Now that "The Butcher of Beirut" is out of the picture, the only question is what other despicable dirtbag will replace him.

Chances are Sharon will be dead within three months. This kind of stroke has a terrible prognosis. At the least, he's suffered massive brain damage.

Expect the US media to trot out the elegies about how a hard-but-fair man of war became a man of peace at the end of his life.

They will naturally skim over his early history of founding and running death squads, and personally tossing hand grenades through the bedroom windows of sleeping children at Qibya in 1953.

Of course they'll have to mention that Sharon was implicated by his own government's inquiry in the massacres at Sabra and Shatila, but they'll go on to say that the Israeli public forgave him so that's all right then.

The wider crime of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will get no mention, since it never does in the US media.

Then the panegyrists will pass swiftly on to Sharon's demolition of settlements and his supposed recognition of the need for a Palestinian state.

They will fail to note that his destruction of the tiny, militarily indefensible settlements in Gaza was accompanied by massive settlement building in the far more valuable West Bank.

They'll say he recognised the need for Palestinian statehood, even though there's not a shred of evidence to suggest this is true. Even though his own spokesman said that his policy was actually to 'freeze the peace process in formaldehyde'.

Finally, he'll be credited with nobly abandoning his lifelong dream of "Greater Israel" and settling for the prospect of a more limited land-grab.

Nowhere in the US papers will there be any mention of the fact that the real debate on this issue in Israel had nothing to do with compromise or peace, but was driven purely by the rightwingers' fear that demographic trends would leave a "Greater Israel" with an eventual Arab majority.

By the way, when I say "death squad" I am referring to the same force that Morley calls a "legendary commando unit".

Sorry, Morley. I thought commandos were people who killed enemy soldiers.

Force 101's speciality was lining women and children up against a wall and machine-gunning them.

What you call "driving off Arab forces" is generally referred to these days as "ethnic cleansing of villages through the application of armed terror."

There's nothing like an article on Israel to bring out unqualified criticism of Israel and Israeli policy, as though they were acting in a vacuum.

Sharon shares responsibility for the massacres in Lebanon, he doesn't bear it. Or are you one of those people who engages in the subtle racism of believe Arabs are unable to make their own decisions?

For all his faults, Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza was the right decision, and there is simply no reason for Israel to reward a violent uprising. It would mean the beginning of the end of its existence. Of course, judging by your commentary, you ahve a selective belief in who is entitled to their own country and who is not, and I am guessing for you Jews fall into the latter category.

Sharon's death is bad news for the peace process, but good news for you, since if a hardline rightist government replaces Sharon, you'll be able to continue to see the Middle East as a conflict between your medieval concept of Jews and your view of Arabs as people who apparently lack the intelligence for independent agency.

"They will naturally skim over his early history of founding and running death squads, and personally tossing hand grenades through the bedroom windows of sleeping children at Qibya in 1953"

Sharon founded one unit, the 101, which was disbanded/merged into another unit after the massacre of civilians at Qibya. In your imagination, one unit has become many, and instead of commandos, they are "death squads". Your description of Sharon tossing hand grenades in the windows of sleeping children is a dramatic fabrication.

How many Hamas or Al Aqsa, Hizbollah units have been disbanded or otherwise acknoweldged wrongdoing in the killing of civilians? are their army units not also "death squads" by your definition, since their primary targets are often not military units, or military units hiding in civilian spaces, but civilians themselves?

"The wider crime of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon will get no mention, since it never does in the US media."

Not only has the invasion been widely reported on, but it seems as though you are the one deliberately omitting information by not including Syria's invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon and continued violent interference in Lebanese politics as a "crime". Is the killing of arab civilians, or underminding of Arab sovreignity only a crime when Jews do it?

"They will fail to note that his destruction of the tiny, militarily indefensible settlements in Gaza was accompanied by massive settlement building in the far more valuable West Bank."

The West Bank is a far less valuable piece of territory, economically, than the Gaza Strip. It is however, larger, and more difficult to mount a defense against in case of an invasion, which, as you may or may not choose to notice, tends to happen every few years. Especially from the 1948 border, which would be the border today if not for subsequent invasions from surrounding countries.

Ok, so you accept that Sharon founded 101 and that it conducted what you call a 'civilian massacre' while he was personally leading it. Yet you have a problem with my characterising Force 101 as a death squad instead of commandos. I guess we just have a different idea of what constitutes a commando unit.

My account of throwing hand grenades through children's windows during the Qibya attack is not a fabrication. It came from a contemporaneous report of the incident presented by UN investigators to the Security Council.

As for the 'don't OD' guy, you are jumping to conclusions about my views. I didn't comment on the Lebanese Phalangists' role in Sabra and Shatila because we are writing Sharon's obituary today, not Aoun's.

My view of the Middle East is not the leftie student one you are branding me with. I don't even think Israel is a particularly wicked country. In many ways it's behaved better than its neighbours, most of which are also run by war criminals.

Sharon, like many others in the region, is a man whose political and military career path happens to have been littered with piles of bodies of women and children who have been lined up against a wall and shot.

I merely wanted to point that out, to counterbalance the hagiographies we will undoubtedly be reading over the next few weeks.

Did I come here to point out that Assad Sr was a bad man when he died? No I didn't. That isn't because I defend Assad. It's because I knew the US media wasn't about to try to beatify him, so there was no need.

I wish Israelis well. But murderers should not prosper, and they should not be praised.

And as for claiming that Gaza is more valuable than the West Bank, that is pure horse-puckey. Quite apart from being a barren strip of waste ground, Gaza is economically valueless to Israel because incorporating it would threaten the State's Jewish majority.

The prize everyone really wants is East Jerusalem and you know it.

"Ok, so you accept that Sharon founded 101 and that it conducted what you call a 'civilian massacre' while he was personally leading it. Yet you have a problem with my characterising Force 101 as a death squad instead of commandos. I guess we just have a different idea of what constitutes a commando unit."

I dispute your characterization of it as a "death squad" because Israel is saddled with the difficult task of identifying an enemy that deliberatley hides among civilian populations. The Israeli Army policy of going house to house to clear out civilians before destroying the buildings is a flawed and ineffective one, but shows more respect for individual human life than their enemies or any western power, who are content to bomb civilian targets from the air and never recieve UN scrutiny. So while I believe Sharon bears responsibility for the Qibya massacre, I believe he bears it as a military commander whose unit failed to protect civilians while searching for their real enemy, not as a leader of a paramilitary unit formed explicitly for the murder of civilians based on their ethnic or religious identity.

Your omission of the Lebanese Christian Militia that ACTUALLY carried out the massacre implicitly hands any and all responsibility to Sharon. That is a mischaracterization of events on any day.

your response that you are not a "leftie student" is well taken.

Sharon is a murderer. The truth is, many soldiers are. But that is a simplified view that really does not encompass the scope and influence of the man's life. I was not a big fan of Sharon, but I give credit where credit is due, and his withdrawal from Gaza deserves credit. I fear a rightward lurch in Israeli politics, so I do not see his death as good news.

It's interesting that your defence for war crimes is remarkably similar to the Republican Party's defence for corruption: "Everybody was doing it."
If Israel wants to prove its moral superiority to the likes of Syria, it can start by rejecting leaders with terroristic pasts like Begin and Sharon.

what's wrong with being a leftie student?
99% of the biggest idiots i've ever encountered AREN'T...

(it just needed to be said.)

I've been to the Gaza Strip. It is valuable both as port/trading space and as a tourist attraction, once it is cleaned up. It may be valueless to Israel, but it will be an important part of the palestinan state once it actually comes into existence.

East Jerusalem was offered in the last Camp David Summit. Arafat refused because he wanted to die a hero. We wouldn't even be having this discussion about Sharon if Arafat had accepted that agreement. Eventually it needs to happen, but I don't believe Israel should relinquish such an important prize as long as they are dealing with agression from the Palestinian side.

My post above wasn't a response to yours, by the way Yup yup, I hadn't seen it yet.
I think it's unfair to say I mischaracterised Sabra and Shatila. I said, truthfully, that he was "implicated by his own government's inquiry in the massacres."

I assume anyone who cares enough to comment here already knows who actually pulled the triggers.

I do think Qibya was ethnic cleansing, and I dispute the term "failed to protect civilians while searching for their real enemy". That might describe Jenin or Rafah. What happened at Qibya was a deliberate massacre.

I happen to believe the Gaza withdrawal was another sort of ethnic cleansing, and I base that on the actual debate among Likudniks. They simply realised that Gaza was indigestible, so they spat it out.

On the whole, we probably don't disagree that strongly. But I personally am hopeful that Israeli politics won't lurch rightwards. Netanyahu has been wounded more seriously than Labour by the founding of Katima. Peretz is now uncontestably the largest figure on the landscape.

There's still a lot of Israelis who long for peace and are willing to deal. The pendulum could swing back their way, though I worry that developments in Palestine may give ammo to the Right.

"It's interesting that your defence for war crimes is remarkably similar to the Republican Party's defence for corruption: "Everybody was doing it."
If Israel wants to prove its moral superiority to the likes of Syria, it can start by rejecting leaders with terroristic pasts like Begin and Sharon"

I didn't defend any war crimes. I clarified the difference between a Military unit whose war crimes were peripheral to their objective and a military unit for whom war crimes are the objective. I did however, point out that you tend to be less excited about declaring who is a murderer and a war criminal when that person is not a Jewish Israeli.

Please quote me when you refer to my arguments, because you are responding to arguments I haven't made.

Begin and Sharon have very different pasts. Once again you have trouble with differentiating between tragic instances in which the death of civilians occur and when the are the objective. Begin was a member of the Irgun, a terrorist organization. Sharon has always been involved with uniformed armed forces that represent the state of Israel. refer to my above statement for the very significant difference between the two. Your arguments continue to rely on ignoring important distinctions for the purpose of making dramatic and innaccurate pronouncements.

There is an abundance of idiots on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States. Sorry.

Yes, no-name, I accept Gaza will one day be valuable to Palestine, but as you concede it has no value to Israel and that's the main point.

This was not a noble sacrifice by Sharon, but rather a way to keep Israel a Jewish-majority state forever. The US papers won't mention that fact, so I do.

You are far more optimistic than I am. Bibi is extremely effective at exploiting people's fear for his political goals, and i don't know that Sharon's party wll survive without him.

People said the same thing abou Peres when Rabin died. I think people just don't like him.

"Yes, no-name, I accept Gaza will one day be valuable to Palestine, but as you concede it has no value to Israel and that's the main point.

This was not a noble sacrifice by Sharon, but rather a way to keep Israel a Jewish-majority state forever. The US papers won't mention that fact, so I do."

you're going to have a hard time convincing me that it is a secret that one of Ariel Sharon's overall goals as prime minister of the jewish state was to keep it jewish. That's such a blatant given that its not worth mentioning. Its like saying "Joe Gibbs overall goal is to have the skins win the super bowl. The Washington Media won't mention it, but I will!"

What is implicit in your statement is that in your view, Israel should not retain its Jewish identity. In that sense, you have assembled a double standard in which some people are entitled to their own state and ethnic identity while others are not.

"Please quote me when you refer to my arguments"

That would be tricky, since you aren't providing a name to quote.

I'm referring to whoever jumped on me for criticising Sharon's atrocities because Hamas, Hizbollah, the Phalange etc have also committed atrocities. In other words, leave Arik alone, everyone was doing it.

If civilian deaths weren't the objective at Qibya, Sabra and Shatila then I must say Sharon's famed military competence has been overstated, because civilian deaths were most certainly the result.

"Begin was a member of the Irgun, a terrorist organization. Sharon has always been involved with uniformed armed forces..."

Yes, well you see the truth is I don't care. To me a massacre is a massacre. The fact that you are wearing a particular outfit while machine-gunning civilians doesn't really improve it in my view. Nor does the fact that you are getting a regular paycheck for it.

The world is full of people who argue that massacres are less evil when committed by the uniformed representatives of recognised governments. Tell me, do you apply the same logic to, say, the SS massacre at Babi Yar? I gather the SS were VERY fond of uniforms and were loyal patriots to a man. Only doing their job, y'know?

"The world is full of people who argue that massacres are less evil when committed by the uniformed representatives of recognised governments. Tell me, do you apply the same logic to, say, the SS massacre at Babi Yar? I gather the SS were VERY fond of uniforms and were loyal patriots to a man. Only doing their job, y'know?"

The argument you are making is that the means to an end have no influence on the end. There is a difference between a military objective to kill civilians and that being a tragic peripheral result. A significant part of any analysis of the situation must place responsibility not just the hands of the military in question (which i have done) but also in the opposing force which chooses to hide among a civilian population after attacking civilian targets (which you have not done). A massacre may be a massacre but we hve distinctions in both american and international law because HOW these things happen are as important as the fact that they do, and responsibility must be appropriately assigned, not just dramatically equated with whatever historical event you feel lends it the most weight.

The SS stated and executed goal was to exterminate Jews.

The Israeli Military's stated and executed goal is not to exterminate Arabs. I am positive that your response will be "that's what they do, so it might as well" but then, you have to assign the same kind of genocidal lust to any army in any military conflict, since your only way of understanding moral action is to way solely the results, rather than both result and intent.

"I'm referring to whoever jumped on me for criticising Sharon's atrocities because Hamas, Hizbollah, the Phalange etc have also committed atrocities. In other words, leave Arik alone, everyone was doing it."

I never justified Sharon's atrocities, or referred to them as anything else but atrocities, but I did point out your frequent and continued omission of wrongdoing on the part of Sharon and/or Israel's military opposition.

Yupyup: "What is implicit in your statement is that in your view, Israel should not retain its Jewish identity. In that sense, you have assembled a double standard in which some people are entitled to their own state and ethnic identity while others are not."

If that is implicit in my statement, then I phrased it badly. Israel has every right to keep its Jewish majority by dropping the attempt to annex territory heavily populated by Arabs. I merely dispute the US media's right to give phony reasons for that decision.

On the other hand, you would presumably accept that Israel would not have the right to try to keep its Jewish character by, for example, removing the vote from its Arab citizens, or introducing discriminatory measures to cut the Israeli Arab birthrate.

So long as the majority of people living within Israel's borders are Jewish, and so long as no-one is using force or murder to influence those demographics, they are welcome to keep their State Jewish.

Although you can't deny that such an association between a particular religion and the State flies in the face of the principles that underlie the US Constitution.

"The SS stated and executed goal was to exterminate Jews.
The Israeli Military's stated and executed goal is not to exterminate Arabs. I am positive that your response will be 'that's what they do, so it might as well'".

I really would be a fool if that were my response. Given Israel's overwhelming military power, if they were trying to exterminate Arabs we would be dealing with millions of corpses.

Israel has never tried to exterminate Arabs. Even in the 40s and early '50s, when they were sometimes using methods devised to maximise civilian casualties rather than minimise them, the Israelis were not aiming at genocide. The purpose of Force 101 was to frighten Arab villagers into fleeing their homes, not to wipe them all out.

On the other hand, you are being disingenous by associating these particular massacres with Israel's more normal practice of singling out its armed enemies. The particular events I refer to WERE attempts to exterminate particular groups of civilians. They cannot be swept under the rug of collateral damage. They were not accidental byproducts of a mostly-clean military operation. They were deliberate forays into criminality and murder.

"...your frequent and continued omission of wrongdoing on the part of Sharon and/or Israel's military opposition."

As I said, there is no need for me to come here and comment on atrocities by Israel's opponents because:
A) Sharon, not Assad or Saddam, is the subject of today's news, and
B) There is little danger that the crimes of Syria or Hezbollah are about to be sanitised or justified by the US media.

I'm glad the 101 Commandos came up in the discussion.

I was writing a story about Israeli media reaction to Sharon's incapacitation. I was trying to sketch out why Sharon is an important character in a way that people unfamiliar with the subject could readily access. I spoke of "legendary" because the Sharon's exploits in that time are indeed legendary, for reasons good and bad. I avoided a more judgmental phrase like "death squads," not because I'm indifferent to Palestinian (or Jewish) life but because 1) I know how little I know and 2) I don't want to alienate readers from getting the information in the article.

I know this is not the approach of someone possessed of absolute moral certainty about who the good guys and who the bad guys are in the Arab-Israeli conflict. But it is my approach.

Does anybody have any citations to books/articles written on the early days of Sharon's military career or eyewitness accounts?

"If that is implicit in my statement, then I phrased it badly. Israel has every right to keep its Jewish majority by dropping the attempt to annex territory heavily populated by Arabs. I merely dispute the US media's right to give phony reasons for that decision."

The US media can provide analysis, but it would be irresponsible of it to make the kind of intellectual leaps you have, because it simply does not know what goes on in the mind of Ariel Sharon. Neither do you, but you are not a major media outlet and so your opinion has less impact.

"On the other hand, you would presumably accept that Israel would not have the right to try to keep its Jewish character by, for example, removing the vote from its Arab citizens, or introducing discriminatory measures to cut the Israeli Arab birthrate."

According to the CIA world factbook, there are at least two Arabs with seats in the Israeli Knesset. Which is twice as many black Americans as there are in the American Senate. Please indicate a source for your statement that Israel is introducing descriminatory measures to cut the Israeli Arab birthrate, I suspect your choice of words is deliberatley misleading.

"Although you can't deny that such an association between a particular religion and the State flies in the face of the principles that underlie the US Constitution."

Only if you're a conservative Republican is it unconstitutional to pass laws conscious of ethnic identity in order to ensure constitutional protections. The state of Israel has to exist because the world has proven time and time again it cannot be trusted with the lives of Jewish people. In terms of American Constitutional philosophy They have the constitutional right to exist and to be represented in government, rights that have historically been denied to them in any other country in the middle east. So no, it doesn't fly in the face of US constitutional principle, unless you're Antonin Scalia.

"So long as the majority of people living within Israel's borders are Jewish, and so long as no-one is using force or murder to influence those demographics, they are welcome to keep their State Jewish."

This statement is unconcerned with and does not allow for the reality that Israel often has to use force to protect its existence. According to you, this is unnacceptable behavior. Of course, you seem to hold Arabs to a less stringent standard, which, as I mentioned earlier, is a subtle form of racism. There are forces in Israeli Civil society opposed to Israel's more brutal policies. It is part of maturing as a democracy that these issues are dealt with by the country in question, but the statement "they are welcome to as long as.." is highly conditional. What are you going to do about it? Suggest their state be taken away? and for who else in the Middle East do these standards apply?

Mr. Morley,

This is Sharon's personal account from his autobiography:

"I couldn't believe my ears. As I went back over each step of the operation, I began to understand what must have happened. For years Israeli reprisal raids had never succeeded in doing more than blowing up a few outlying buildings, if that. Expecting the same, some Arab families must have stayed in their houses rather than running away. In those big stone houses... some could easily have hidden in the cellars and back rooms, keeping quiet when the paratroopers went in to check and yell out a warning. The result was this tragedy that had happened."

I found it on this website: http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b1sharon.htm

OD,

"On the other hand, you are being disingenous by associating these particular massacres with Israel's more normal practice of singling out its armed enemies. The particular events I refer to WERE attempts to exterminate particular groups of civilians. They cannot be swept under the rug of collateral damage. They were not accidental byproducts of a mostly-clean military operation. They were deliberate forays into criminality and murder."

On the issue of 101, this is entirely your opinion. The assignment given to Sharon by the Israeli military was to find and kill the terrorists, not destroy the village and kill the civilians.

"As I said, there is no need for me to come here and comment on atrocities by Israel's opponents because:
A) Sharon, not Assad or Saddam, is the subject of today's news, and
B) There is little danger that the crimes of Syria or Hezbollah are about to be sanitised or justified by the US media."

I am not arguing with the US media. I am arguing with you. You are not balancing your arguments and refusing to acknowledge that these are armed conflicts that include two or more active participants, not just unilateral Israeli atrocities.

That Dude | Jan 5, 2006 4:24:24 PM
Are you misunderstanding me deliberately? Where did I say that Israel was removing the vote from its Arab citizens? I merely said that WOULD be wrong, to demonstrate that not all methods are acceptable ways of keeping the State's Jewish character.
What on earth is the connection between the IDF defending against external enemies and the use of force to alter Israel's internal demographic balance? Where did I say that Israel is using force against its Arab minority? I said that so long as they aren't doing that, they are entitled to use other means to keep their state Jewish.

Then you say I would be wrong to criticise them if they did ever launch some sort of anti-Arab pogrom. Why is that?

If you're going to accuse me of unbalanced arguments, you could at least read them properly.

I can tell you this Morley: The US Department of State issued a statement on Oct. 18, 1953, expressing its "deepest sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives" in the Qibya attack as well as the conviction that those responsible "should be brought to account and that effective measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future".
Funnily enough, the man responsible has just been brought to account, but the State Dept is now offering its prayers for his swift recovery.

Source for above US comments: Department of State Bulletin, Oct. 26, 1953, p. 552

Source for accounts of grenades through windows (and MGs set up to fire on those fleeing the burning buildings): Report of the Security Council to the General Assembly Covering the Period from 16 July 1948 to 15 July 1954 (A/2712), pp. 6-15

So That Dude, your Sharon account is asking us to believe that he blew up 45 small houses, killing 69 people inside, while the whole time labouring under the impression that the village was deserted.

And you call me unbalanced.

Anyway, even if you believe his account, the IDF clearly didn't, since they broke up his unit. And the US didn't either.

"What on earth is the connection between the IDF defending against external enemies and the use of force to alter Israel's internal demographic balance? Where did I say that Israel is using force against its Arab minority? I said that so long as they aren't doing that, they are entitled to use other means to keep their state Jewish."

An Arab invasion would upset Israel's internal geographic balance, wouldn't you say? I didn't you meant using the IDF to exterminate Israeli Arabs in the street, because, since that ISNT actually happening its not even worth mentioning. Your criticism of Israel is then based on hypothetical persecution of arabs? Who ever said ANY methods to maintain Jewish character in Israel would be appropriate? are you saying the withdrawal from Gaza was an innapropriate method of maintaining Jewish Identity? because earlier you seemed to be concerned that the American Media wasn't condemning Sharon for A. trying to keep the Jewish state Jewish B. using the Gaza withdrawal to do so.

"Then you say I would be wrong to criticise them if they did ever launch some sort of anti-Arab pogrom. Why is that?"

No, I said Israel has the right to defend itself against external threats, even those that affect its internal demographic composition. Also, while Israel has issues with democracy, its survival as a state should not be conditional on how well you think they're doing.

"I can tell you this Morley: The US Department of State issued a statement on Oct. 18, 1953, expressing its "deepest sympathy for the families of those who lost their lives" in the Qibya attack as well as the conviction that those responsible "should be brought to account and that effective measures should be taken to prevent such incidents in the future".
Funnily enough, the man responsible has just been brought to account, but the State Dept is now offering its prayers for his swift recovery."

Are you implying here that God made Sharon sick and is causing his death?

"So That Dude, your Sharon account is asking us to believe that he blew up 45 small houses, killing 69 people inside, while the whole time labouring under the impression that the village was deserted.

And you call me unbalanced.

Anyway, even if you believe his account, the IDF clearly didn't, since they broke up his unit. And the US didn't either."

I didn't say I believed his account, I said it was his account. However, if you had read it he doesn't say he believes the entire village was deserted, but that they had taken measures to remove the civilians before the destroyed the buildings. As I said before, this is a poor and inneffective method, but far more humane than any practiced by say, the US.

Whether or not they believed his account I don't know, but as above, I believe him to responsible, just not the way people who make it their mission to muder people of a certain race, gender, religion, creed or sexuality ar held responsible, because I dont' beleive that was his intent. However, earlier you suggested he wasn not disciplined, and now you are saying he was, because you think taht supports your belief that he is guilty of ethnic cleansing. However, his punishment seems to suggest that the incident was seen by the army as a mistake made by a soldier, not the genocidal agenda of a homicidal maniac.

I'm not calling Sharon a genocidal maniac. Israel has thankfully never given power to its small minority of genocidal maniacs. I'm calling him a deliberate murderer of unarmed civilians. I'm glad you agree.

"Are you implying here that God made Sharon sick and is causing his death?"

No, I don't believe in God. Overeating made Sharon sick.

Just as Lieut Calley was forgiven by the American people and went unpunished, Arik Sharon was forgiven by the Israeli people and went unpunished. It was therefore left to Father Time and Mother Nature to settle his account.

As for Calley, I understand he's happily running a jewellery store in Austin, Texas.

Morley: 'I spoke of "legendary" because the Sharon's exploits in that time are indeed legendary, for reasons good and bad. I avoided a more judgmental phrase like "death squads," not because I'm indifferent to Palestinian (or Jewish) life but because 1) I know how little I know and 2) I don't want to alienate readers from getting the information in the article.'

That's all understandable enough, sort of. "Death squads" is clearly a loaded term that you can't use.

But do you really think "legendary commando unit" is a neutral description?

Why don't you try "reprisal unit"? Reprisal is the term Sharon himself used for these 101 raids, including in the Sharon quote cited by That Dude above.

Reprisal was the standard term employed by the IDF at the time. "Hunting for terrorists" is a modern anachronism.

OD,

Yeah, Sharon has murdered unarmed civilians. I think you have provided zero evidence, other than your own opinion that he did so deliberately in Qibya.

You called him the butcher of Beirut and assigned him sole responsibility for the massacres of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, without mentioning that it was Christian militias who did the actual killing, and did not require any encouragement (and still do not) to murder Palestinians or Muslims.

Sharon's acquisition of west bank territory can hardly be described as "massive settlement building". It can be argued that it was unethical, but under Sharon more settlements have been dismantled than under any other Israeli leader.

You decline to give him credit from his withdrawal from Gaza because of completely unverifiable conjecture about his true motivations.

You claim that the US media will ignore Israel's "right wing" concerns about demographics for Israel's sake. Not only is Israels concern about maintaining its Jewish identity no secret, but it is not simply a "right wing" concern, Israelis know full well how Jews would fare in an Arab state. They only have to look at how Arabs fare in Arab states. Not freaking well. Your tone of condemnation undermines your later assertions that Israel has a right to exist. Only if it allows itself to be eventually swallowed by an Arab state and lose its Jewish identity, right?

Your characterization of Israeli Army units as "death squads" was incorrect, and you seem to have at least implicitly acknowledged the difference between an army unit that kills civilians as a peripheral result of its mission and one that is formed explicitly to do so.

You haven't responded to my questions about why you made so many hypothetical criticisms of hypothetical Israeli policy, but maybe its because they were silly to begin with.

My problem was and is with your imbalanced and reductive characterization of his life, which relied entirely on your own taste in hyperbole and omission of any actual context for the actions your were criticizing him for. You characterized every bad situation as the unilateral result of Israeli policy, rather than the complex system of actions and reactions that have brought the Middle East where it is today.

No I didn't call him the Butcher of Beirut. Despite the initials, I'm not the same person as Oh Damn.

However I think the characterisation is fair enough. After all, the bulk of the 17,000 civilian casualties of that war were killed by indiscriminate Israeli shelling of Muslim areas that went on for months. As Defence Minister, he was responsible.

He was also responsible for the additional cruelty of cutting off their water supplies. The IDF persistently denied doing this until caught red-handed.

And he personally helped arrange two appalling massacres there that killed about 900 people.

'Your characterization of Israeli Army units as "death squads" was incorrect, and you seem to have at least implicitly acknowledged the difference between an army unit that kills civilians as a peripheral result of its mission and one that is formed explicitly to do so.'

Sharon's unit didn't kill civilians as a peripheral result of his mission. It killed them because he interpreted his mission that way.

The IDF wanted Sharon to scare the villagers off. Blow up their shacks, a few houses, kill some livestock and one or two people, hopefully adult males.

Sharon instead massacred the entire village. This was typical of the way he ignored orders. He was widely distrusted by his superiors at the time. Dayan in particular thought him a loose cannon.
As I said, the murder of unarmed civilians at Qibya is not simply my own opinion unsupported by evidence. It was also the opinion of the UN Security Council, which investigated the incident and actually voted a resolution condemning it (the number was UNSC 101, ironically). And it was the opinion of the US State Dept, which I quote above.

And Sharon's complicity in the murder of civilians at Sabra and Shatila is also not my own unsupported opinion. It was the considered conclusion of an inquiry launched by his own government and it led to his enforced resignation.

You are the one spouting unsupported opinions. The only source you've cited is the laughable excuses of the war criminal himself. Some evidence.

And by the way, you aren't even reading his quote properly, despite citing it.

In it, Sharon admits that the purpose of the mission was a "reprisal raid" to blow up the homes of these villagers.

Instead you persist on characterising it as "hunting for terrorists", a military op in which these civilians were "tragically" but "peripherally" killed.

What, he blew up every house in the village by accident?

They must have been very small terrorists if he needed to turn Qibya into dust to find them.

You are actually ahead of the perpetrator himself in misrepresenting Qibya. Are you dishonest, or just gullible?
And, by the way, Sharon's motives for pulling out of Gaza are entirely knowable. I don't have to be a mind-reader. Likud's internal debate about Israel's demographic future has been long and loud.

Maybe a little off subject, but the willingness of Egypt's government to use murderous brutality against it's opponents last year is an ominous development for the neighborhood.

"Yeah, Sharon has murdered unarmed civilians. I think you have provided zero evidence, other than your own opinion that he did so deliberately in Qibya."

Since you and others here keep saying that I'm throwing about unsubstantiated allegations, and since the US media keeps implying that Sharon's early career is shrouded in impenetrable mystery, I went back and read up on the public facts.
Public facts recorded by UN observers and truce adjudicators, senior US and European military officers who arrived at the scene within a few hours, which were heard and discussed by the members of the UN security council and are in the UNSC's publicly available minutes.

http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/017eefb458011c9d05256722005e5499
"Bullet-riddled bodies near the doorways and multiple bullet hits on the doors of the demolished houses indicated that the inhabitants had been forced to remain inside until their homes were blown up over them.
...Witnesses were uniform in describing their experience as a night of horror, during which Israel soldiers moved about in their village blowing up buildings, firing into doorways and windows with automatic weapons and throwing hand grenades."
Major General Vagn Bennike, Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, reporting to the UN Security Council

"The crossing of the demarcation line by a force approximating one half of a battalion from the Israel regular army, fully equipped, into Qibya village on the night of 14-15 October 1953 to attack the inhabitants by firing from automatic weapons and throwing grenades and using bangalore torpedoes together with TNT explosive, by which forty-one dwelling houses and a school building were completely blown up, resulting in the cold-blooded murder of forty-two lives, including men, women and children..."
Finding of the Mixed Armistice Commission, read by Sir Gladwyn Jebb (UK Representative), at a UN Security Council Meeting.
(This was before the full 69 bodies had been dug out.)

"One story was repeated time after time: the bullet-splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them."
Cmdr E.H. Hutchison, US Navy, Chairman, Mixed Armistice Commission

Since when have grenades, mortars and machine-guns been tools used in the demolition of empty buildings?

Sharon's autobiography is a pack of lies and there wasn't a single government in the world that entertained for one second the notion that the deaths at Qibya were accidental. All, including the United States, condemned it as a deliberate massacre of civilians, and called for the perpetrators to be punished.

No-one had a political axe to grind against the obscure young Major Sharon -- nobody outside Israel had heard of him yet -- but his deeds shocked the world.

"...the Israelis moved into Qibya with rifle and Sten guns. They shot every man, woman and child they could find, then turned their fire on the cattle. After that they dynamited 42 houses, a school and a mosque. The cries of the dying could be heard amid the explosions. The villagers huddled in the grass could see Israeli soldiers slouching in the doorways of their homes, smoking and joking, their young faces illuminated by the flames. By 3 a.m., the Israelis' work was done ... Sixty-six died that night ... It was the bloodiest night of border warfare since the 1949 armistice ... In the slaughter of Qibya, Israel made peace harder than ever to attain."
Time magazine, 26 October 1953

'Qibya was in effect another Lidice and no United States person who was living at the time of this detestable Nazi wiping out of an entire village will forget the world's horror at that act.'
The National Jewish Post, editorial, October 30th 1953

"The cruel massacre at Qibya...For many months past, there have been acts of violence ... but this in its calculated horror is different in degree."
Dr. Cyril Garbett, Archbishop of York

"Your description of Sharon tossing hand grenades in the windows of sleeping children is a dramatic fabrication."

http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/017eefb458011c9d05256722005e5499
"One of the latest and gravest incidents in the Gaza Strip has been the attack upon several houses and huts in the Arab refugee camp of Bureij on the night of 28 August.
Bombs were thrown through the windows of huts in which refugees were sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons. The casualties were twenty killed, twenty-seven seriously wounded and thirty-five less seriously wounded. A likely explanation is that it was a ruthless reprisal raid."

Major General Vagn Bennike, Chief of Staff of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, telling the UN Security Council of an Israeli raid on Bureij on 28 August 1953, about a fortnight before Qibya. This raid was also carried out by Force 101 and personally led by Major Ariel Sharon. That's a publicly acknowledged fact and you can find it in the official history of the IDF Parachute Brigade, which later swallowed 101.

So Qibya was his second massacre of civilians in a few weeks. In fact he was at it throughout much of 1953. His unit was formed for that purpose. It appears that Sharon was just vastly more bloodthirsty than other officers ordered to carry out 'reprisal' operations, who had often come back after just torching a few barns and fields. Sharon could be trusted not to go softhearted at the thought of a few sleeping children.

I will tell you how legitimate a military operation Qibya was:

Israel denied any involvement.

Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared live on air: "The Government of Israel rejects with all vigor the absurd and fantastic allegation that 600 men of the IDF took part in the action ... We have carried out a searching investigation and it is clear beyond doubt that not a single army unit was absent from its base on the night of the attack on Qibya." (Statement by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, ISA FM 2435/5)

The British Rep at the UNSC pointed out the lawyerly loophole language:
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/eef5490a45758c7c05256727006e0e6c
"With the greatest respect, I suggest that the broadcast statement made by the Prime Minister of Israel on 19 October 1953, does not in itself preclude such a conclusion (Israel's guilt), since that statement only denied the allegation that 600 men of the Israel defense forces took part in the action and asserted that no unit was absent from its base on the night of the attack on Qibya."

Commander E.H. HUTCHISON (USN), Chairman of the Mixed Armistice Commission, easily debunked Israel's disowning of not only the attack on Qibya but also on several other villages attacked that year with 81-mm mortars, 2-inch mortars, PIATs, bangalore torpedoes, scattered landmines, "specially manufactured incendiary bombs used by Israel military forces to burn a field of grain", machine-guns, grenades and small arms.

According to the Israeli government, it had no idea whence came the reinforced company-sized units who sprang from the desert air to mount these night raids.

The American officer pointed out that the tracks always led back to Israel, the sites were strewn with IDF munitions and at the scene of one attack, at Idna, "the body of an Israel soldier in full uniform with identification tag".

Israel's denials were never intended to convince its peers in foreign governments, of course. That stuff was just for the American public and other suckers.

I apologise for spamming everyone with the truth, but hopefully it will settle the issue of whether Sharon is a habitual murderer of unarmed civilians.

My charges and accusations weren't fabrications. Sharon's feeble excuses were.

Other Security Council meetings on the massacre:
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/6bd4ecb150d067a5052567240073c87f
http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/eef5490a45758c7c05256727006e0e6c

Morley asks for reading suggestions on the early career of Sharon. In 1985 Israeli journalist Uzi Benziman wrote a well-known book called 'Sharon: An Israeli Caesar' which predicted, while Sharon was still in disgrace over the Beirut massacres, that he would return to become prime minister. I've not read it. It's not a flattering portrait, but has never been debunked from what I gather.

Another book, Righteous Victims by Benny Morris, says Qibya was carried out on orders from defence minister Lavon. The orders apparently called for "maximum destruction and killing" in response to an attack by Jordanian infiltrators that killed an Israeli woman and two kids.

Most Israelis believe their government ordered Qibya, Bureij and the other attacks. Otherwise they would have to accept the only alternative: that Sharon just likes massacres, that he's their own Lt Calley and they have made him Prime Minister. Having gone back and read up, I also now believe it was decided higher up to make a severe example of an Arab village.

But ordered or not, Sharon was eager, that's for sure. He had no problem with the dirty jobs. This one 25-year-old major was on the scene, commanding, at all three of Israel's notable truce-violating massacres of the year.

He was a hitman, an executioner, disliked by his fellow officers long before he got his brigade into trouble during Suez.

But beloved by the public. Like Lieut Calley, the young war criminal Sharon was given a second chance by a public that can't resist a man in uniform.

The super-ambitious Sharon was entrusted with the post of Defence Minister, until he was found to have borne "personal responsibility" for the massacres of 900 people at Sabra and Shatila. Even then, he refused to resign, and was fired by the Government, acting on the recommendation of the inquiry commission. Is someone going to accuse me of basing that charge on wild conjecture too?

War criminals are supposed to be punished. Sharon should have been behind bars in 1982, but instead was running an invasion and organising further, bigger massacres. Many thousands of Lebanese died in his crappy failed war.

Unsuccessful bandits throughout history have complained that if you kill one man, they hang you as a murderer, but if you kill ten thousand, they hail you as a king. Arik King of Israel is a very old and familiar type in the region. Newspapers like the Post will now praise his virtues, because his political elevation apparently makes it taboo to call him a criminal in polite company.

I see no need to view Sharon's life in a 'larger context'. Nor to pay any particular heed to his shifty politics when there remains unaccounted for the matter of his crimes. I must have missed the meeting where we all agreed to compromise with war criminals.

Nor am I obliged to somehow mitigate his massacres of the innocent by setting them off against the crimes of other killers. I'll agree to give war criminals a second chance when their apologists invent a way to give dead villagers a second chance.

I'm not cheered by Sharon's illness in the slightest. Quite the opposite, I always resent it when the perpetrators of mass-murder die old and unpunished. He's cheating the hangman of his due.

I appreciate the detailed and thoughtful argument you have just made.

"I see no need to view Sharon's life in a 'larger context'. Nor to pay any particular heed to his shifty politics when there remains unaccounted for the matter of his crimes. I must have missed the meeting where we all agreed to compromise with war criminals."

I disagree with this statement. In order to understand something, you have to view it in context. The middle east is a tangled mess of bloody sectarian conflicts and fierce grudges, and new atrocities are committed every day by every political entity involved and by the individuals who run them. It is one thing to hold Sharon accountable for what he has done, but it is another to hold him solely accountable. What you call "compromise with war criminals" is really a refusal to acknoweldge that Sharon was not acting independently, but that his actions are part of the complex web of horrible things people do and have done to each other as part of the ethnic and religious conflicts in the middle east. To single him out for criticism while letting others off the hook when you are discussing certain incidents suggests that you are less concerned about civilians dying then pointing the finger at specific people.

There are very few heads of state without blood on their hands, especially in the Middle East. There are a few, like Bush, who I would find difficulty finding any defensible qualities or policy decisions. I don't feel the same way about Sharon, and whatever you speculate to be his motivations, he has done some good things and taken steps toward the necessary creation of a Palestinian State, more so than any other leader in the region.

"I'm not cheered by Sharon's illness in the slightest. Quite the opposite, I always resent it when the perpetrators of mass-murder die old and unpunished. He's cheating the hangman of his due."

I'm sure Sharon would be very satisfied in himself belivieving that he has deprived certain people of that comfort. I guess what I'm saying is that the philosophy behind that statement doesn't really sound very different from the kind of rationalization that would be driving Sharon to do the things he did.

You might as well say that the philosophy of the Nuremburg Tribunal was no different than the philosophy of the murderers that it hanged. I am calling for punishment of the guilty, to discourage further crimes. Sharon's job was the murder of innocents, to spread fear. His purpose was to foment violence, during a period of truce. I admit, however, that my use of the word "hangman" was a bit of literary license. What he needed was life imprisonment in 1953.

Many leaders have the odd assassination on their hands. Some much worse. I'll say one thing for George Bush, though. He's never actually stood there supervising the shooting and blowing up of women and children. He'd swoon away.

If the Israeli right, or centre, or whatever faction Sharon most latterly represented, wants to send an envoy to transmit its bold new peace-orientated thinking, I suggest they choose one who doesn't have death squad leadership on his resume.

Because to even deal with the man in a political sense is to lend legitimacy to his dual career path of part war criminal, part statesman. I know Sharon is hardly the first to reconcile those two roles. Murder can be a quick way to the top.

Politics is surely the only profession where a history of murdering women and children is not necessarily a black mark on your CV. Sharon's past would immediately disqualify him from being a janitor in a primary school. But not, apparently, from guardianship of Israel's 300 nuclear weapons.

I knew you would mention context. You're right it was silly of me to say 'I see no need to view Sharon's life in a larger context'. What I should have said was 'I see no need to present Sharon's life in a larger context'.

If Sharon is a person whose past includes multiple instances of machine-gunning sleeping infants, yet everyone here is either defending him or saying they are not in possession of the facts, then my immediate instinct is to point out the child-murdering side of his character. Other people may choose to highlight different personality traits.

You say Sharon has done some good things. Feel free to list them.

When I read you saying it was unfair to blame Sharon alone while letting other men off, for a second I thought you were referring to the men who gave Major Sharon his orders.

But of course you were referring to the other side. The UNSC delegates got into the question of provocation and context a great deal.

The alleged provocation for Qibya came two days before when a woman and two children in Yahud were killed by a hand grenade thrown through a window by Jordanian infiltrators.

Gen Bennike described the investigation: "United Nations observers went from Jerusalem to Yahud on 13 October at about 0600 local time to carry out an investigation. There was no evidence on the ground to indicate who had committed the crime.
An Israeli dog trainer and a blood-hound were brought to the scene in an attempt to pick up tracks. The dog was shown a footprint outside the window of the attacked house and started tracking towards the East. This information was passed to the Jordanians who offered, if the tracks led to the border, to allow the dog handler to enter Jordan... The tracks led into Jordan for about 1,400 metres and were lost on the road near the police station outside of Rantis. The reason given by the dog master for the dog losing the tracks was that traffic along the road had caused dust to settle over the tracks."

The Israelis had no idea where the attack came from. They picked Qibya for its convenience. They also shelled two neighbouring villages during the attack. That was all normal. Neither soldiers nor irregulars from either side ever made any effort to find the actual culprits of the attacks they were allegedly reprising against. Both sides just picked on the most convenient civilian throughout this period.

Who could say which was the reprisal and which the provocation? Were Sharon's Israelis at Qibya throwing grenades through windows because a Jordanian had just thrown one through an Israeli's window at Yahud? Or did that Jordanian do so in revenge for Force 101 having done it a few days previously at Bureij?

The tit-for-tat cycle mostly had no beginning and no end. The old local priniciple of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth was widely observed.

What was always different and special about Sharon was the ruthlessness and the quantity of blood. There was no proportionality in Sharon's operations. At Qibya he killed 23 times as many people as he ostensibly avenged. That was about par for the course for Force 101, the legendary bedroom grenadiers.

I think it's pretty clear now whether Force 101 were a death squad or not. They were formed just days before the raid on Bureij (where Jordan says it ultimately dug out 47 bodies), and dissolved following the international outcry over Qibya. There was a formal truce on throughout their existence. And the Arab Legion was away in Amman. Force 101 wasn't in any battles. Just massacres.

One thing that makes Qibya particularly egregious, and infuriated the Mixed Armistice Commission, was that within a few hours of the grenade attack at Yahud, General Glubb, commander of the Arab Legion, flew in from Amman and asked to meet the Chairman of the Mixed Armistice Commission, Commander Hutchison.

Glubb told him that Jordan took the violation extremely seriously, and that he had flown in to lead the investigation in person. Israeli investigators were welcome to cross the border, he added. This was actually a standard offer from the Jordanian side which Israel had never previously accepted.

The same day, in the presence of the Chairman, the Jordanian delegates to the Mixed Armistice Commission had begged their Israeli counterparts not retaliate because "if any retaliation action is taken, then the whole issue will be difficult and it will confuse the investigation on our side".

24 hours later, Sharon hit Qibya.

The obvious likely consequence if commanders go around exacting this sort of disproportionate vengeance is a rapid escalation in casualties all round, and a swift end to periods of truce. But that always suited Sharon.

After all, Sharon's dream was Greater Israel. Or more accurately, "Complete Israel" - Eretz Yisrael Hashlema.

This required annexing large chunks of Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

What did this mean in practice? Quite simply, there were two ways Sharon could get what he wanted:

1. Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon could all peacefully decide to give Israel large chunks of their countries, or
2. Sharon needed more wars.

No prizes for guessing which path he saw as more practicable.

You mention that Israel's borders always grew in wars started by its neighbours. But that is not because of restraint on the part of Sharon. In fact Israel has launched two aggressive invasions, and Sharon was heavily involved in both, in Suez-Sinai and in Lebanon, which was his own plan.

You'll remember that after invading Lebanon, Israel set up a 'buffer zone' in the south complete with a collaborating force, the South Lebanon Army. Ostensibly this was a defensive measure against rockets sporadically launched across the border by terrorists. But the buffer zone, stretching far off to the west, bore no relation to the potential launching sites of these primitive Katyusha rockets.

It matched perfectly, however, the part of Lebanon which the Greater Israelites claimed as their own. Shortly after the invasion, Sharon's Cabinet colleague and close ally Yuval Ne'eman, founder of the Tehiya party, let the cat out of the bag. He said publicly that South Lebanon was "geographically and historically an integral part of Israel."

"Israel could integrate (Lebanon) south of Litani (River) into development plans," he added.

Over the 11 months between US envoy Philip Habib's border ceasefire and the start of the war Israel charged that the PLO staged 270 terrorist actions in Israel, the Occupied Territories, and along the Lebanese and Jordanian borders, in which 29 Israelis were killed and more than 300 were injured.

But after the war, former chief of Israeli Military Intelligence Gen. Yehoshafat Harkabi charged that the 1982 invasion had been engineered by deceit at the highest political levels. Harkarbi cites misleading statements to the cabinet by Sharon and Begin, inaccurate announcements by Israel's military spokesmen and the Likud government's gross exaggeration of terrorist acts conducted from Lebanon. Defence Minister Rabin later admitted in the Knesset that during the eleven-month ceasefire preceding the war Israel's northern settlements had been attacked only twice and that during this period Israel had suffered a total of two killed and six wounded from terrorist attacks out of Lebanon.

During the same period, the UN Secretary-General reported 2096 Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace, including bombing raids like the ones on June 4/5 1982, which killed 45 people. Or the raid at Damour on 21 April, which killed 23. This raid was a reprisal carried out after an Israeli officer INSIDE LEBANON stepped on a landmine.

The ostensible immediate pretext for the invasion was the shooting of the Israeli ambassador to London. This led the Israeli cabinet to conclude that the PLO needed to be driven out of Lebanon.

The only problem was that the British police had proved beyond any doubt that the shooting was the work not of the PLO, but of Arafat's hated rival Abu Nidal, who had zero presence in Lebanon. When this was mentioned to IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan, he uttered his famous quote: "Abu Nidal, Abu Shmidal, we need to screw the PLO."

Sharon never got to integrate South Lebanon into his development plans. Unfortunately for Ne'eman, Sharon and the SLA, the locals had other plans.

Now he has also dropped his plans for the smallest, poorest, and most indigestible part of "Complete Israel", the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile he has driven forward far greater settlement-building in the coveted West Bank.

Do you deny that Israel wants to incorporate vast chunks of the West Bank? Why then should I accept that the Israeli right has abandoned the dream of Complete Israel? Ils reculent pour mieux sauter.

Why should anyone trust his goodwill towards peace? He's always thrived in times of violence. The assassination of Rabin by a right-wing activist made possible Likud's revival and Sharon's comeback from disgrace. After that, the sense of emergency spawned by the Intifada kept him on top. An Intifada that began with his deliberately provocative trip to the al-Aqsa.

Whenever the pace of suicide bombings in Israel fell off too much, Sharon would stir the pot by targeting a couple of Hamas members. Always, he intervened in some way if things seemed to be quieting down.

Sharon worked his way up the war criminal career ladder from the bottom. He began as a triggerman but ended as a stringpuller. His most egregious crimes, in 1953 and 1982, stand out as moments of particular horror in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Perhaps there's a large hole in my memory, but I can't think of a single atrocity in the whole 60+year mess that competes in awfulness with Sabra and Shatila.

The greatest irony is that one of the most effective ways in which Sharon was able to 'freeze the peace process in formaldehyde' in recent years was by refusing to negotiate with Arafat because Arafat was a criminal and a murderer.

If the Palestinians wanted to be taken seriously as partners for peace, said Sharon, let them send forth a leader whose hands are not stained with innocent blood.

But that is precisely what I am saying about Sharon.

I have read with interest the many to and fros and playing with words with regards to Ariel Sharon but with so many words we cannot see the wood for the trees, and that seems to be the intention of some pro Sharon listers.

Sharon was instrumental in ethnic cleansing, murder, land and water resource theft, actively promoting illegal occupation of occupied territory, defiance of United Nations resolutions, and, on a different plane, illicit financial dealings and corruption.

In my book that makes the man a war criminal at the very least.

But what is far far worse is the blind support of Israel by successive US presidents who will do anything to defend Israel even when international opinion is almost united in the condemnation of Israel's acts.
The numerous US vetos to quash criticism of Israel, the pressure used against Belgium to prevent Sharon for being tried for his personal involment in the Sabra & Shatila massacre etc.
Bush's recent statement that Sharon is "a man of peace" is too ridiculous to be taken seriously but what can you expect from a man who has friends like Pat Robertson and who declares that "God told me to do it". The world listens with astonished amazement at these comments from someone who holds his finger on the button.

It does really seem that Washington and the US media is in a stranglehold of AIPAC and the Jewish lobby.

Along with other observers I forsee an ominous swing to the right in Israeli politics which can only bide ill for the Palestinian people.

I subscribe to LWP's notion that the tit-for-tat goes back so far it's pointless trying to decide who did what first.
But what is notable to me is that America insisted democracy needed to be planted in the Middle East because "democracies don't make war on each other".

Well, there are now two truly elected Arab governments, Palestine and Lebanon, and both are being invaded by another democracy, Israel.

And the very same people who swallowed the US Govt's "democratisation" crap hook, line, and sinker, are now saying that Lebanese civilians are legitimate targets BECAUSE they had elections. So much for the blessings of democracy in the Middle East.

So tell me, David and others touting this line...Israel elected as PM Menachem Begin, who directed the terroristic blowing-up of the King David Hotel, which killed many innocent Jews as well as Britons. Begin also ordered the despicable assassination of Count Bernadotte, a man who had saved thousands of Jews from Himmler's clutches.

Israel also elected as PM Ariel Sharon, who personally led a death squad in the terroristic massacres of at least two villages (Qibya and Bureij). Sharon's massacre at Qibya was condemned by the National Jewish Post in the US as "another Lidice".

Israelis elected these terrorists and regard them as fathers of their nation.

I guess by your logic that makes Israeli civilians legitimate targets.