The Forward has a great essay on Ariel Sharon by his biographer.
The second thing that made him anathema to many of his fellow countrymen was Israel’s settlement policy, which was his initiative. To truly understand Sharon’s strategy, one had to see the West Bank through his eyes — literally.
For years, he took every visitor who would go, up onto the West Bank’s hills and ridges. Looking eastward, you could see the sparse line of Israeli kibbutzim that guarded the Jordan River, on whose far side lay the confrontational states of Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. “You see,” he’d tell his guests, “without control of the high ground, those places down there are defenseless.”
Looking westward, visitors got an even starker lesson. Before their eyes lay Israel’s narrow coastal plain, with its concentration of population and industry. There was Israel’s one international airport. And there were the country’s three power plants, two in plain sight, one visible from the smoke issuing out of its tall stack.
“Would we ever,” Sharon would ask, “allow enemy forces to look down on us like this?”
This one carries a read-in-full endorsement.
Israel has lost a giant.
Except his disengagement policy led to the exact problem that he warned against. The people claiming to be his successors are pushing the abandonment of everyone on the front line.
Ditto to comment #1 — this so-called giant went treasonously corrupt in the end; he may be in a coma but his lemmings are prepared to take Israel over the cliff to suicide; unless things drastically change Sharon’s historical legacy will be that of an arch criminal traitor; he was always an opportunistic fraud, even as a military man — yi mach shmo vi zichro (may his name and memory be obliterated)
You know, cj, Ariel Sharon is the general who saved Israel from the Egyptian Army in the Yom Kippur War. He also did some pretty good things for the defense of the Jewish state a few other times.
You want his memory to be obliterated about those, too?
Do me a favor: Dump the curses in my comments thread. As Ariel Sharon is still alive, they constitute personal attacks, or flames. If you had read my comments policy (the link is above every comments box), you’d know they’re not allowed.
Criticism is one thing. But I fail to see how that remark is criticism.
I’ve been to Itzhar and Braha settlements as one of the soldiers who guarded them. They are located on two hills in close proximity to Nablus (Shkhem).
It is true that you could see the whole coastal plane from those hills.