YIZKOR: ARIEL SHARON, LION OF JUDAH (1928-2014)

Contents:

"The State of Israel bows its head over the passing of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon." — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement in which he expressed "deep sorrow" over the news. "His memory will forever be held in the heart of the nation."

“When it was necessary to fight, he stood at the forefront of the most sensitive and painful places, but he was a smart and realistic person and understood well that there is a limit in our ability to conduct wars.” —Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Sharon’s former deputy who took office after the 2006 stroke.

 “A renowned military leader, Mr. Sharon pursued the security of Israel with unyielding determination that was recognized by friends and foes alike.” — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Contents:

Ariel Sharon: Larger than Life: Caroline Glick, National Review, Jan. 11, 2014 — Ariel Sharon, who died today at age 85, after being suspended comatose, between life and death for the past eight years, was the final Israeli prime minister from the generation that fought in the 1948 War of Independence.

Ariel Sharon, the Last Lion of Judaea: Benjamin Kerstein, The Tower,  Jan., 2014 — The passage of Ariel Sharon—soldier, general, politician, and former Prime Minister of Israel—is upon us at long last.

Left for Dead in 1948: The Battle That Shaped Arik Sharon: Mitch Ginsberg, Times of Israel, Jan. 12, 2013 — The formative moment of Ariel Sharon’s life came in May 1948; not with the Declaration of Independence – which he heard on the radio wafting out of an open window on his way to kiss his girlfriend Gali before a mission – but with the battle for Latrun, 11 days later, in which he was left for dead.

Tribute: Larger Than Life: Danny Ayalon, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 11, 2014 —  Ariel Sharon, the leader, was uncompromising in his commitment to the people and the State of Israel.

On Topic Links

Ariel Sharon: A Life in Photographs: Micha Bar-Am, Tablet, Jan. 11, 2014

Sharon: Through the Years: New York Times, Jan. 11, 2014

Ariel Sharon, Audacious General and Decisive Prime Minister, Laid to Rest: Haviv Rettig Gur, Times of Israel, Jan. 13, 2014

Ariel Sharon, Fierce Fighter For His People: Seth Lipsky, New York Post, Jan. 12, 2014

Gaza's 'Parting Gift' to Sharon: A Rocket Attack: David Lev, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 13, 2014

ARIEL SHARON: LARGER THAN LIFE                                                Caroline Glick      

National Review, Jan. 11, 2014                                                                                                                                     

Ariel Sharon, who died today at age 85, after being suspended comatose, between life and death for the past eight years, was the final Israeli prime minister from the generation that fought in the 1948 War of Independence. And as with others of his generation, the growth and development of the country were reflected in his career. Sharon was a dazzling military commander. He was one of the original authors of Israel’s trailblazing counter-terror strategies. The large battles against regular armies that he commanded in the 1956 Suez campaign, the 1967 Six Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War are still taught in military academies around the world for their tactical brilliance.

Sharon was a risk-taker. The most prominent shared quality of his military battles and his political ones was that they were always over high stakes. As a general, Sharon’s gutsiness paid off in spades more often than not. As a politician, the results were less impressive. His two big gambles as a political leader were the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. Although the results of both actions were mixed, Israel could have won the gains it made in both at far less cost, if it had not gone along with Sharon’s plans.

Perhaps the most notable way in which Sharon’s life is a reflection of his country, at least outside of Israel, is that the blood libels published against him in the Western media are of a piece with the overall slander of Israel in the European and U.S. mainstream media. Like Israel as a whole, Sharon saw his good name dragged through the mud by the Western media with tales published about him against which he had no means of defending himself. Sharon’s powerlessness was exposed in the libel suit he filed against Time magazine for a 1982 article in which the media alleged that Sharon had planned the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Christian militiamen. When the jury rendered its ruling, it declared that although the story was false, Sharon had no right to monetary damages, because the lie was not actionable.  As prime minister, Sharon was caricatured as a baby eater, as a Nazi, the murderer of Jesus, and a hook nosed, greedy Jew. In the hours following the announcement of his passing, he was libeled repeatedly by such outlets as the BBC. And as was the case throughout his life, and throughout the life of Israel, so now after he has died, the libelers will pay no price for their misdeeds.

Sharon was one of the warmest, most engaging political leaders Israel has ever seen. He had an infectious sense of humor, a true love of life, of Israel, and of Israelis that made even his greatest Israeli critics like him. Sharon was larger than life. His accomplishments and failures were similarly outsized. And while much of what happened to him, particularly at the hands of the media, reflects the larger predicament of all of Israel, there can be no doubt that Ariel Sharon was one of a kind.

                                                                            Contents
                                       

ARIEL SHARON, THE LAST LION OF JUDAEA                                         

Benjamin Kerstein                                 

 The Tower, Jan., 2014

The passage of Ariel Sharon—soldier, general, politician, and former Prime Minister of Israel—is upon us at long last. Israelis are saying their final goodbye to one of their country’s most enigmatic, controversial, and ultimately beloved leaders. The end of Ariel Sharon is the symbolic end of a generation. A generation of men and women who knew a world without a Jewish state, and fought on the battlefield and in the political arena to establish it; who in its service endured the love and hatred of many; and are now swiftly passing, as they must, from the world. A generation of lions for a people who had for so long been lambs.

Sharon22

Yet, in many ways, Sharon was the most unlikely of all Israel’s leaders. For most of his career, Sharon seemed to be Israel’s blunt instrument. He lacked Ben-Gurion’s fervor, Begin’s charismatic eloquence, Golda’s feminist appeal, and Rabin’s coldly incisive mind.  Sharon represented the stubborn strength of a people unbowed; the unstoppable force and the immovable object; a sturdy, rumpled bear of a man with a knife between his teeth.

In his final years, however, as he rose to power during one of Israel’s greatest crises, he became something altogether different: A protective elder, a wise tribal chief, and a wise, sentimental grandfather, again ready to make tough sacrifices to protect the Jewish people. The rough-and-tumble warrior transformed into protector, sympathetic, even lovable; and almost all agreed that, in the hour of trouble, there was no one better to turn to. Sharon’s long career embodied the contradictions of his public image. Throughout his life, he was a hero, a tragic villain, and then a hero; electable, unelectable, and then electable; triumphant, defeated, and then triumphant.  Loved, reviled and then loved again, ultimately leaving a legacy of peace making girded by strength, and ushering in an unprecedented era of prosperity and security for the people of Israel.

He earned all of it over the course of his life. Ariel Sharon was born in 1928 on a moshav to a taciturn and stoic father he later said he never really knew. He fought in the War of Independence, coming out of the famed Battle of Latrun badly wounded. Following the war, he became something like the man-at-arms to then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion—a fearless, unpredictable, and headstrong soldier, who cared deeply for his men but did not always follow orders to the letter. He founded Israel’s famed Unit 101, which fought against Palestinian terrorism during the 1950s and would set the operational standard for Israel’s legendary paratrooper units. He was also, at times, more than a bit of a headache. After one particularly bloody engagement, Ben-Gurion asked him how the operation had gone. “OK,” said the young commando. “Too OK,” Ben-Gurion replied.

This combination of military prowess and a self-confidence some saw as insubordination would haunt Sharon all his life. Though he did not share in the heroic status generals like Dayan and Rabin enjoyed after the Six Day War of 1967, he came out of the 1973 Yom Kippur War as both a national hero and a fierce critic of the political and military establishment. The tank battles he led in the Sinai—sometimes exceeding his orders—are now studied as tactical masterpieces. And it was he who, sporting a bandage wrapped around his head, saw a gap between the two Egyptian armies in the Sinai, made a bee-line to the Suez Canal with tanks and pontoon bridges, crossed the Canal, and then cut off the entire Egyptian Third Army, effectively winning the Egyptian front. And it was this same Sharon who later oversaw Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai desert, and the removal of Jewish communities built there, in return for peace with Egypt under the Camp David Accords.

But following the 1973 war, Sharon also broke the taboo on criticizing the army and the Labor establishment when he denounced the conduct of the early days of the conflict as a disgrace that needlessly sacrificed lives and equipment. Others such as Rabin—with whom Sharon maintained a fraught but lasting friendship—emerged relatively unscathed from the war’s failures, but Sharon was nearly alone in becoming an object of adoration. For a moment, he was almost universally loved. It didn’t last. Sharon’s entrance into politics following his retirement from the IDF marked the moment he was cast as a polarizing figure. Beginning in the mid-1970s, he left the dominant Labor party, helped Menachem Begin form the Likud, left and formed his own party, then rejoined the Likud when the 1977 elections broke Labor’s decades-long hold on power. It was here that Sharon began to emerge as a major political voice, eventually becoming defense minister, and ultimately presiding over the First Lebanon War.

That war proved a turning point in Sharon’s career, shattering his authority and leaving him in the political wilderness. As defense minister, he was the war’s primary author and its guiding force as the Jewish state sought to secure its northern border from unremitting terrorism. Yet in carrying out his plans, he exceeded his authority and—according to some—manipulated Menachem Begin into expanding the war well beyond its initial parameters. But it was the massacre of over 800 Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps by Christian Phalangists that proved Sharon’s undoing. The slaughter was the work of a Lebanese militia allied with Israel; a horrifying act of vengeance that defined the sectarian tit-for-tat slaughter of Lebanon’s civil war. A national commission of inquiry, headed by Supreme Court President Yitzhak Kahan, concluded that Sharon should have known a massacre was possible, and thus bore indirect responsibility for it. He was unceremoniously removed from office. For years, Sharon blamed the outcome on Begin; who had, he believed, thrown him to the proverbial wolves. For nearly two decades after, Sharon was consigned to the political wilderness. Despised by the international community, and considered unelectable to higher office by Israelis across the political spectrum, Sharon appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, finished; a lumbering dinosaur no longer suited to the modern landscape.

 [To Read the Full Article Follow the Link –ed.]

                                                                                                           Contents
                                  

LEFT FOR DEAD IN 1948:

THE BATTLE THAT SHAPED ARIK SHARON                                           

Mitch Ginsberg                                                

 Times of Israel, Jan. 12, 2014

The formative moment of Ariel Sharon’s life came in May 1948; not with the Declaration of Independence – which he heard on the radio wafting out of an open window on his way to kiss his girlfriend Gali before a mission – but with the battle for Latrun, 11 days later, in which he was left for dead. At the time, Jews and Palestinians had been fighting for six months. Arab forces controlled the ridges along the road to Jerusalem, barring the delivery of anything beyond sporadic convoys of food and water. The corridor to the capital, dominated by the town of Latrun and the Crusader castle looming over the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem road, was held by Jordanian troops and Palestinian militia.

The Haganah’s 7th Brigade, a newly formed unit mostly manned by Holocaust survivors, some of whom had never before fired a weapon, was given the task. Sharon, then still known as Scheinerman, commanded the 1st Platoon of B Company of the 32nd Battalion, the only battle-hardened fighting force in the brigade. On May 25, in the afternoon, he lay in the shade of an olive grove and wrote a letter to his parents. It was published years later in Ram Oren’s account of the battle, “Latrun,” and speaks both to Sharon’s underappreciated facility with words and his view, as the quintessential sabra, of the European Jewish refugees and their plight: “My platoon and I are lazing in an olive grove, passing the heat of the day, thinking pre-battle thoughts, blending with the water-smoothed stones and the earth, feeling part and parcel of the land: a rooted feeling, a feeling of a homeland, of belonging, of ownership. Suddenly a convoy of trucks stopped next to us and unloaded new, foreign-looking recruits. They looked slightly pale, and were wearing sleeveless sweaters, gray pants, and striped shirts. A stream of languages filled the air, names like Herschel and Yazek, Jan and Maitek were thrown around. They stuck out against the backdrop of olives, rocks, and yellowing grains. They’d come to us through blocked borders, from Europe’s death camps.

“I watched them. Watched them strip, watched their white bodies. They tried to find fitting uniforms, and fought the straps on their battle jackets as their new commanders helped them get suited up. They did this in silence, as though they had made their peace with fate. Not one of them cried out: ‘Let us at least breathe the free air after the years of terrible suffering.’ It is as if they’d come to the conclusion that this is one final battle for the future of the Jewish people.” [The letter was republished in "Ariel Sharon: A Life," a 2006 biography, which this reporter translated.]

The plan was to attack at midnight. The commanders, though, quarreled through the dark hours of the night and only sent the troops into the field at 4 a.m. Sharon, 20 years old, led the battalion into battle. The column cut through the fog and the rigid wheat and promptly came under Jordanian fire. In his autobiography, “Warrior,” written with David Chanoff, Sharon said that, under machine gun fire, he “sensed rather than saw men dropping suddenly or sliding slowly into the fog.” Shortly after five in the morning, “in a moment of startling swiftness,” the sun burnt away the haze, and the platoon, which had been leading several hundred men, found itself alone on an open patch of earth. The olive grove above them, on Latrun hill, “looked like it was spitting fire.”

Sharon led the platoon to a gully, a small indentation in the earth that provided the most meager cover, and took stock: his sergeant had been wounded. The platoon radio took a bullet and was inoperable. None of them had water, as canteens had not been found before the battle, and behind them, the wheat fields burned from the artillery rounds. Up ahead, through the billowing smoke, the Jordanian troops laid down long bursts of machine gun fire. They were trapped. “On the bright side,” Sharon wrote, “we had a good supply of hand grenades and ammunition for our Sten guns and Czech rifles.”

The slightest movement from members of the 1st Platoon provoked enemy fire. Soldiers who shifted carelessly were shot and dragged to the back of the gully, where an oozing, muddy trickle of water turned red with blood. Flies and gnats descended on the wounded. Jordanian Bedouin soldiers began flitting out of the olive grove and launching frontal assaults. Only when they were within 40 yards of the position, and only after the Hagannah soldiers heard the calls of Itbah al-Yahud, kill the Jews, did they open fire, repulsing wave after wave of  Arab offensives. Sharon was plagued by thirst and desperate for the day to darken into night. He re-wound his watch so often, he told Chanoff, that the stem came off in his hand.

By one in the afternoon, half of the platoon was dead and nearly all the rest were wounded, and Sharon, who had entered the battle with one arm in a cast, was shot in the abdomen. “Raising myself to see what was happening, I felt something thud into my belly, knocking me back. I heard my mouth say ‘Imah’ – mother, and the instant it was out I glanced around to see if anybody had heard,” he wrote in “Warrior.”A little later in the afternoon, a palpable shift descended on the battlefield. The Israeli guns opened fire, and Sharon, completely cut off from the rest of the force, told his men to get ready for a charge. He was sure the Israeli artillery was the precursor to a larger offensive. But looking over his shoulder, amid a sudden calm in the barrage, he saw how mistaken he had been: the artillery fire had enabled the brigade to retreat. The hills behind him, where the 72nd Battalion had guarded their flank, were covered with Palestinian villagers. “I looked back and saw that I had misinterpreted the sudden silence,” he wrote in a piece for Yedioth Ahronoth in 1998 and which was reprinted in his son Gilad’s memoir, ‘Sharon: The Life of a Leader.’ “The entire mountainside behind us was covered with Arab villagers. They butchered our wounded, the ones left in the field by other units.”“All around me,” he continued, “the dead and the wounded. All friends, all from the Sharon region, most from a single village. People you grew up with. Here they were, right in front of you, in this awful field, close to death, and there was nothing you could do for them. They were lost. ”

One of them, Simcha Pinchasi, described in “Warrior” as “a wonderful boy from Kfar Saba,” had been hit in both legs and couldn’t move. He’d been manning the machine gun all day. “With a look and a quick nod he indicated that he would cover the withdrawal,” Sharon wrote. “But Arik,” he said, “before you go, give me a grenade.” I gave it to him, knowing there was no hope whatsoever, not for him and most likely not for the rest of us either. There was no one whom I could ask to carry him, just as there was no one who could carry me. Our eyes caught for a moment, then I turned to go. And as I did I had a momentary image of his parents as they were when I last saw them in their village.”  

[To Read the Full Article Follow the Link –ed.]      

                                                                        Contents                                                                                                                                                                                                                           TRIBUTE: LARGER THAN LIFE                                                        

Danny Ayalon                                                                                           Jerusalem Post, Jan. 11, 2014

Ariel Sharon, the leader, was uncompromising in his commitment to the people and the State of Israel. He felt personal responsibility for the security and well-being of this nation, and dedicated his entire life to it. He was a lion on the battlefield, in his political career and in his personal life. I was fortunate, in working for him, to witness firsthand his unique leadership qualities, as well as his courage as a human being. He was able to rise above all crises. He refused to be defeated.

World leaders admired Sharon and looked up to him as they discovered his integrity, his intelligence and his willingness to make bold decisions and stand by them. They were also captivated by his charming personality and wry sense of humor. They always knew where he stood. In his words: “They know that my ‘yes’ is a yes and my ‘no’ is a no, and what to do to change my ‘no’ to a ‘yes.’” In his meeting with Pope John Paul II in 1998, Arik Sharon discussed the difference between terra santa and terra promisa, agreeing that the Land of Israel was holy to all monotheistic religions, but was promised only to the Jews. Only this strong Jewish leader could say without hesitation or equivocation to the Holy See in the Vatican that the Land of Israel only belonged to the Jews. Arik Sharon was never apologetic, but always confident in what was just and right for the Jewish people, and proudly proclaimed Israel’s interests. When first elected prime minister in 2001, he was still controversial in the international community and especially in the United States.

As world leaders worked with him, they discovered the real Sharon. The special personal relationship he developed with president George W. Bush was based on mutual trust and respect. During Sharon’s term as prime minister, Israel-US relations reached an all-time high in strategic and defense cooperation during international crises, including American support for Operation Defensive Shield and targeted counterterrorism operations in Gaza. The $10 billion loan guarantees gave us a safety net that helped the Israeli economy overcome the economic crisis of 2003. When Russian President Vladimir Putin pressed Sharon in their meeting in 2001 to give up Jewish land to the Palestinians, the prime minister asked him: “Why doesn’t Russia give up their disputed land with Japan back to the Japanese?” As Putin dismissed the idea of giving disputed land to Japan, Sharon said that what was good for Russia was good for Israel. That ended Putin’s pressure.

Sharon as a boss was always demanding, but very fair and supportive, giving us space and independence for initiative and creativity. He was extremely organized, self-disciplined, coherent and kind – always asking about the family. His sense of humor and fabled stories entertained us long into the late hours. His sudden fall was a tragedy for the family, and also for the nation. His heroic battle for the past eight years, against all odds, is symbolic of his larger-than- life figure.

 [Danny Ayalon served under Sharon as his chief foreign policy adviser

                                                and ambassador to the United States. ]

                                                       Contents

Ariel Sharon: A Life in Photographs: Micha Bar-Am, Tablet, Jan. 11, 2014

Sharon, Through the Years: New York Times, Dec. 15, 2013

Ariel Sharon, Audacious General and Decisive Prime Minister, Laid to Rest: Haviv Rettig Gur, Times of Israel, Jan. 13, 2014 — Ariel Sharon, Israel’s eleventh prime minister, was buried in a military funeral Monday, surrounded by family, friends, foreign dignitaries and the upper echelons of the state and military, who gathered to honor one of Israel’s most storied — and controversial — battlefield commanders and political leaders.

Ariel Sharon, Fierce Fighter For His People: Seth Lipsky, New York Post, Jan. 12, 2014 — Ariel Sharon rarely worried about all the controversy. The left called him a murderer for his military exploits. The right called him a traitor for pulling out of Gaza.

Gaza's 'Parting Gift' to Sharon: A Rocket Attack:  David Lev, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 13, 2014 — Gazan Arab terrorists "saluted" Ariel Sharon on the occasion of his funeral Monday by firing two rockets at the Negev Monday afternoon.

 Contents:         

Visit CIJR’s Bi-Weekly Webzine: Israzine.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing is available by e-mail.
Please urge colleagues, friends, and family to visit our website for more information on our ISRANET series.
To join our distribution list, or to unsubscribe, visit us at https://isranet.org/.

The ISRANET Daily Briefing is a service of CIJR. We hope that you find it useful and that you will support it and our pro-Israel educational work by forwarding a minimum $90.00 tax-deductible contribution [please send a cheque or VISA/MasterCard information to CIJR (see cover page for address)]. All donations include a membership-subscription to our respected quarterly ISRAFAX print magazine, which will be mailed to your home.

CIJR’s ISRANET Daily Briefing attempts to convey a wide variety of opinions on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world for its readers’ educational and research purposes. Reprinted articles and documents express the opinions of their authors, and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.