The Immovable Object
His country is changing, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refuses to soften a lifelong commitment to his vision of the land of Israel
U.S. officials thought Shamir would have a hard time turning down $10 billion in housing loan guarantees to ease the way for up to 1 million Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the next few years, immigrants that are vital to Israel's future. He didn't, and he has brushed aside questions about why he chose settlements over the paramount Zionist goal of immigration. "Settlements are only an obstacle to one thing, a Palestinian state," Shamir declared.
Instead of slowing settlements, Shamir's government accelerated them, but without the fanfare that Shamir's Likud predecessor, Menachem Begin, used to open new settlements. Shamir thought he could avoid a confrontation with the United States by building settlements quietly. He has an almost mystical belief that if one does not make noise, issues will slide out of sight and Israel will be saved by events.
Underground past. Shamir's belief that things are best done decisively but quietly comes naturally to him. He was born Yitzhak Yzernitsky in 1915, in the Belarussian town of Rozhnoi. His father, Shlomo, was a member of the anti-czarist underground, and Yitzhak joined a socialist-Zionist youth movement, only to become disillusioned at a young age, saying Jews needed to fight if they were to obtain a state. At 20, he immigrated to Palestine, and in 1937 he joined the Irgun Zvai Leumi, the Jews' underground national military organization, which was attacking both Arab and British targets in its effort to free Palestine from British control. It was in the underground that Shamir met his future wife, Shulamit.
When Britain went to war with Nazi Germany in 1939, the mainstream Zionist underground stopped its attacks against the British. Shamir, however, joined the more violent Lehi, the Lohamei Herut Israel (Fighters for Israel's Freedom), which continued the war against the British. Shamir's nom de guerre in the Lehi was "Michael," which he took from Michael Collins, an Irish revolutionary who also fought the British but agreed to the partition of Ireland in 1921. Collins was killed by his colleagues, who considered him a traitor for allowing the partition of Ireland. As a member of the Lehi's ruling triumvirate, Shamir ordered the execution of one of his own colleagues, Eliyahu Giladi, for alleged recklessness. Shamir later named his only daughter Gilada, but he refuses to discuss the incident.
"Michael's" orders. One old Lehi comrade privately explains Shamir's style as a leader of the underground, where among other things he helped plan the 1944 killing of Lord Moyne, the head of the British Foreign Office's Middle East bureau. "'Michael' was tough and at the same time took no chances. When he planned the assassination of Lord Moyne, he reviewed every detail thoroughly. The two assassins were caught because they flouted 'Michael's' instructions." Shamir himself was arrested two times during his years in the underground, but he escaped each time.
While he was imprisoned by the British in Eritrea, he met Vietnamese revolutionary Doung Bash-Mai, who taught him about Marxism. But there is no indication that Shamir ever embraced communism or any other political philosophy. He remained partial to the Soviet Union during the first years after the founding of Israel, but that was because of Moscow's anti-British outlook, not its ideology.
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