|
|
| up a level post search archive articles admin main |
 Posted by Aron on January 09 2006 (Monday) : 07:17 PMI have refrained from commenting on Arik Sharon's illness for a few days. If I had reacted immediately, my intense loathing for the man would have come out. The Rabbis warn us: "When your enemies fall, do not rejoice." Arik Sharon is not a personal enemy, but an enemy of peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. I try hard not to wish suffering on any human being. So following the Rabbis' and the Buddha's injunctions, I hope Sharon manages to recover or at the very least, live his last days in dignity. But I don't see his passing from the political scene as a great loss. By contrast, his rule as Prime Minister of Israel for the past several years, has been a disaster for both Israelis and Palestinians. Below you will find an article by Gideon Levy which expresses my own feelings far more eloquently than I could have written myself. One quote up top: "The belated enthusiasm for Sharon is therefore enthusiasm for a clever leader, who tried toward the end of his life to extricate himself somehow from situations that a wise leader would never have gotten into in the first place...The old Sharon was the one who led the country into the most superfluous and harmful of Israel's wars, the Lebanon War, and would not even raise his hand in favor of the peace agreement with Jordan ...The new Sharon blatantly ignored the Palestinians. In critical moves such as the disengagement or the construction of the separation fence, he ignored their existence, their needs and their desires. He did not attempt to achieve peace with them, because he did not for a moment believe that it was possible." We moved to Israel about a year after the Lebanon War. Human nature being what it is, many have already forgotten the thousands of Lebanese and Israeli families who lost their loved ones for one cause only: the insatiable lust for power of Arik Sharon. Another casualty of the war was the Camp David peace accords. Menahem Begin, a truly great leader whom I admire despite my political differences, made some amazing political concessions in those accords. What he offered the Palestinians went farther in many ways then the subsequent Oslo agreements. But the war in Lebanon torpedoed any possibility for implementing the Camp David agreements. Menahem Begin himself was a casualty of the Lebanon war - many believe he died a broken man because of the countless young men who died needlessly in the war and its aftermath. Arik Sharon blatantly lied to Begin in order to get him to agree to go to war in the first place. He also hid the war's true aims and went far further than the Israeli government authorized. I have no doubt that Begin was horrified and shamed by how Israel's name was blackened by the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Begin supported the commission of inquiry and did not hesitate to fire Arik Sharon, acts of political courage few other politicians emulate. Over the years Arik Sharon fought tooth and nail to prevent Israel's withdrawel from Lebanon. Even as the death toll mounted, and more and more lives were ruined, his huge ego could not allow him to admit a mistake, and he used his enormous political clout to keep Israel mired in the muck. When we lived in Kokhav Yair we had a neighbor everyone was fond of. He was a jovial teddy bear -- always smiling and sharing some humorous anecdote. On one of my trips overseas I heard the news that his son had been killed in Lebanon, another victim of Arik Sharon. Months after I returned I didn't see this neighbor who always used to sit on his front porch. The first time I ran into him, was heart breaking. He barely looked at me, a broken man whose pain would never heal. When I heard the news of Sharon's stroke, my first thought was of my neighbor, and all the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and lovers whose lives were destroyed by Arik Sharon's blind ambition. So I find it very hard to feel sympathetic to him, even in his present condition. Moreover, I find all the adulation being heaped on this murderous man, a load of hypocritical crap. As Levy notes below, he certainly was a brave soldier and no doubt a great general. But to call him a "man of peace," is absurd. If an arsonist rushes in to save someone from the fire he himself set, would any sane person call the arsonist a hero? Arik Sharon was an arsonist on a grand scale, and the region is still burning because of him. The blind love of the people By Gideon Levy A concept is born - the "Sharon legacy." Like its predecessor, the "Rabin legacy," it too will present a persona entirely different from the real person. Therefore, a moment before Prime Minister Ariel Sharon becomes the "Sharon legacy," the hero of peace and the disengagement who, had he only continued in his role a little longer, would have brought peace to Israel - we would do well to sketch his non-mythical persona, without mincing words. Perhaps the most influential leader since David Ben-Gurion, Sharon was the cause of many of the political and security problems now facing Israel. This must be said honestly, even now. The new Sharon, who has earned the respect of a large number of Israelis and of most of the countries in the world, tried in his twilight years only to repair some of the historical mistakes into which he led the country during his life. The settlement project, the strengthening of Hamas and the emergence of Hezbollah as a threatening and significant factor in Lebanon - all owe a great debt to Sharon's policies. The belated enthusiasm for Sharon is therefore enthusiasm for a clever leader, who tried toward the end of his life to extricate himself somehow from situations that a wise leader would never have gotten into in the first place. He is deserving of respect for this belated change, for his recognition of the limitations of power, for his awareness of the harmfulness of the settlement project and the criminality of the occupation, but it is impossible to ignore his critical role in creating all of these. Because he remained very faithful to his basic worldview, which maintains that there is no chance of peace with the Arabs, we cannot also present him as a "hero of peace" now - just as it was an exaggeration to turn the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin into such a hero after his assassination. The old Sharon was the one who led the country into the most superfluous and harmful of Israel's wars, the Lebanon War, and would not even raise his hand in favor of the peace agreement with Jordan - the easiest and most convenient of such agreements, from Israel's point of view. The new Sharon blatantly ignored the Palestinians. In critical moves such as the disengagement or the construction of the separation fence, he ignored their existence, their needs and their desires. He did not attempt to achieve peace with them, because he did not for a moment believe that it was possible. The Sharon legacy will recall mainly the disengagement, not Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin in 2002, nor the retaliation raid in Qibya in 1953, nor the other violent and superfluous operations - just as the Rabin legacy remembers mainly the Oslo Accord. Perhaps that is a lesson for our future leaders: Eternal glory is achieved via peace agreements, not via glorious battlefields. But even those who believe that Sharon intended to evacuate more settlements cannot ignore the fact that this was a matter of removing some of the rotten fruits of his policy. The historian will remember all of Sharon's insane maps, the "settlement blocs," the "legal" and "illegal" outposts, for which he may have been more responsible than any other Israeli, all of which were designed to prevent any possibility of a just agreement with the Palestinians. But if on the subject of the settlements Sharon tried to repair the damage he caused - that is not the case in other areas. Israel's two bitterest enemies at present, Hamas and Hezbollah, achieved their positions of strength to no small degree thanks to him. During that same accursed war, the Lebanon War, which is attributed to him, Sharon brought about the removal of the Palestinians from South Lebanon, and their replacement by Hezbollah. He can take credit for an amazingly similar outcome years later vis-a-vis the Palestinian Authority, when he preferred the religious fundamentalists to the moderate secular camp. The new Sharon, who is beloved and esteemed, is responsible for the collapse of the PA as the central entity in the occupied territories, and to its replacement - whether by Hamas, which now threatens to assume control of the government, or by the anarchy that threatens to destroy everything. During all his years as prime minister, Sharon refrained from granting any support to the leaders of the PA, so that they could establish their rule under the Israeli occupation. Even when the late PA chair Yasser Arafat died, Sharon did not allow his moderate successor to present any significant achievement to his people: neither the release of prisoners, nor a significant increase in freedom of movement, nor taking the Palestinian people into consideration when planning the route of the fence, nor even participation in the beginning of negotiations. Instead, Sharon's Israel did everything in its power to bring about the destruction of the PA and to humiliate it in the eyes of its people. A violent Israeli military effort, which reached its peak in Operation Defensive Shield, caused the collapse of all the PA mechanisms: Police stations that were meant to stabilize the government and to fight terror were bombed mercilessly, and all the mechanisms of the PA and its government offices were destroyed one after another. In the political and social vacuum that resulted, Hamas could only flourish. The last chapter of his political life saw the eruption of the Iranian threat, perhaps the most dangerous of all. How ironic it is that this threat, which emphasizes the irrelevance of territory in maintaining the country's security, appeared in the waning days of the man who all his life believed that territory is the be-all and end-all. A moment before Sharon enters the national pantheon, we would do well to remember that at best, we are losing a courageous fighter and a clever statesman rather than a wise one, who caused a great deal of damage and is now leaving the stage enveloped by the blind love of his people. < | >
|
|
  Cost of the War in Iraq
|
"Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz -- Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace" -Benito Juárez
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." -Eleanor Roosevelt "Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul" -Thomas Paine | |
| Copyrights for all postings on this page are owned by Aron Trauring, except where otherwise noted ©2002-2008 Aron Trauring. |
||
Blind Love
