks were held with no prior conditions.

Also during Shamir’s tenure, he spearhead immigration from the Soviet Union, changing immigrants’ first stop on leaving the USSR from Vienna or the U.S. to Israel so that, as Shamir put it, they could see the choice first hand; many thus remained in Israel, with 450,000 entering between 1989 and 1991. In May 1991, 15,000 Ethiopian Jews were saved and airlifted to Israel in Operation Solomon. Shamir retired from the Knesset in 1996.

He was known to speak his mind and strived to benefit Israel. His daughter said that he was a loving family man. He lived humbly. When he spoke at a ZOA dinner in 1995, he warned of the dangers of the Oslo Accords and the realization that the Arabs are not interested in peace. “The peace will not be a real peace,” he said.  “It is not built on a readiness of these Arabs for a peace with us, but rather on an Arab plan to destroy Israel in stages.” Instead of attempting to make peace with the Arabs, said Shamir, “had we only been patient, we could have witnessed before long the collapse of our most extreme enemies.”

Shamir also supported those building and living in Judea and Samaria. “Israeli settlers are the real defenders of the sacred covenant between the people of Israel and the land of Israel,” he said. “They deserve all the support and solidarity of Jews everywhere.”

Shamir was a leader in the fiery re-establishment of the Jewish homeland, fighting the destructive forces of Europe, the British, and the Arabs, to help re-create a strong and vibrant home for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland in Israel. In a speech in 1984 to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, then Prime Minister Shamir said, “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.”

His intelligence, foresight and fortitude are missed. Yehi Zichro Baruch.