Word: shamir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During his years in power, Begin so thoroughly dominated Israeli life by the sheer force of his personality that his sudden exit from politics was sure to usher in a period of instability. Shamir will not find it easy to fill the void left by the indomitable Begin, who could make peace with Egypt and wage war in Lebanon. But Begin's successor will probably be a transitional leader, as unlikely to respond to bold initiatives as to launch them. That will make it all the more difficult for him to sort out Begin's troubled, and troublesome...
...favors regular hours and punctilious habits, but admires, and often exemplifies, a debonair style. He savors jokes, but does not tell them. And even though he rarely raises his voice, he has always been fired by passionate convictions. As Menachem Begin's successor, Yitzhak Shamir, 67, is at once less strident and more uncompromising than his former boss. Instead of denouncing or defending Begin's policies, the small (5 ft. 4 in.) man with deep-set eyes and a shock of gray-black hair may simply take to investing them with his distinct brand of quiet, guarded authority...
Ever since his youth in Rozana, Poland (as Yitzhak Yezernitzky), Shamir has dedicated himself to militant Zionism. While a law student at the University of Warsaw, he threw all his energies into Vladimir Jabotinsky's aggressive movement pledged to the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. After emigrating to British-ruled Palestine in 1935, Shamir entered the law school of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, only to drop out in 1937, as the Arab revolt against the burgeoning Jewish presence in Palestine intensified. That same year, he joined Irgun Zrai Leumi (National Military Organization), the radical terrorist group...
When Jewish Nationalist Avraham Stern formed an even more bellicose splinter group, the Lohamei Herut Israel (Israel Freedom Fighters) in 1940, Shamir promptly enlisted and began acting on Stern's assumption that Zionism's principal foe was not Germany but Britain. He soon became a leader of the notorious, sometimes ruthless "Stern Gang," which in 1944 assassinated the British resident minister in Cairo, and is believed to have committed the 1948 murder of Swedish U.N. Mediator Folke Bernadotte. Twice Shamir was imprisoned by the British, and twice he escaped. In 1941 he stole out of detention, grew...
...Israel, and made four trips to Western Europe to argue against the European Community's 1980 Venice Declaration, which recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization and called for a Palestinian state. He also struck up what one aide calls an "instant chemistry" with U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. Shamir's only major blemish appeared last February when the Kahan commission of inquiry reprimanded him severely for having failed to verify early reports of the massacre of more than 700 Palestinians in two Beirut refugee camps. Despite that omission, his standing within Israel remains unshakable. Says a U.S. official...