Politics & Power Quote by Yitzhak Shamir

There is a hard-edged realism to Shamir's phrasing: he doesn’t merely criticize the United Nations; he frames distance from it as an act of self-care and self-preservation. “Whoever cares for himself” turns foreign policy into a moral litmus test. The target audience is domestic as much as international: Israelis who might still want legitimacy through multilateral institutions are gently recast as naive, even reckless, for trusting a body portrayed as structurally hostile.

The line works because it smuggles a larger argument into a seemingly plain statement about “bad history.” Shamir compresses decades of diplomatic bruises - General Assembly condemnations, the “Zionism is racism” resolution, repeated friction over settlements and security policy - into a single causal claim: the UN is not an arena where Israel can be treated fairly. If you accept that premise, disengagement stops looking like stubbornness and starts looking like prudence.

The subtext is also about sovereignty. Shamir’s political brand leaned hawkish and distrustful of international constraint; this sentence turns that disposition into common sense. “Distances himself” is personal and deliberate, almost hygienic: the UN becomes something contaminating, an institution you step away from to stay intact. It’s a rhetorical move that preemptively discredits external scrutiny. If the referee is biased, then rules, resolutions, and investigations can be dismissed as theater.

Contextually, it fits an era when Israel’s leaders were balancing military vulnerability with diplomatic isolation, and when appealing to the UN often felt less like protection than indictment. Shamir weaponizes that feeling: not a policy debate, but a survival instinct.