Ester Shamir in her final interview: “Now the farewell has become real”

The respected creator and singer Ester Shamir died today, Thursday, after a long battle with cancer. Last week, her final interview was broadcast on the main edition of Kan News, conducted by the head of culture, Dorit Asraf Mizrahi. In the open and painful interview, Shamir shared her feelings about the severe illness and voiced sharp criticism of the country’s leadership.

The struggle for life and thoughts about the end

In the interview, Shamir spoke with unusual candor about the advanced stages of her illness: “These are not simple days healthwise, but okay, relatively. There are worse days. I am in a battle with metastatic breast cancer, at a difficult point, where every day is critical, and we hope for the best.” When the interviewer asked whether thoughts of parting were already arising in her, Shamir replied with a bitter smile: “All the time. First of all, I have had thoughts of parting since the day I was born. Now it has become real.”

Alongside her personal medical struggle, Shamir remained attentive and engaged with what was happening in the country. In the interview, she recounted a moment of deep disappointment with the political echelon at the end of October, בעקבות a late-night post by the prime minister that absolved him of responsibility: “On October 28 the prime minister took responsibility and I went to sleep happy. I woke up to drink water at one in the morning, and then he tweeted that it wasn’t his fault, it was this one and that one and that one.”

At that moment, Shamir said, she felt a strong urge to write what was on her mind. The text she wrote that night: “Late at night the prime minister tweeted to me: ‘It’s not me who is to blame, it’s him and him and him.’ And my heart was eased of its pain, and I was happy that he had time to tweet, because that surely means all the children came home.”

Shamir closed her last words in the interview with pain over the state of the country, in what now takes on the meaning of a kind of ideological testament: “Thank God, the hostages came back, but our country is in a bad place.” The final interview of Ester Shamir | Photo: from the main edition on Kan News 10 10 0:00 / 1:16