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On June 30, he died at age 96. Hillary Clinton said he "work(ed) for Israel's independence....strengthened (its) security, and advanced the partnership between the United States and Israel."Shimon Peres hailed him as "a brave warrior....a great patriot and lover of Israel who served his country with integrity."
Netanyahu said he "fought for the freedom of the Jewish people in its land." He "belonged to the generation of giants who founded the State of Israel and fought for the freedom of the Jewish people."
They didn't explain how. They omitted his criminal legacy. More on that below.
Born Yitzhak Yezernitzky in Ruzinoy, Poland, he left Warsaw for Palestine in 1935. In 1937, he joined the terrorist Irgun gang. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin led it. It followed hardline Ze'ev Jabotinsky's "Revisionist Zionism."
He argued that peaceful coexistence with Arabs was untenable. He advocated violent confrontations. Jews had to build "an iron wall of (superior) military force," he believed. At issue was using Jewish might to remove, slaughter, and/or subjugate them.
Irgun and Lehi were responsible for the 1946 King David Hotel attack. It massacred 92 Brits, Arabs and Jews. Dozens of others were wounded. David Ben-Gurion approved it. Begin led it. Shamir was directly involved.
In 1940, he joined Avraham Stern's Lehi. It was more extremist than Irgun. After British forces killed Stern in 1942, he, Nathan Friedman-Yellin and Israel Sheib comprised its troika leadership.
Jointly with Irgun in April 1948, it committed the Deir Yassin massacre. An eyewitness described the horror, saying:
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