Ariel Sharon: Peacemaker, hero… and butcher
by ROBERT FISK
“Ariel Sharon: Israeli Hawk Who Sought Peace on His Terms, Dies at 85,” read the headline in the January 12 issue of the New York Times. The Washington Post called Sharon “a monumental figure in Israel’s modern history” who “sought to become the architect of a peaceful future,” accompanied by a most kindly and grandfatherly photo. USA Today: “controversial and iconic.” And on and on in all the U.S. corporate media. PHOTO & TEXT/Global Research
He was respected in his eight years of near-death, with no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker. Thus do we remake history
Any other Middle Eastern leader who survived eight years in a coma would have been the butt of every cartoonist in the world. Hafez el-Assad would have appeared in his death bed, ordering his son to commit massacres; Khomeini would have been pictured demanding more executions as his life was endlessly prolonged. But of Sharon – the butcher of Sabra and Shatila for almost every Palestinian – there has been an almost sacred silence.
Independent for more
Sharon the Terrorist
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR and ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel on February ?6, 2001. Some incorrigible optimists then suggested that only a right-wing extremist? of Sharon’s notoriety would boast the credentials to broker lasting peace? with the Palestinians.
Maybe so. History ?is not devoid of such examples. But Sharon’s record was not encouraging.? His crucial role in provoking Palestinian uprisings by his excursions ?under heavy military protection to holy sites in Jerusalem is well known. A ?little more faintly perhaps people recall the verdict of an Israeli commission?of inquiry finding that Sharon bore some responsibility for the dreadful Phalangist ?massacres in Palestinian refugee camps outside Beirut.
But in fact ?Sharon’s history as a terrorist, with documented participation in what ?can be fairly stigmatized as war crimes, goes back to the early 1950s. Here ?is a brief resume, culled in part from a two-part series on Sharon in? the well-respected Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz.
Counterpunch for more
The imperator: Sharon’s catastrophic legacy
by URI AVNERI
In the middle of the 70s, Ariel Sharon asked me to arrange something for him – a meeting with Yasser Arafat.
A few days before, the Israeli media had discovered that I was in regular contact with the leadership of the PLO, which was listed at the time as a terrorist organization.
I told Sharon that my PLO contacts would probably ask what he intended to propose to the Palestinians. He told me that his plan was to help the Palestinians to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, and turn Jordan into a Palestinian state, with Arafat as its president.
“What about the West Bank?” I asked.
“Once Jordan becomes Palestine, there will no longer be a conflict between two peoples, but between two states. That will be much easier to resolve. We shall find some form of partition, territorial or functional, or we shall rule the territory together.”
…
One of them, which he expounded at the same time to the US strategic planners, was to conquer Iran. When Ayatollah Khomeini dies, he said, there will begin a race between the Soviet Union and the US to determine who will arrive first on the scene and take over. The US is far away, but Israel can do the job. With the help of heavy arms that the US will store in Israel well before, our army will be in full possession before the Soviets move. He showed me the detailed maps of the advance, hour by hour and day by day.
The Palestine Chronicle for more