Background and Personal Life
Shamir says that he was born Izrail Schmerler in Novosibirsk, Siberia in 1947. He states that he was born to Jewish parents. According to Shamir, he read mathematics and law at Novosibirsk University. He states that he moved to Israel in 1969, served as paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces, and fought in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After the war he says that he returned to his study of law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but then abandoned this in favour of a career in journalism.
Norman Finkelstein is quoted by Tablet magazine as saying of Shamir "He has invented his entire personal history. Nothing he says about himself is true".
According to Searchlight, which describes him as a "Swedish anti-semite", Shamir was registered in Sweden in 1984 and later gained Swedish citizenship, in 1992. He left Sweden for Russia and then Israel in 1993, before returning in 1998, having remarried in Israel in July 1994. However, others argue that Swedish files show that he was married in Sweden. He was known as Jöran Jermas from 2001 to 2005, before changing his name to Adam Ermash, although continuing to use "Israel Shamir" as a penname. According to Shamir, these name changes were necessary "in order to safeguard my private life and to manage to travel without harassments from political adversaries."
In 2004 Shamir was baptized into the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem by Archbishop Theodosios (Atallah) Hanna of Sabastia and given the name Adam.
According to his website, Shamir "lives in Jaffa and spends much time in Moscow and Stockholm". He has three sons, one of whom is the Swedish journalist Johannes Wahlström.
Read more about this topic: Israel Shamir
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