Sharon and Israel – At the Epicenter of Humankind
Week of January 13, 2006

A severe stroke impacted upon the Israeli Prime Minister and the world’s media reported each phase and grasped at every report. Israel is one of the world’s smallest counties but the attention given to Ariel Sharon’s severe stroke was at the center of the world’s attention, why? Was it the magnitude of Sharon’s position or personality?

Admittedly, Sharon’s image is both powerful and extraordinary but not more than some leaders of heavily populated or enormously wealthy nations and their leader’s lives in sickness or even death never evoked the attention that Sharon received. The focus on Sharon is revealing. His impact on today’s world represents one of modern history’s most significant events that the downtrodden and beaten Jew reduced to less than one percent of the world’s population is nevertheless at the epicenter of humankinds.

Sharon’s leadership and specifically the disengagement from Gaza, you still have to acknowledge that this is a Jew who achieved historic greatness as the twentieth century’s foremost personifies the new Jewish image. His was the proper response to a crazed world obsessed with underserved Jew hatred determined to finish Hitler’s genocide of our people. Sharon is publicly the most despised of Jews in the Arab world. He is their nemesis. His heroism, wisdom and courage defeated the Egyptians in the miraculous 6-day war in 1967, and Hashem’s emissary of leadership and brawn in 1973 when he shocked Egypt and Israel’s political leaders who were prepared to surrender to the enemy. General Sharon defied orders and crossed the Suez Canal to encircle the Egyptian Third Army and bring victory instead of defeat to Israel.

Gold Meir, writing in her autobiography admits that she was prepared to surrender. Others in the government at the time were suggesting the use of nuclear weapons which would have resulted in worldwide condemnation of Israel and would have brought massive reprisals against our small Jewish nation.

Sharon showed all of America’s Jewish assimilationists that there is an alternative to assimilation and it is called Israel, the Jewish State. He demonstrated before all the Jewish quislings that the day of Jewish oppression and surrender is over.

I was invited several years ago to lecture at one of the Navy’s Air-Naval Stations, a large academic center in Millington, Tennessee. The then Commander of that institution invited me along with several high-ranking officers to a private meeting. I did not have a clue as to the purpose of the meeting. The base commander, an Admiral began, “You had mentioned in your lecture that you personally know Ariel Sharon. We want you to know that we and our colleagues consider him the greatest military commander of this century.” He then proceeded to show me text after text discussion Sharon’s role in Israel’s great victories.

The 1982 war in Lebanon brought strong condemnation for Sharon’s “indirect responsibility” for the Iraqi massacre in Sabra and Shatila. The killings were committed by members of the Christian Lebanese Phalange and the victims were hundreds of Palestinians living in refugee camps. An Israeli commission study of those events accused Sharon if indirect responsibility, at best a questionable conclusion. In southern Lebanon, several years ago, I met with some Lebanese Maronite Christian leaders. Their eyewitness account was quite different. They maintained that Sharon had no way of knowing or stopping the Phalange from committing these gruesome acts. This was also established in an American court where Sharon sued Time magazine for libel on this subject and won.

I am on my way to Israel at this writing. The news reports Sharon is critical, but stable condition. It is now assumed that Israel’s Prime Minister will no longer function in that capacity. I know that all of us will pray for his life and well-being.

Shabbat Shalom