Blending Sincerity with Style

He 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. "He is," says a Jerusalem editor, "the only man I know who can strut while he's sitting down."

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 whose subsequent leader was Menachem Begin.

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 a full beard and traveled around the country disguised as a rabbi; in 1946 he helped fellow prisoners in Eritrea tunnel their way to freedom, fled to Ethiopia and sought asylum in France. When the British quit Palestine in 1948, following the creation of the state of Israel, Shamir returned at last to Tel Aviv. He later entered the shadowy realm of Israel's intelligence agency, MOSSAD. It was not until 1969, after he had become the manager of a small rubber fac tory, that Shamir began to attend meetings of Begin's Herut Party. Employing his adroit administrative skills, he established a department to attract members from the flood of Jewish immigrants who had arrived in the wake of the 1967 war. In 1973, he won a seat in the Knesset and, following his re-election four years later, he was appointed Speaker of the body. Although Shamir had irritated Begin by refusing to support the Camp David agreements, the Prime Minister recognized in him an invaluable ally. In 1980 Begin made Shamir his Foreign Minister.

The onetime guerrilla surprised many critics by managing his new position with competence and cool. He met four African leaders in the hope of regaining their diplomatic recognition of 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 who knows him well: "He's a tough son of a gun." Adds an admiring aide: "Shamir does not shoot from the hip. He is a good listener and a good reader." That useful blend of tenacity and watchfulness will now be put to the test. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.