The Late Yitzhak Shamir

The Late Yitzhak Shamir: Israel's Grittiest Prime Minister – Tablet Magazine

This is an excellent article about Yitzhak Shamir by Daniel Gordis. He writes:

For all the misgivings many now have about Shamir’s intransigence or his specific policies, part of his legacy is that Jews ought not to pretend not to know what, deep down, they know. Yitzhak Shamir knew what he had seen, both in Europe and then in the Arab world, and he knew what it meant. He was no less ambivalent about the Arabs than he was about the Poles and refused to vote for Begin’s peace treaty with Egypt. Presumably in deference to Begin, he abstained; but he made it clear that he thought Israel was paying far too high a price. Today, three and a half decades later, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power in Cairo, and with Israel now missing the Sinai as a buffer, who was wiser? Was it the Nobel Prize-winning Begin who’d turned peacemaker, or Shamir, who had not? Will the sword devour forever? Yes, Shamir sadly believed, it will. Is it possible that he was right?

I continue to pray that he was not, although with each passing day I come to believe that sadly he may indeed have been correct.  My prayers however will forever remain unchanged.  Shalom is always my most fervent prayer.