I was about to write a scathing obituary about Ariel Sharon, all about how he was a war criminal (Massacres at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon), a corrupt politician (although he was never actually convicted and it may be just that his son was corrupt, and spoiled, and kind of stupid), and a deliberate troublemaker.
It might have been the sunglasses that pissed them off
His walk on Temple Mount was an act of deliberate provocation which sparked the Intifada. Sure, radical groups may have planned the violence ahead, Israeli intelligence may have even known about it, but this obese man (sorry, it’s part of the image, and that day was all about image), trudging around the Mosque of Omar surrounded by about 1,000 heavily armed police officers, and probably in violation of a couple Arab traditions in the way he was dressed, was an act of deliberate provocation. It was saying, “Come on, throw rocks at us.”
There’s no spin you can put on it that can make it not that. I saw it. Plain as the nose on my face. (kind of a strange expression, as you can’t actually see the nose on your face without looking into a mirror)
And besides. We live in a polarized age, where we praise people who we loved at their funerals, and heap abuse upon those we hated. Or perhaps it is just that as I get older, I care less what people think about what I think, and have no real problem criticizing the dead, when they were a public figure deserving of criticism.
So, I was going to write a scathing obituary, and then I read this: “Between 16 and 30 August 2005, Sharon controversially expelled 9,480 Jewish settlers from 21 settlements in Gaza and four settlements in the northern West Bank. Once it became clear that the evictions were definitely going ahead a group of conservative Rabbis, led by Yosef Dayan, placed an ancient curse on him known as the Pulsa diNura, calling on the Angel of Death to intervene and kill him.” (from his Wikipedia page)
He went into a coma less than 5 months later. He died today.
So, he was cursed to death by the Israeli right for taking the side of peace and compromise for a change. Also, the man’s been in a coma for over 8 years. Time to let go. RIP, Ariel Sharon. Perhaps you weren’t as unrepentantly evil as I remember.
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