Ariel Sharon (Arik Ha Melech) Has Died
Ariel Sharon, Arik Ha Melech (Arik the King), the late Israeli Prime Minister, as many Israelis nicknamed him, was gruff and opinionated. Yet he left an indelible mark on Israel’s history. At critical moments he exhibited effective military leadership from the 1956 Sinai Campaign to the 1973 October War when he exploited a cross canal opening that virtually surrounded the Egyptian Third Army less than 91 kilometers from Cairo. That, plus critical US supplied weapons and materiel provided on orders from President Nixon and the tenacious battles fought by courageous IDF forces, thwarted the thrust across the Suez Canal orchestrated by the late Anwar Sadat that pierced the Bar Lev line.
As Defense Minister his launch of the First Lebanon War in 1982 sent the late Yassir Arafat and the PLO leadership packing from Beirut to Tunis ended badly with the pell mell retreat from the security zone under former PM and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in 2000. That saw the void filled by tens of thousands of rockets and missiles supplied by Iran to proxy Hezbollah and the later abortive Second Lebanon War of 2006 under Former Israeli PM and Kadimah Party leader, Ehud Olmert. As Defense Minister under Israeli PM Menachem Begin Sharon also ordered the dismantling and forcible removal of the Jewish settlement of Yamit in 1982 from the northern Sinai to implement disengagement as specified under the 1979 Camp David Accords facilitated by former President Carter. That was later compounded by Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gush Katif settlements in Gaza in 2005 that mistakenly made Israel’s southern border and Western Negev less secure. The result after Hamas seized power in 2006 was tens of thousands of homemade rockets and others supplied by Iran fired by Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad raining down on towns like Sderot and cities like Ashkelon.
Sharon’s political party Kadimah that he established when he left Likud,has virtually disappeared from the Knesset. Our deepest rachmonis (compassion in Hebrew) is extended to the Sharon family having held a vigil of eight years at his bedside at Sheba hospital at Tel Hashomer. Arik Sharon will be remembered by many in Israel and certainly by his enemies in the Arab league, Fatah-PLO, Hamas and Iran’s mullahs and even some in the West who will heinously gloat over his passing. The stroke that caused him to lapse into an eight year coma is over. His memory and accomplishments, as well as controversies, will not erase the fact, as his name Ariel implies, that a lion of Judah has finally found rest and peace. View this slide show of his life as a soldier and Israel political figure and leader.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Ariel Sharon, the hard-charging Israeli general and prime minister who was admired and hated for his battlefield exploits and ambitions to reshape the Middle East, died Saturday, eight years after a stroke left him in a coma from which he never awoke. He was 85.
As one of Israel’s most famous soldiers, Sharon was known for bold tactics and an occasional refusal to obey orders. As a politician he became known as “the bulldozer,” a man contemptuous of his critics while also capable of getting things done.
He led his country into a divisive war in Lebanon in 1982 and was branded as indirectly responsible for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps outside Beirut when his troops allowed allied Lebanese militias into the camps. Yet ultimately he transformed himself into a prime minister and statesman.
Sharon’s son Gilad announced the death on Saturday afternoon. Sharon’s health had taken a downturn over the past week and a half as a number of bodily organs, including his kidneys, stopped functioning, and doctors on Thursday pronounced his condition “grave.”
“He has gone. He went when he decided to go,” Gilad Sharon said outside the hospital where his father had been treated in recent years. (READ MORE)
EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.
