On Wednesday evening, June 24, Jerusalem’s Menachem Begin Heritage Center will host a screening of Shamir, His Way, an Israeli-made and produced documentary about Israel’s seventh prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. The date coincides with Shamir’s yahrzeit on the Hebrew calendar.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with three figures connected to Shamir’s career. The participants reflect several parts of his public life.
Herzl Makov, the recently retired president of the Begin Heritage Center and a former chief of staff to prime minister Shamir, brings the perspective of a close aide. Elyakim Rubinstein, a former Supreme Court justice and former cabinet secretary to Shamir, represents both the workings of Shamir’s office and the later legal establishment. Yair Stern, chairman of the Freedom Fighters of Israel Heritage Association (LEHI), points to the earlier chapter of Shamir’s life in the pre-state underground.
Shamir, His Way was released in 2021, during a period of renewed interest in films about Israel’s founding generation. The documentary was funded by Yair Shamir, the former prime minister’s son, who has described it as a personal tribute to his late father rather than a broadcaster’s commission.
The film presents Shamir for viewers who may know him mainly through a brief public outline: prime minister in 1983-1984 and 1986-1992, foreign minister, Knesset speaker, and, after 1948, a Mossad operative involved in clandestine missions.
Using archival footage, interviews, and testimony from people who worked with him, the film sketches a portrait consistent with Shamir’s public reputation: terse, disciplined, and difficult to read. It leaves much of the judgment to the viewer.
In a 2024 interview, Yair Shamir said that point mattered to him. Although the film is associated with a second version made for the History Channel – a 90-minute feature assembled from the same material, with some changes – he said the project was his from the outset.
The filmmaking team, Igal Lerner and Erez Fridman, conducted roughly 250 hours of interviews. Yair Shamir said he did not want the documentary to push viewers toward a single conclusion, but to present material and let them decide what to make of his father’s life and accomplishments.
He has also said the film deliberately left out some potentially divisive issues and dramatic stories because he did not want it to become a partisan argument. In the 2024 interview, he said he wanted the documentary to convey a message of unity and to show a form of leadership he described as clean and honest.
Now, five years after its release and after screenings in cities across Israel and abroad, the documentary is returning to a Jerusalem public venue. Shamir, His Way has appeared at about 14 Jewish film festivals and has screened in the United States, Australia, Europe, and throughout Israel.
Yair Shamir continues to attend screenings in Israel, often taking questions afterward. He has said that audience members frequently tell him they learned things about his father that are not widely known. He has also said that relatively little material exists about Yitzhak Shamir and that the filmed interviews were meant, in part, to address that gap.
Any reassessment of Yitzhak Shamir has to account for the contrast between his political longevity and his austere public style. He was not known as an orator and did not cultivate visibility. He often spoke little and gave few unnecessary interviews.
Supporters saw that as steadiness and discipline; critics saw rigidity. Those arguments shaped debates over the peace process, settlement policy, and Israel’s approach to the 1991 Madrid Conference, and they continue to shape assessments of his record.
The roots of Shamir’s reserved leadership
In the 2024 interview, Yair Shamir described his father as fair and honest, and as someone who stayed away from what he called “small political stuff.” He said his father did not act as if he were the smartest person in the room and worked through trusted groups, operating as “first among equals.” In that account, leadership was collective rather than centered on personal stature.
Shamir’s background helps explain some of that style. He emerged from the Lehi (Stern Group) underground with a preference for secrecy and a limited tolerance for sentimentality. He had seen the destruction of Jewish communities in Europe and was later recruited to work in clandestine roles on behalf of the state.
Colleagues and supporters pointed to that history when describing his reserve and consistency; critics pointed to the same traits when arguing that he could be inflexible.
Yair Shamir has also pointed to his father’s role in rebuilding and broadening Herut, the movement that later became the backbone of Likud, including efforts to bring more Mizrahi voices into a party long shaped by Ashkenazi leadership. That patient organizational work, rather than public showmanship, forms part of the story told around Likud’s 1977 victory.
In today’s political culture, where leaders are often judged by their visibility and emotional projection, Shamir can appear markedly different from many of his successors.
Shamir was born Yitzhak Yezernitsky in 1915 in what is Belarus today. He was married to Shulamit Shamir until he died in 2012, and those who knew the family have described a private life warmer than his public image suggested. Yair Shamir recalled that his father was arrested when he was one year old and “came back only after” the establishment of the state in 1948.
In 1956, after Yitzhak Shamir joined the Mossad, the family moved to Paris, where he kept his distance from the local Jewish community to preserve his cover. Yair and his sister attended French public schools. Yair has said that it was only later, after his own military service and flight training, that he and his father began spending regular time together one-on-one.
Shamir’s children, Yair and Gilada, remained central to his private life, though the family stayed largely out of public view. Since his death in 2012, they have also played a part in shaping how he is remembered. A documentary funded and advanced by his son, built on hundreds of hours of interviews and accompanied by the son’s repeated appearances at screenings, is also part of that process.
When Shamir, His Way was released in 2021, it arrived during a period of prolonged political crisis in Israel, when questions about leadership were already close to the surface. Its 2026 return comes in a different setting, but with some of the same issues still in view.
The generation that remembers Shamir firsthand is growing older, while younger audiences are more likely to know him from textbooks, archives, or secondhand political memory.
A screening at the Begin Heritage Center carries its own symbolism. The venue is named for Menachem Begin, whose political relationship with Shamir shaped a major chapter in Israeli public life.
Yair Shamir’s continuous presence at screenings across the country has reinforced the effort to celebrate Yitzhak Shamir’s legacy, giving audiences a chance to ask questions not only about the film but about the man at its center.