Former Israel Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir Dies at 96: A Personal Memory
Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir has just died at the age of 96. Rather than discuss his broader career, I’d like to tell you about my most memorable meeting with him.
It was January 13, 1991. Everyone in the world knew that in 48 hours, a U.S.-led coalition was scheduled to attack Iraq in order to force Saddam Hussein’s withdrawal from Kuwait. Saddam had announced that if the coalition attacked he would strike at Israel with long-range missiles, possibly with biological or chemical warheads.
I was asked by a visiting American delegation to accompany it to a meeting with the prime minister. We arrived at the prime minister’s office and went to his quite modest meeting room. Along with Shamir was Elyakim Rubinstein, then the cabinet secretary but today a Supreme Court justice. I won’t tell you his name but the group’s leader, let’s call him Mr. Bird, later held high diplomatic positions in the U.S. government.
Shamir sought to break the ice with a friendly question. “So,” he said to the delegation’s leader, “how long are you planning to be here? A week?”
I don’t know if he was joking about the impending deadline but a look of pure fear and panic leaped onto Mr. Bird’s face. “Are you kidding!” His voice shook with dismay. “We’re getting out of here tomorrow!” (Those were his precise words.)
Almost immediately, however, he realized that he was making himself look like a fool. He tried to calm down and recover. So he added, albeit with equal ham-handedness, “But I guess you have to stay here.” (Honest, that’s what he said.)
Rubinstein answered with a big smile on his face: “Oh, no. We don’t have to stay here. We just happen to like it here.” I will never forget the even bigger smile on Shamir’s face. Mr. Bird and all the little birds who fancied themselves great statesmen and Middle East experts had no idea what had just happened.
The rest of the meeting was mere anti-climax. Shamir did what he had to do during the war that followed. More than three dozen missiles hit Israel but Shamir kept to his promise to the U.S. government, that Israel would remain passive and let the Americans go after the launchers in western Iraq. Some American anti-missile crews came to Israel. The defensive missiles didn’t do much good and the U.S. government didn’t keep its promise to reward Israel after the war, though U.S. aid for Israeli missile systems continues to this day.
Shamir was not a charismatic man. He didn’t appear enough during the war to reassure Israelis and to provide public leadership. Still, he did what he needed to do. Whatever my policy disagreements with him, Shamir, like Yitzhak Rabin, was an honest man of Spartan habits who genuinely sought to serve his people.
Compared to the arrogant foreign politicians who always thought they knew better what Israel should do and the know-it-alls who would have quickly run away if faced by similar problems, Shamir was modest, rock steady, and more concerned with doing what he thought to be right than what he expected to look good in the mass media.
He helped build a country that is—as any Israeli will tell you in the first sixty seconds—far from perfect but also one where people in the shadow of a threatened war of extinction could remain cool-headed, do what is necessary, and say, “We just happen to like it here.”
May his memory be blessed.
Note: A friend says of the New York Times obituary of Shamir that it reads as if it came from a Hamas newspaper. I’ll leave the punchline to you.
Amen.
Precious!
Shamir certainly achieved much in his career however his failure to defend against Iraqi missiles and his forcing Rabbi Kahane out of the Knesset caused damage that we are still suffering from.
May his soul rest in peace. He was indeed one of the old guard leaders, like David Ben Guryon, Menachem Begin, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin who indeed sought to serve their nation, living in modesty uncommon for heads of states.
As for liking it here, in international surveys where people of different nations are asked about their subjective level of happiness Israel consistently ranks in the top ten, among the Scandinavians. Go figure. In 2012 Israel came 6th after Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria, and before Finland, Australia, Canada and Sweden:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-happiest-countries-in-the-world.html?page=all
Odd, isn’t it? It’s not out of ignorance about living conditions in other countries either – Israelis are on average among the best traveled nations in the world and it’s the second most educated country after Canada. Hey, maybe we’re happy because we travel a lot?
My guess is that Jews are pretty happy just having our own country. Just think of the improvement compared to previous generations. I’m certainly happy for having a measure of control on our lives and the ability to defend ourselves, which I guess most Westerners just take for granted.
One slight cavil here concerning what is omitted/elided in the account of Shamir’s decision to hold back on retaliatory strikes against Iraq in the course of the first gulf war (Desert Storm. Once Iraqi airspace had been effectively neutralized in wake of the US intervention, Shamir gave the order for Israeli F16s to overfly Iraq. This act, at once, demonstrated the wisdom and valence of the decision to have stood down (even after jets had been prepared to launch retaliatory strikes) and drove the Bush 41 administration and top American military brass up the wall. As we can see in retrospect, this demonstration proved an entirely condign coda under the circumstances!
The Times editorial does indeed read as if it came from Hamas or a similar source. It is unrelentingly anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Shamir. It unrelentingly denies Israel’s history, right to any part of the land of Israel as designated under the Balfour Declaration, British Mandate, and San Remo Convention, and unanimously adopted by unanimous resolution of the UN, which gave Israel the land “from the river to the sea.” Under the view of this extraordinarily partisan editorialist, nothing that anyone has ever done to strengthen or even support Israel’s right to Judea and Samaria, or even to Jerusalem, is good, right, or philosophically acceptable. My one wish is that they all live in Gaza, Syria, Iran, Egypt, or any other Moslem country under the tyranny of Islamism. Then, they can editorialize to their heart’s content, enjoying all the peace and freedom…they’re allowed to have.
I didn’t even bother looking at it. The Times is, if possible, getting even worse these days.
Amen, Barry. A taste of their own medicine would be just the thing.
Thanks for the tip Arlene and I am glad you did your research. Stay away from these creeps.
I am afraid I will not be very popular here, but I did not see too much that was unfair. Shamir was a hardliner, his policies of encouraging Jewish settlement on the West Bank led to the first Intifilda and led to Israel being isolated in the world. Anybody who thinks that Israel can control the West Bank forever and kept its Arab majority under control or massively expel the Arabs is living in unreality. Mr. Ben Yakov’s support of kooky Kahane indicates he perfers the latter fantasy.
You suck. You hate all the people around? you. You don’t really know what good music is.. You hate real music. You all know is to watch —-! STUPID.