Thoughts on Ariel Sharon, January 11, 2014
Ron Stockton
Ariel Sharon died on January 4, 2006. He was declared dead
January 11, 2014. He spent eight years in a vegetative state.
According to a national poll, Sharon is considered by many Israelis
to be one of their great leaders. Not everyone would agree with that
assessment. The Lebanese call him The Butcher of Beirut.
Palestinians would have an even harsher assessment. When
Menachem Begin, under whom Sharon organized the Lebanon War
of 1982, was an elderly, reclusive ex-premier, an aide asked if he had
any contact with Sharon. He went cold as ice and said, “I never want
to hear that man’s name again.” Ezer Weizman, a top military
commander and President of Israel, once said that in combat he
would follow Sharon into hell but politically he would not follow him across the street.
Here are some significant points in Sharon’s life.
As Israel’s Minister of Agriculture (i.e., chief of West Bank colonization) in the 1980s,
he expanded the structure of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian lands and set the stage for
Israel’s ultimate destabilization. He told settlers that it was necessary to grab every hill top, even
without government approval. Everything they did not grab would be taken away in negotiations.
This land grab is a quicksand trap that will engulf Israel in the end.
To fill the West Bank, Sharon said Israel should have ten million Jews within a decade.
Do the math and see the reality. At that time, there were fourteen
million Jews in the world. Less than five million lived in Israel. That
meant that five million more would have to come from overseas.
Nearly six million were in the U.S. Three million lived elsewhere. If
ALL the Jews in the world outside of the US went to Israel, they
would still need well over a million American Jews to meet their goal.
Given that few people over 40 ever leave their homeland, and given
that the Jewish population in the US is aging, the departure of a
million plus Jews would mean that almost ALL the fertile Jews in the
U.S. would have to go to Israel if the Jewish state were to fulfill its
destiny. This would produce the demographic collapse of Jewish
America. Within a few decades, the U.S. would have only a miniscule
Jewish population. That was Sharon’s vision.
Just before his stroke, in 2004, Sharon repeated the appeal. He told Jewish leaders in the
U.S. that Israel needed a million Jews, fast. That same year, he said the French Jews should get
out while there was still time. The French Jews were not pleased. The American Jews stayed put.
In a country that puts the Holocaust at the center of its identity, Sharon did not mention
that historic event even once in his autobiography (Warrior, 2001). He was a proud Israeli.
What happened in Europe was Europe, not Israel. You have to admire that.
In discussing the 1973 war in that memoir, Sharon insisted that the massive U. S.
emergency airlift of arms to Israel played no role in the outcome. He really did not like us very
much.
As a young officer, Sharon headed Unit 101, a retaliation unit within the Israeli military.
In 1953 his unit massacred 69 Palestinian civilians at Qibya, a West Bank town. There had been
attacks across the border and Israel decided to retaliate. They blew up homes and a mosque.
Two-thirds of those killed were women and children. Sharon was investigated but not charged.
When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, there were the Sabra and Chatilla massacres in
which 800-1500 unarmed Palestinian civilians were killed in the refugee camps near Beirut. This
was after the Palestinian military units had been evacuated to Tunis under an international
agreement brokered by the U.S. President Reagan had promised to guarantee the security of
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Palestinian civilians left behind. The Israelis controlled access to the camps and allowed an
extremist anti-Palestinian Lebanese militia to enter the camps to conduct the massacres. The
Jerusalem Post, then a progressive paper, described how rabbis leading Rosh Hashana prayers as
the sun went down could hear the screams and gunshots. The Post said it would be known in
Jewish history as “The Rosh Hashana of Shame.”
Israel’s Kahan Commission investigated these massacres and (in an act of political
courage) found that Sharon had “personal responsibility” for what happened. His allies in the
U.S. have grabbed onto another phrase in the report about “indirect responsibility,” meaning that
Sharon and other top Israeli commanders in the “political echelon” had not given specific orders
for the massacres. But the report was unequivocal about his involvement. It recommended that
he be removed from political office (he was the Minister of Defense at the time) as punishment.
When Sharon went before the Knesset to defend himself, his bellowed rage turned into an antiAmerican harangue. He said the Kahan Commission was an American-instigated plot to crush
Israel and to force it out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The opposition Labor Party of
Rabin and Peres was a part of this conspiracy.
1982 cartoon
After these massacres, the U.S. got drawn into the Lebanese War in a direct military sense. We
lost 249 marines one terrible Sunday morning, and left in defeat. It was a bad time all around.
In 1998 during the Oslo-linked negotiations at Wye, Israeli and Palestinians signed an
agreement to have Israel fulfill its unfulfilled previous commitment to withdraw from the major
Palestinian cities, especially Hebron. Sharon refused to shake hands with Arafat. Wye could have
ended the fighting and facilitated future negotiations. His message was loud and clear.
Sharon was known in Israel as The Bulldozer. This was an allusion to his support for
more settlements, but also a comment on his political style. When the first Intifada started in
1988, he said that there was a finite number of Palestinian leaders. If we target and assassinate
them, there will be peace. Israeli observers always said that Sharon had a strategy: If violence
does not work, more violence will.
Sharon was a central factor in precipitating the two Intifadas (Palestinian uprisings in
Gaza and the West Bank). The first Intifada started in 1988 and the Al Aqsa Intifada started in
2000. Both involved the security of Islam. In 1988 Sharon had purchased an apartment in the
Ecce Homo arch in the Via Dolorosa, the Street of Suffering where the Stations of the Cross
(commemorating the Crucifixion) were located. This street runs through the Muslim Quarter of
the old city. Under the centuries-old Status Quo Agreement, the Muslim authorities recognized
the significance of these sites to Christians and had allowed various Christian organizations
(Catholic and others) to control those sites and have their churches and orders there. One of the
most dramatic of those Stations was the Ecce Homo arch, which stretches dramatically over the
Via Dolorosa. This was the presumed site where Jesus was condemned to death by Pilate. Sharon
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had taken over the apartment in that arch for his personal use (this was in violation of local laws)
and had hung a large Israeli flag over the street where Christian pilgrims and Muslim neighbors
would see it waving. It certainly sent a message, that Muslims
were
not safe (or Christians for that matter). The first Intifada
followed quickly.
Putting mezuzah on Ecce Homo apartment door
In Al Aqsa mosque compound
Sharon’s second contribution to a Jewish-Islamic war was to walk into the Al Aqsa
Mosque compound with 1,000 Israeli soldiers on September 28, 2000. Since the day in 1967
when the Israelis captured East Jerusalem and the Old City, not a single Israeli leader had entered
that sacred area. Over and over Israel had reassured Muslim authorities that Islam and its holy
sites were safe. The Israelis knew exactly what would happen if they violated that pledge, and
they were right. Sharon marched in with his security guard, with helicopters flying overhead, and
proclaimed that “this will be Jewish forever.” Of course, he then did what leaders in that area so
often do. He switched into English and said for the cameras, “We want peace.” But the next day,
the explosion occurred. By the time the situation settled down there were over 4,000 people
dead, 3,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis. Sharon’s allies in the U.S. and elsewhere have
insisted that the Al Aqsa intifada began on September 27 (thus exonerating their hero) but no
serious analyst exonerates him.
When Sharon made his political comeback and became Prime Minister in 2001, his two
sons told him that he had to change his image. He had to become the kindly grandfather, just
looking after the family. He stuck to this as much as he could but sometimes slipped. I saw him
once on CNN when the reporter asked him about the Palestinians. The Old Sharon appeared and
he snapped out, “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. They are Arabs.” But then he
switched back and said, “We want peace.”
Sharon’s admirers credit him for withdrawing unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. But he did
not withdraw. He unilaterally pulled out the few thousand Jewish settlers but kept Gaza under his
thumb. Israel still controls the water, the electricity, the tax collection, the coast, and entrance and
exit for both people and goods. He also cut off all physical contact between Gaza and the West
Bank. As his chief advisor said, the withdrawal would put the idea of a Palestinian state into
formaldehyde.
Sharon’s two sons did his dirty work for him. In December, 2005 one of the sons was
indicted for corruption for taking three million dollars in bribes. (He later went to prison). It
was obvious he was taking the hit for his dad. A few hours after the indictments, Sharon had his
first stroke. The second one, the one that killed him, followed soon thereafter.
Sharon’s supporters say he was a man of peace, that he was prepared to give up almost all
of the West Bank for a settlement. No one who watched his career thinks this is realistic. He had
never offered more than 44% of the West Bank for a Palestinian state, and even then he insisted
on keeping the vast expanses of Greater East Jerusalem and much of the Jordan Valley under
Israeli control.
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To many Israelis, especially those on the political right, Sharon was a hero. As Weizman
said, if I were in a battle, I would want Sharon on my side. But we Americans also have a dog in
this fight. We need a stable Israel and a stable Palestine, perhaps snarling at each other across a
barricade but not at war. As an American, I think Sharon’s policies—seizing Palestinian land for
Jewish settlers, assaulting Islam, doing everything he could to prevent a settlement—has
destabilized the region and set the stage for horrendous future violence. Given our strong support
for Israel (military, financial, political) we will certainly be entangled in that violence, whether
we want it or not. Sharon liked to portray himself as a Warrior for Peace. I see him as a leader
unto darkness and death.
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