At memorial for Yitzhak Shamir, Lapid says former PM’s greatest legacy was unity

At a state memorial ceremony for former prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, Prime Minister Yair Lapid lauded the late leader’s ability to compromise and work with others while maintaining his ideology.

“Shamir believed that there was one Israel, and that the role of leaders was to unite and bring its sons and daughters together, not to spur on disagreements,” Lapid says, while recalling Shamir’s rotation agreement with his ideological foe Shimon Peres. “Shamir understood that the Israeli people, and certainly the Zionist majority, has more in common than what divides us…. He refused to see his people torn apart. He refused to allow the country to stop functioning.”

Lapid suggests that Shamir’s “greatest legacy, was unity…. Shamir’s words, and primarily his deeds, should serve as a beacon of truth for us all. He did not speak in terms of right or left, but in terms of mutual respect and shared fate against those who sought to divide our nation and to set brother against brother.”