Hundreds mourn loss of former minister Shulamit Aloni

President Peres eulogizes former education minister, praises her "authentic and real courage" to express difficult truths.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
President Peres and Shulamit Aloni 370 (photo credit: GPO)
President Peres and Shulamit Aloni 370
(photo credit: GPO)
Former education minister Shulamit Aloni was laid to rest in Kfar Shemaryahu on Sunday. Hundreds of people attended Aloni’s funeral, including President Shimon Peres, who worked with her for many years in the world of Israeli politics.
“We have come to bid farewell to Shula, but we will not bid farewell to her ways,” said Peres. “They say that she has gone on to the next world, and so it probably is. But she went, and her world remains, including the best of Hebrew, Judaism and humanity.”
Peres stated that he had known Aloni since his days at the Ben Shemen Youth Village and that she and his late wife Sonia had been close friends.
The president also discussed Aloni’s uniqueness as a politician: “The most impressive thing, that I rarely saw among others, was her public, authentic and real courage, which did not intend to win hearts or make an impression, but intended to express a difficult truth – a painful, stinging, maddening and disappointing truth – and to face it standing tall, breathing deep without surrendering.
To embody spirit, despite all of the disappointments.
Shula barely knew what a majority was, but she always knew what a minority was. What she left behind was expectation and hope – that she always had a future.”
Peres added that Aloni’s truth was not wasted, and those who disagreed with her in the past, could still one day agree with her in the future.