Israel Shamir - Career

Career

On his website, Shamir states that, after dropping out of law studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem some time after the Yom Kippur War, he took up journalism and writing. He says that he was initially a journalist for Israel Radio, before becoming a freelance journalist, and covered the latter stages of the war in South East Asia (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia). He says that he joined the BBC in 1975, moving to London, before moving to Japan (1977–79), writing for Maariv and others. In 1980 he says that he returned to Israel, and says that he wrote for Haaretz.

After a career in journalism, Shamir says that he focussed on other writing, particularly translation. Shamir states that he translated various works of Shmuel Yosef Agnon (Nobel Prize for Literature, 1966) from Hebrew into Russian (1981–2004), as well as Chaim Herzog's The Arab-Israeli Wars (1986). Other works he says that he translated include a 2006 annotated translation of Abraham Zacuto's 15th century history of the Jews, Sefer Hayuhasin (The Book of Lineage). With the outbreak of the First Intifada in 1987 Shamir says that he went to Russia and wrote about the political changes until 1993, for newspapers including Pravda and the extreme nationalist Zavtra, before returning to Israel.

Shamir writes about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish people. Several of his books have been translated into a range of languages. Shamir did not publish in English until January 2001, after the beginning of the Palestinian Second Intifada in September 2000. As he put it, "Israeli attacks on Palestinians forced him to give up literature and turn to politics." An article in the Russian-language Israeli newspaper Vesti was cited by Christopher Hitchens in 2001 as "a brilliant reply to Wiesel".

The French edition of Shamir's Flowers of Galilee was initially co-published in October 2003 by Éditions Blanche and Éditions Balland, and was prominently displayed in large bookshops. It was withdrawn from sale at the end of October after Balland's director had his attention drawn to the content of the book, which he considered anti-semitic. The book was republished in 2004 by Éditions Al-Qalam, which led to a court case (a civil case brought by the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme (LICRA),) with the publisher sentenced to three months in prison (suspended) and a 10,000 euro fine, and the banning of the book. The ban was overturned on appeal, and the fine reduced.