Ariel Sharon dies at 85

[Irbis]

Ex-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon dies at 85

The iconic but controversial former Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has died after his medical condition significantly deteriorated, local media report.

The 85-year-old politician died in Tel Aviv’s Tel Hashomer hospital, also known as the Chaim Sheba Medical Center, where he has been in a coma since January 2006 after suffering a stroke and brain hemorrhage.

For nearly eight years he has been on respiratory life support, occasionally opening his eyes and moving fingers. He was supported by fluids through a feeding tube.

Signs that Sharon’s health was failing started coming shortly before the New Year, with a spokesman for the hospital reporting deterioration in Sharon’s medical condition. The ex-PM was suffering from “serious kidney problems” after undergoing surgery, army radio said.

News website Ynet quoted medical sources as saying Sharon was taken into intensive care a month ago.

"We are defining his condition as critical, and there is definitely a threat to his life," Zeev Rotstein, director of the Sheba Medical Center, told reporters. "The feeling of everyone ... is that this decline is very serious."

In September, Sharon underwent surgery to correct his intravenous feeding system.

Last January, neurological MRI scans revealed significant brain activity in the former PM’s brain. Medical staff recorded a positive response to family pictures, a recording of his son's voice and human touch.

Sharon, one of Israel’s most famous generals, was an iconic figure of his time, yet some of his policies remain controversial to this day.

As a military commander, Sharon sometimes disobeyed orders and followed bold and often risky tactics in battle. As a politician he was known as “the bulldozer,” a man capable of getting things done.

Rising from the rank of paratrooper to Defense Minister, Sharon played a prominent part in several of Israel’s armed conflicts – the 1948 War of Independence, the 1956 Suez War, the Six-Day War of 1967, the War of Attrition and the Yom-Kippur War of 1973 and the 1982 Lebanon War.

By 1967, his military genius in the Six-Day War earned him the name of "The King of Israel" and "The Lion of God" with the Israeli public.

Sharon resigned as a Defense Minister in 1983 after a commission of inquiry found him personally liable for failing to prevent the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla camps by Christian Phalangists.

After retiring from the army, Sharon joined and later led the Likud party, leaving it in 2005 to form the new Kadima party.

A military hawk, he was Israel’s prominent hard-liner when he was elected prime minister in 2001.

In mid-2005 he ended 38 years of military control of the Gaza Strip after directing a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from the territory, a shock for those who supported Sharon’s championing of the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

On one hand, he has much dirt on his hands, on the other, his decision to remove settlers from Gaza and end its occupation was half a step in the right direction, something that would be almost unthinkable today. I wonder if Israel will find the courage to finish the process and establish peaceful cooperation in the region somehow.

[Welf]

Pity the removal of the settlers was only seen as a sign of weakness by Hamas and instantly used to built rockets and start a war.

[cosmicalstorm]

I thought he died years ago.

[LadyTevar]

He will be idolized and stigmatized by generations to come. I will simply wish Peace upon his family.

[Thanas]

One less war criminal. May he and his corrupt family get what they deserve.

[DaveJB]

I thought he died years ago.

For all intents and purposes he did. He suffered a series of strokes eight years ago which damaged his brain beyond any realistic hope of any sort of recovery, and remained in a coma until he died.

[Flagg]

One less war criminal. May he and his corrupt family get what they deserve.

No shit. The post-mortum fellatio the media over here is disgusting. They mention he's been accused of indirectly causing deaths but don't go into any detail.

[Kitsune]

I thought he died years ago.

For all intents and purposes he did. He suffered a series of strokes eight years ago which damaged his brain beyond any realistic hope of any sort of recovery, and remained in a coma until he died.

Would have been better to just let him die

[Lolpah]

I thought he died years ago.

For all intents and purposes he did. He suffered a series of strokes eight years ago which damaged his brain beyond any realistic hope of any sort of recovery, and remained in a coma until he died.

Not actually? Didn't they find large amount of brain activity, and doctors were hopeful he might some day recover?

[Kitsune]

I thought he died years ago.

For all intents and purposes he did. He suffered a series of strokes eight years ago which damaged his brain beyond any realistic hope of any sort of recovery, and remained in a coma until he died.

Not actually? Didn't they find large amount of brain activity, and doctors were hopeful he might some day recover?

Other than in movies, people really don't recover after being in comas that long.
Steve Novella, a neurologist, has spoken about it several times

[Lolpah]

Other than in movies, people really don't recover after being in comas that long.
Steve Novella, a neurologist, has spoken about it several times

They MOSTLY don't, but it is always possible and it has happened.

[Darth Yan]

On one hand, he was a grade a asshole. On the other hand, no one really deserves to fall into that kind of coma and live in that kind of hell. At this point I'm torn between expressing relief that he's no longer in that hell or good riddance. His son is still an asshole

[Elfdart]

One less war criminal. May he and his corrupt family get what they deserve.

No shit. The post-mortum fellatio the media over here is disgusting. They mention he's been accused of indirectly causing deaths but don't go into any detail.

Judith Miller called this dead fat fascist as "The Lion of Israel". She is right, considering that lions are predators that go out of their way to kill the cubs of other lions. Think of this as National Geographic's version of Qibya or Shatila/Sabran.

[Flagg]

One less war criminal. May he and his corrupt family get what they deserve.

No shit. The post-mortum fellatio the media over here is disgusting. They mention he's been accused of indirectly causing deaths but don't go into any detail.

Judith Miller called this dead fat fascist as "The Lion of Israel". She is right, considering that lions are predators that go out of their way to kill the cubs of other lions. Think of this as National Geographic's version of Qibya or Shatila/Sabran.

That's also funny because lions mostly steal food from other predators. You know how hyenas are portrayed as stealing from lions? It's almost always the other way around. Lions are the King of the Jungle if they ordered the execution of Ned Stark.

[Simon_Jester]

Sharon's background was very much that of combat. As a commando, he sought out battles and conflict on the soil of Israel's hostile neighbors- and committed war crimes and acts of aggression as part of that. For most of his life, he did terrible things to people, and he believed he was doing them to protect his country.

That attitude, I think, characterizes Israel very well. Their history is surrounded by fighting, fighting against invading national armies and fighting against the guerilla forces of the population they displaced to create their country. As they fight, they seek to do harm to their enemies, they sometimes go out aggressively and try to do harm to those they deem their enemies. And they don't count the costs suffered by those other people very carefully. They have seldom if ever stopped fighting, and as a result it is nearly impossible for them to imagine the idea of stopping the fight for any great length of time.

That is Israel's history, and that is Sharon's career. Which is why the man has been such a good fit for the nation- as a commando in the early years, as a general in the Six Days' War and the Yom Kippur War, and as a politician after his retirement from military service.

That said, I do think Sharon found at least a small measure of grace toward the end, when he seemed to grasp that despite all his experience as a fighter, it was no longer the time for Israel to simply fight, and began disengaging from parts of what we now call the Palestinian territories. Maybe, at the end, he began to understand. I hope so.

[mr friendly guy]

Taking a trip down memory lane when Arafat carcked it.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=56389

At last. One down, Sharon to go.

Well I guess it had to happen. I would say that with their passing hopefully a new generation can try and sort out the problems in the ME, but that would be overly optimistic given the state of affairs over there. If anything, the current Israel PM was even more extreme then when Sharon was running the show.

[Simon_Jester]

As I said, at the end of his career Sharon was at least thinking seriously in terms of "what can we do to achieve peace?" Most of his replacements... don't.

[Thanas]

You would think he thought that way, but all I see is a way to control those pesky palaestinians by walling off one part of their country while granting settlement permits en masse in the other, more valuable part.

[Ace Pace]

You would think he thought that way, but all I see is a way to control those pesky palaestinians by walling off one part of their country while granting settlement permits en masse in the other, more valuable part.

I think he saw it that way, it's the way he talked in his inner circle. And yet, he was also willing to do land swaps for security, which is more than you can say for any of his successors.

[Simon_Jester]

I do not deny it. I simply think it's interesting that he was even able to get that far beyond the "we're at war, do harm unto our enemies" mindset, and move over to "we need some kind of long-term stable arrangement with these people, we can't just ignore them and/or shoot at them and hope they go away."

[Irbis]

You would think he thought that way, but all I see is a way to control those pesky palaestinians by walling off one part of their country while granting settlement permits en masse in the other, more valuable part.

In case you didn't notice, he removed settlements in Gaza, despite being able to hack off choicy bits there too. As in, ordered Israeli soldiers to physically move in, drag every settler back to Israel, despite armed resistance, and hand the whole area to Palestinians:



That operation cost Israel billions of dollars and was extremely unpopular, yet he still ordered to do it. Had Israeli prime minister today said, as you contemptuously say, to unilaterally "wall off" and withdraw from West Bank, he would be pretty much leading candidate for that year Nobel peace prize.

Also, a few things in perspective. West Bank wall is 700 km long, 1/3 of West Bank is off limits to Palestinians, who however still are wast majority of people living in it. This is pretty bad, yes, and Israel breaks multiple international laws, but if you look at the other end of Africa, to another "West Bank" called Western Sahara, you will find dear Western ally, Morocco, occupying area 55 times larger than West Bank, regularly hunting its population, attracting little to no scorn compared to Palestine.

Western Sahara wall is 2700 km long, liberally laced with land mines (can you imagine literal explosions among Israeli detractors that would happen if Israel placed a single land mine in West Bank?), and Moroccan pernament settlers, unlike Israeli ones, are already 60% of the population of Western Sahara (together with Moroccan soldiers, the ratio is over 90%). Morocco loudly demands this literal demographic plough-through was forgotten and the settlers were allowed to vote in any future peace settlement, in order to keep WS forever, something Israel never demanded in any capacity for their own.

What kind of sanctions met Morocco for all this? Let's see, dear ol' EU and USA allow Morocco to sell WS fruits and tomatoes as "Made in Morocco" (this is illegal under international laws), fishing in WS territorial waters is sold as Moroccan fish (again illegal), with EU happily participating in the deal, US and French companies with German (and many other) subcontractors drill for oil and phosphates in WS, all being equally illegal, and despite NGOs and left wing parties sometimes claiming bullshit on the blatant pillaging Morocco is still best ally 4 life. Proof? Talks about admitting them to NATO (they already have special ally status with USA) and giving them special relationship deal with EU ('advanced status' and special summit talks, with talks of them moving to EEA member).

So please, while Sharon did multiple things that should have been met with retribution, he is one of just 3 Israeli leaders in last quarter of the century that actually did something to move Israel closer to peace, and any righteous indignation to criticize is best saved for people that actually move the world further away from it.

[Thanas]

So please, while Sharon did multiple things that should have been met with retribution, he is one of just 3 Israeli leaders in last quarter of the century that actually did something to move Israel closer to peace, and any righteous indignation to criticize is best saved for people that actually move the world further away from it.

If I oppress people, I do not deserve recognition for oppressing them less. Especially not if I merely swap worthless land for land much more valuable. How many settlers were evicted out of Gaza? 14.000? Let's call it 20.000 just to be sure.

Do the number matters in overall increase under Sharon?

What about buildings? Well, around 10.000 new settlement buildings were allowed in the west bank between 2001 and 2007. How many buildings were evacuated in the west bank? I can't find any number, but even if we allow just 2 settlers per building (a preposterous assertion considering the large families they usually have) then (assuming the land taken in the west bank is just as worhtless as the Gaza land, while we know that it is worth much more) Sharon barely breaks even. And that is under so many prerequisites in favor of Sharon that one might very well call that scenario to be unrealistic.

[eyl]

So please, while Sharon did multiple things that should have been met with retribution, he is one of just 3 Israeli leaders in last quarter of the century that actually did something to move Israel closer to peace, and any righteous indignation to criticize is best saved for people that actually move the world further away from it.

If I oppress people, I do not deserve recognition for oppressing them less. Especially not if I merely swap worthless land for land much more valuable. How many settlers were evicted out of Gaza? 14.000? Let's call it 20.000 just to be sure.

Do the number matters in overall increase under Sharon?

What about buildings? Well, around 10.000 new settlement buildings were allowed in the west bank between 2001 and 2007. How many buildings were evacuated in the west bank? I can't find any number, but even if we allow just 2 settlers per building (a preposterous assertion considering the large families they usually have) then (assuming the land taken in the west bank is just as worhtless as the Gaza land, while we know that it is worth much more) Sharon barely breaks even. And that is under so many prerequisites in favor of Sharon that one might very well call that scenario to be unrealistic.

About 8,000 settlers were removed from Gaza. I don't know how many buildings were removed, but 4 settlements were removed at the same time as Gaza and a few others were later. That said:

1) As a general note, it can be misleading to look at how many buildings were "allowed". Especially under right-wing governments (and it's especially bad under Netanyahu due to the fractiousness of his coalition), there are periodic announcements of approval for plans to build thousands of new buildings, but often these aren't actually carried out. For example, recall the two announcements over the last decade (the second was not very long ago) of approval to build in the E2 are near Maale Edumim. There was a lot of international furor around it, but as of now, nothing has been built there AFAIK.
2) I'm not sure why you're dismissing the evacuated land as "worthless" - the settlements wouldnt have been cite there in that case.
3) It's more instructive to examine the distribution of settlement growth rather than total numbers. There are areas (e.g. places in the environs of Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion region) which will remain Israeli under almost every peace proposal since the Geneva Accords. As these areas are, not coincidently, also the most populated settlements, they tend to attract the highest growth. But the amount of territory under Palestinian control was considerably greater at the end of Sharon's term than when it began (include the entirety of one of the two contiguous elements of the proposed Palestinian state).
4) You realize that same condemnation you gave Sharon could be equally levelled at Rabin? Settlements grew during his term as well, and he began the removal of the Israeli military presence from the Palestinian cities he did not remove any significant number of settlers.

[Thanas]

1) As a general note, it can be misleading to look at how many buildings were "allowed". Especially under right-wing governments (and it's especially bad under Netanyahu due to the fractiousness of his coalition), there are periodic announcements of approval for plans to build thousands of new buildings, but often these aren't actually carried out. For example, recall the two announcements over the last decade (the second was not very long ago) of approval to build in the E2 are near Maale Edumim. There was a lot of international furor around it, but as of now, nothing has been built there AFAIK.
2) I'm not sure why you're dismissing the evacuated land as "worthless" - the settlements wouldnt have been cite there in that case.

With regards to the first point, I agree with it. With regards to the second, if your aim is to push the Palestinians into ghettos, then land which you want to grab is worth more than the giant ghetto aka Gaza, especially if control over the west bank is more important in the strategic sense.

3) It's more instructive to examine the distribution of settlement growth rather than total numbers. There are areas (e.g. places in the environs of Jerusalem and the Gush Etzion region) which will remain Israeli under almost every peace proposal since the Geneva Accords. As these areas are, not coincidently, also the most populated settlements, they tend to attract the highest growth. But the amount of territory under Palestinian control was considerably greater at the end of Sharon's term than when it began (include the entirety of one of the two contiguous elements of the proposed Palestinian state).

And yet, he also approved the wall and did nothing to reign in settlers in the west bank.

What is supposed to be the end goal of Israel here?

4) You realize that same condemnation you gave Sharon could be equally levelled at Rabin? Settlements grew during his term as well, and he began the removal of the Israeli military presence from the Palestinian cities he did not remove any significant number of settlers.

Yes, of course. Though Rabin gets the added bonus of not being a war criminal.

[Elfdart]

I found this article interesting. Apparently, Aryan Sharon didn't just support ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, but in Guatemala too.