Army Radio reported on Tuesday that during the funeral of Israel's seventh prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, burglars broke into Shamir's daughter Gilada's home, stole jewelry and escaped. The Israel Police has begun an investigation and currently no suspects have been identified. Shamir was laid to rest Monday evening at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Family members, government officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, as well as prominent members of the Ethiopian community were in attendance. Shamir served intermittently as prime minister from 1983 to 1992 as the head of the Likud party. Before entering politics, he worked for Israel's foreign intelligence service, the Mossad, and was a member of the Revisionist underground movements Irgun and Lehi in pre-state Israel. Soon after his health began to fail in the early part of the last decade, he took residence at a Herzliya nursing home, where he stayed until his death. He is survived by two children, Gilada and Yair, and five grandchildren. As prime minister, Shamir presided over one of the largest waves of Jewish immigration, or aliyah. The biggest endeavor involved the absorption of hundreds of thousands of Soviet Jews who had been allowed to emigrate by the communist regime. Shamir even encouraged Washington policymakers to make Jews go through many hoops before they could arrive in the U.S., hoping that such red tape would have them choose Israel instead. Shamir also launched Operation Solomon, in which 14,400 Ethiopian Jews were airlifted into Israel. Shamir won the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement and contribution to the state in 2001.
