The Whitewashing of Ariel Sharon: The Dead Former Israeli Leader Was No Hero
14 January 2014
By Ramzy Baroud
The death of former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon
enlivened US media's interest in the legacy of a man
considered by many a war criminal, and by some a hero.
In fact, the supposed heroism of Sharon was at the
heart of CNN coverage of his death on January 11.
Sharon spent his last eight years in a coma, but
apparently not long enough for US corporate media to
wake up from its own moral coma. CNN online's coverage
presented Sharon as a man of heroic stature, who was
forced to make tough choices for the sake of his own
people. "Throughout, he was called 'The Bulldozer', a
fearless leader who got things done," wrote Alan Duke.
In his article, "Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime
Minister, dead at 85", Duke appeared to be confronting
Sharon's past head on. In reality, he cleverly
whitewashed the man's horrendous crimes, while finding
every opportunity to recount his fictional virtue.
"Many in the Arab world called Sharon 'the Butcher of
Beirut' after he oversaw Israel's 1982 invasion of
Lebanon while serving as defense minister," Duke
wrote.
Nevertheless, Sharon was not called the "The
Bulldozer" for being "a fearless leader" nor do Arabs
call him "the Butcher of Beirut" for simply
"overseeing" the invasion of Lebanon. Duke is either
ignorant or oblivious to the facts, but the blame is
not his alone, since references to Sharon's heroism
was a staple in CNN's coverage.
Sharon's demise however, and the flood of robust
eulogies will neither change the facts of his
blood-socked history, nor erase the "facts on the
ground" - as in the many illegal colonies that Sharon
so dedicatedly erected on occupied Palestinian land.
Following the Israeli occupation of Gaza along with
the rest of Palestine in 1967, Sharon was entrusted
with the bloody task of "pacifying" the headstrong
Strip as he was the head of the southern command of
the Israel Defense Forces. Sharon was dubbed the
"Bulldozer" for he understood that pacifying Gaza
would require heavy armored vehicles, and Gaza's
crowded neighborhoods and alleyways weaving through
its destitute refugee camps were not suited for heavy
machinery.
Therefore, he resolved to bulldoze thousands of homes,
preparing the way for tanks and bulldozers to move in
and topple even more homes. Modest estimates put the
number of homes destroyed in August 1970 alone at
2,000. Over 16,000 Palestinians were made homeless and
thousands were forced to relocate from one refugee
camp into another.
The Beach Refugee Camp near Gaza City sustained most
of the damage. Many fled for their lives, taking
refuge in mosques and UN schools and tents. Sharon's
declared objective was targeting the terrorist
infrastructure. What he in fact meant was targeting
the very population that resisted and aided the
resistance, for they indeed were the very
infrastructure he harshly pounded for many days and
weeks.
Sharon's bloody sweep also resulted in the execution
of 104 resistance fighters and the deportation of
hundreds of others. Some were sent to Jordan, others
to Lebanon, and the rest were simply left to rot in
the Sinai desert.
Sharon's violence was part of an equally disturbing
logic. He believed that any strategic long-term plan
to secure Israel must have at its heart a violent
campaign aimed at disorienting Palestinians. He was
quick to capitalize on the Allon plan, named after
Yigal Allon, a former general and minister in the
Israeli government, who took on the task of drawing an
Israeli vision for the newly conquered Palestinian
territories.
Sharon recounted standing on a dune near Gaza with
cabinet ministers, explaining that along with military
measures to control the Strip he wanted "fingers" of
settlements separating its cities, chopping the region
in four. Another "finger" would thrust through the
edge of Sinai, helping create a "Jewish buffer zone
between Gaza and Sinai to cut off the flow of weapons"
and divide the two regions in case the rest of Sinai
was ever returned to Egypt. That legacy disfigured and
isolated Gaza, even years after Sharon implemented his
policy of unilateral "disengagement" in 2005. He
relocated the settlers to other illegal colonies in
the West Bank and imposed a hermetic siege on the
Strip, the consequences of which remain suffocating
and deadly.
Sharon was keen on espousing or exploiting the
division of his enemies. He moved against Lebanon in
1982, when the country was at its weakest point,
exhausted by civil war. And when Israeli forces
finally occupied Lebanon in 1982, as Palestine
Liberation Organization fighters were shipped by sea
to many countries around the Middle East, a triumphant
Sharon permitted his Christian Phalangist allies to
enter the defenseless Sabra and Shatilla refugee
camps.
In the days between September 16-18, 1982, as Israeli
troops completely besieged the camps, the Phalangists
entered the area and carried out a massacre that
gruesomely defined both the Lebanese civil war and the
Israeli invasion, killing thousands of Palestinian
refugees, mostly butchered with knives, but also
gunned down.
Although Sharon was partly discredited after his
disastrous war in Lebanon, Israeli voters brought him
back repeatedly, to lead the rightwing Likud party in
May 1999 and as a prime minister of Israel in February
2001. The aim was to subdue rebelling Palestinians
during the Second Intifada. In fact, it was Sharon's
provocative "visit" to one of Islam's holiest shrines
a few months earlier that sparked anger among
Palestinians and, among other factors, started the
uprising.
Sharon attempted to crush the uprising with the
support and blessings of the US, but he failed. By the
end of August 2001, 495 Palestinians and 154 Israelis
were killed. International attempts at sending UN
observer forces were thwarted by a US veto on March
27, thus paving the way for the Israeli army to thrash
its way into Palestinian refugee camps and other areas
formerly controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
In March and April 2002, Sharon ordered Operation
"Defensive Wall", which resulted in major military
incursions into most West Bank cities, causing massive
destruction and unprecedented bloodletting. The
Israeli operation led to the killing of hundreds of
Palestinians, the reoccupation of major Palestinian
towns, the destruction of Arafat's headquarters in
Ramallah, and the subsequent besiegement of the
Palestinian leader in his barely standing office.
Sharon was no hero. It is time for US media to wake up
from its own coma, and confront reality through
commonsense and the most basic human rights values. It
should not be looking through the prism of the most
rightwing, if not fascist elements of Israeli society.
- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated
columnist, a media consultant and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father
Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto
Press, London).
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