just to note the obvious: he was a war criminal, and a butcher who killed women and children and encouraged that plus rape, in Lebanon. He was largely responsible for the Israeli settlement policy, which will doom Israel either to fully ethnically cleansing the Palestinians, or losing their Jewish identity. (Which Israel should, in any case. A state which classifies residents by their religious ethnicity is an abomination)
The inability of the vast majority of newspapers to state that Sharon was a war criminal plainly is what is wrong with them. Controversial doesn’t cover it.
Sharon was bad for Israel, and will be seen as one of the architects of its demise in the future. He was a monster to non-Israelis.
markfromireland
My unit was one of the first to make it into Shatila after the massacre. Despite all I’ve experienced since the sights, sounds, and above all the smell is something that remains with me to this day. Despite his denials it’s always been clear that Sharon knew what was going to be done by the SLA in those camps. He knew damned well what they were going to do and he wanted it. He was a vicious racist thug who worshiped Jabotinsky he was guilty of waging war of aggression and of far more than merely negligent homicide on a breathtaking scale he was guilty of complicity. As if waging unprovoked war, mass murder, targeting entire civilian populations, weren’t enough he was also directly and personally complicit in setting up the torture regime at Khiam prison. It was Sharon who instigated that hell hole. Sharon who authorised it. Sharon who funded it. Sharon who provided the training and equipment for the torturers. And it was Sharon who personally selected the first set of Israeli Officers to supervise proceedings.
Domestically it was Sharon who instigated some of the worst aspects of how Israel treats its non-Jewish citizens by dint of straightforwardly copying them from his buddies in Apartheid era South Africa. It was Sharon who authorised the presence of South African Bureau of State Security officers in Israel as ‘advisors’.
Ariel Sharon was a racist, a war criminal, a mass murderer, and a torturer. I’m glad he’s dead. May he scream in hell for all eternity.
mfi
guest
Sharon was bad for Israel, and will be seen as one of the architects of its demise in the future.
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Israel has certainly lost its way and its soul (but the whole project was probably doomed from the start) and Sharon may certainly be a principal architect of its eventual demise. But Ian has way too much faith that the “truth will out” in the future.
Personally, I think within the next 100 years, people will be too fucking involved with plain old survival to know or care about the history of absurb claims to crappy desert real estate based on 3000 year old mythology, or how it obviously came to a bad end.
Formerly T-Bear
He was a poor package for worm food.
Here’s me, wishing A. Sharon a long, long, long life; he died way too young – and morally deficient.
Bernard
amazing, truly amazing. to see Israelis, like Sharon, do unto the Palestinians what the Germans did to the Jews. and have this kind of behavior/Sharon’s et al/ lauded?
i guess the Israelis have lost all sense of humanity after the Holocaust. that only could explain such “behavior.”
Special, like Sharon, the Butcher of these PLO camps, lauded for his “humanity” towards the Israelis and outright murder/cleansing of the Palestinians.
frightening what “tribes” can do unto others, in the name of “my tribe”.
we humans are proof there is no intelligent life here on Earth.
Celsius 233
Israel lost its moral rudder (if it ever had one and there is evidence it never did) long ago.
It’s very founding is not dis-similar to the U.S.; takinging (by force) an already occupied land.
I’m disgusted by the west’s (U.S. and Britain’s) dancing around the barbaric history of Sharon’s legacy (?).
I’m basically fed up with us humans; we’re a sorry lot.
Celsius 233
Oops; taking, not takinging… 😉
Sean Paul Kelley
But, Ian, Holocaust!