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The Lessons of Yitzhak Shamir
(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - The victory of the Zionist movement to create the State of Israel was won despite long odds, desperate hardships and grievous costs in blood. The men and women who battled those odds did so in the face of the conventional wisdom of their day that told them they had no chance of forcing the British Empire to make good on its promise to create a National Home for the Jews or to defeat an Arab and Muslim world determined to crush the newborn state. They needed not only courage but also an iron will and the patience to bear great suffering while never losing sight of their goal. No person embodied those attributes more than Yitzhak Shamir. As one of the leaders of the Lehi (the acronym in Hebrew for the Freedom Fighters of Israel) but better known abroad as the Stern Gang, it is true Shamir participated in and ordered terrorist attacks on British soldiers and civilian leaders who were carrying out the policies that were preventing Jews seeking to escape the Holocaust from coming to Palestine. Yet by the end of World War II, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine was united in their determination to fight the British, who were determined not to let the Jewish state emerge. After the War of Independence, Shamir's underground skills were made good use of by the country's Mossad intelligence agency where, among other exploits, he helped lead those who killed some of the former Nazi rocket scientists who were working in Egypt to create new weapons to kill Jews.