Ariel Sharon

[sister herb]

Preparations have begun for the state funeral of the critically ill former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, officials have said.


Dr Zeev Rotstein, director of Tel Hashomer hospital in Tel Aviv, said on Thursday that Sharon's health had deteriorated during the past two days and vital organs were suffering from a critical malfunction.


Sharon had made clear that he preferred to be buried at his Negev home, Sycamore Ranch, next to his late wife, Lily, and not in the traditional grave-site for former prime ministers on Mount Herzl in the capital, according to The Jerusalem Post.


The newspaper reported on Friday that the Prime Minister’s office would handle arrangements for a funeral together with Sharon’s sons, Gilad and Omri, who were at their father's hospital bedside.


Rotstein said earlier that his family and doctors treating him believed that the 85-year-old had taken a turn for the worse.
"He is in a critical condition and his life is definitely in danger," Rotstein said.


Burial delay


It was the first official medical statement on Sharon's health after reports on Wednesday said he had suffered a kidney malfunction.


Sharon had a stroke on January 4, 2006, slipping into a coma from which he had never recovered.


The arrangements required for a state funeral would enable the suspension of the Jewish religious edict requiring the dead to be buried within a day, said Mark Regev, spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Israeli premier, according to Britain's Telegraph newspaper.


The delay would allow world leaders more time to attend the funeral of the controversial former prime minister, who had championed Jewish settlement on land taken in the 1967 Middle East war but later reversed his hardline stance to oversee the Israeli pull-out from Gaza.


The Post said it was unclear whether many world leaders and foreign ministers would come to the funeral, as they had to the recent funerals of former Nelson Mandela, the former president of South Africa, and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu caused controversy when he did not attend Mandela's funeral.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...228763418.html

[Kayser]

I didn't know He was still alive !

[crimsontide06]

^^^ Me either...

[RedGuard]

What his family is coming through must be terrible.

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[sister herb]

He was alive, as vedgetable.

[sister herb]

What his family is coming through must be terrible.

Ever herd Sabra and Shatilla?

Read history!

:raging:

[Jedi_Mindset]

I call this justice, man deserves this and he will die disgraced insha'Allah
He was responsible for Sabra and shatilla massacres.

[RedGuard]

Now what's the evidence that it was his job and not Elie Hobelka's own initiative? What were Sharon's goals? Predicted gains and losses?

[Vito]

In the words of RedGuard, good riddance!

[Jedi_Mindset]

Now what's the evidence that it was his job and not Elie Hobelka's own initiative? What were Sharon's goals? Predicted gains and losses?

Because the phalangists were aided by israel both financing and other forms of support. Before the phalangists entered the camp israel lead by ariel sharon surrounded it knowing very well this would end up in a slaughter. Even israelis themselves have said that sharon bore responsibility for this and nonetheless he was chosen as prime minister in 2001.

Israel was firing flares for the phalangists to do their work in the dark, israel knew what was happening and they didnt lift the siege on the camp basically trapping all of the palestinian refugees.

Remembering Sabra And Shatila Massacre

Monday marks the 31st anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre that took place starting on September 16 1982, after the Israeli occupation army, led back then by Ariel Sharon, surrounded the refugee camp after invading Beirut, and granted access to the Phalanges to enter the camp to slaughter its refugees.

The massacre lasted for three days (16, 17 and 18 of September 1982), approximately 3500-8000 persons, including children, infants, women and elderly were slaughtered and murdered in his horrific and gruesome massacre perpetrated by the Israeli army and its allied criminal militia.

Back then, around 20.000 refugees lived in the refugee camp that was supposed, as any other camp, to receive international protection.

Israeli soldiers, led by Sharon and Chief of Staff, Rafael Etan, made sure their forces are surrounding the refugee camp, isolated it from its surrounding, and allowed the Phalanges to invade it and murder thousands of innocent refugees using white weapons.

The Israeli army also fired hundreds of flares during the massacres in night hours to enable the murderers to commit their war crime. The army claimed that it was searching for nearly 1500 Palestinian freedom fighters who allegedly were in the camp.

But the fighters were somewhere else, joining battle fronts countering the Israeli aggression, and most of those left in the camp, left to face their horrific end, were elderly women and children.

Israel wanted to avenge its defeat after engaging in a three-month battle and siege that ended by international guarantees, to protect the civilians the Palestinian resistance left Beirut as part of an agreement that assured the protection of civilians.

Israel wanted to send a message to the Palestinian refugees; it wanted to continue its aggression and invasion into Lebanon in 1982.

Ariel Sharon, who served as Israel’s Defense Minister, led the assault.

Following the massacre, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the formation of a committee to investigate the circumstances that led to this ugly crime against thousands of helpless refugees.

In 1983, the Cahan Commission announced the results of what it called “investigation” of the massacre, and decided that Sharon is “indirectly responsible” as he ignored the possibility of it taking place, ignored the danger of bloodshed and revenge.

Sharon continued his political career, to become Prime Minister and held various important positions until he suffered stroke on January 4 2006, and has been in a been in a permanent vegetative state since then.

The committee also denounced the stance of Israel’s Prime Minister back then, Menachem Begin, his Foreign Minister, Rafael Etan, and various military and security leaders, for not “doing enough to prevent or stop the massacre”.

The massacre was not the first, nor the last, as Israeli soldiers carried out numerous massacres against the Palestinian people in different places including Deir Yassin, Qibya, Tantour, Jenin, Jerusalem, Hebron and so many areas.

Not a single Israeli official, commander or soldier was ever held accountable for the ugly crimes, and massacres, against the Palestinian people.

The massacre in Sabra and Shatila was carried out in direct collaboration with various leaders, including Saad Haddad, who was in charge of a unit of the Lebanese army before aligning himself in 1979 with the South Lebanon Army militia, and was working with the Israeli occupation forces.

He also announced the so-called “Free Lebanon” forces in Lebanese territories that fell under illegal Israeli occupation in the south.

Haddad dispatched members of his army from southern Lebanon to Bruit Airport, then to Sabra and Shatila, where they had a prominent role in the massacre. He died of a terminal illness on January 14 1984.

Fadi Ferm, who was married to one of the granddaughters of the Phalange Party founder, Pierre Gemayel, was appointed by Bashir Gemayel as the leader of the Lebanese Force militia in 1982 after Bashir Gemayel was elected present, just one day before his assassination.

Ferm moved through the ranks of the Lebanese Force, later on became the head of the Military Intelligence of the LF Militia, and then became the deputy chief before he became the commander.

Bashir Gemayel, the militia commander, and president-elect in Lebanon, was a senior member of the Phalange party, and was the commander of the Lebanese Forces militia during the first several years of the Civil War in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990.

During the Sabra and Shatila massacres, Gemayel was the leader giving the Lebanese Force militia orders to invade the refugee camps.

He was elected president during the civil war, and while southern Lebanon was under Israeli military occupation. He was assassinated on September 14 1982, along with 26 persons, by an explosion that took place in the Phalange headquarters in Beirut.

Months before Sharon and his army invading Lebanon, Bashir had a meeting with Sharon who told him that his army would be invading Lebanon to remove the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its fighters from the country.

The Electronic Intifada;

“They shot my father in the head”: interview with survivor of Sabra and Shatila massacre
19 September 2012

http://www.imemc.org/article/66121

[sister herb]

As well we could say that Adolf Hitler was innocent for murder of Jews.

[RedGuard]

First - there is a chain of command with Sharon being on the top of it so he didn't command the units in Lebanon himself. Second - one of Hobelka's bodyguards wrote years later that the massacre was committed in spite of Israeli orders, not in accordance with them. So he is just indirectly responsible.

[RedGuard]

And of course Israel is culturally closer to my country than it's neighbours, so I'll support Israeli existence regardless of it's demographic policies.

[Muslim Woman]

:sl:



when he was PM , once I thought wow how powerful the man is . He can do what he wants . I m so happy that Allah punished and In'sha Allah will punish this zionist that he deserves.

[Scimitar]

First - there is a chain of command with Sharon being on the top of it so he didn't command the units in Lebanon himself. Second - one of Hobelka's bodyguards wrote years later that the massacre was committed in spite of Israeli orders, not in accordance with them. So he is just indirectly responsible.

your logic sucks badly :D

if Sharon was on the top of the chain of command - then that makes him responsible - thats how WAR works... funny how you are interpolating your own ideas into well known and established military protocols LOOOL.

Try again, after you've had breakfast... just keep your bacon burps to yourself :D

And of course Israel is culturally closer to my country than it's neighbours, so I'll support Israeli existence regardless of it's demographic policies.

That makes you a culture troll :D ... quite possibly with an identity crisis attached, since you claim you are agnostic :D Who and why are you? your answer - I do not know but... blah blah waffle waffle + aliens and science + hollywood brainwashing and bad logic - and we get you

sheesh, didn't know we had sesame street actors joining forums these days

Scimi

[RedGuard]

I am from Europe. I think this is enough to understand why I support the Jewish State - in terms of economy and culture Israel resembles Europe more than it resembles Egypt or Syria.

Sharon would be directly responsible if he issued orders for the attack or instituted a legal policy of killing civilians. Of course neither is true. The only objective of the 1982 operation was to destroy PLO's fighting capability, the issue of Palestinian population of Lebanon was irrelevant. So the only people directly responsible are Ellie Hobelka and the commander of the Israeli forces surrounding the camp (to some degree - as he issued orders to not kill civilians). You can blame Sharon for the operation as a whole but not for any particular incident.

[RedGuard]

PS I am not an agnostic. I just made a mistake during the registration process, I wanted to change it but I can't find it in the settings.

[Said_Soussi]

Let this ugly devil, and all the ones who are speaking good of this demon, burn in the lowest hell, INCHA'ALLAH!!!

TAKBIR!!!!!

[Jedi_Mindset]

Aaaaand he is gone..... ;D

[sister herb]

Israel's Ariel Sharon dies at 85

Former Israeli prime minister dies, local media reports, eight years after he went into coma following a stroke.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middle...338785176.html

[Muhaba]

الحمد لله!!!
He reached his end. No one is immortal. Everyone will die and each will experience their end, the 'fruit' of their doings. What a horrible end such people have! And the end of the victims? In-sha-Allah it is much better.

Allah says in 39: 30:
Indeed, you are to die, and indeed, they are to die.

Followed by:

Then indeed you, on the Day of Resurrection, before your Lord, will dispute.
So who is more unjust than one who lies about Allah and denies the truth when it has come to him? Is there not in Hell a residence for the disbelievers?
And the one who has brought the truth and [they who] believed in it - those are the righteous.
They will have whatever they desire with their Lord. That is the reward of the doers of good -
That Allah may remove from them the worst of what they did and reward them their due for the best of what they used to do. (39: 31-35)

[Insaanah]

He, as a man in office, directly facilitated the massacre of up 3500 civilians. Yet the world doesn't solemnly gather to remember this every year on 9/16 or 9/17 or 9/18. I wonder why.

Anyway, the butcher gets the chop himself.

The organisation Human Rights Watch said Ariel Sharon had died without facing justice for the massacre at Sabra and Shatila. An Israeli commission of inquiry found him personally responsible for failing to prevent the massacre.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25699701

There's no escaping justice now though.

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle37297.htm

[سيف الله]

Salaam

I think this is a suitable summing up of Sharons career.

Politicide: The Real Legacy of Ariel Sharon

Baruch Kimmerling (Author)

Ariel Sharon is one of the most experienced, shrewd and frightening leaders of the new millennium. Despite being found both directly and indirectly responsible for acts considered war crimes under international law, he became Prime Minister of Israel, a political victory he won by provoking the Palestinians into a new uprising, the second intifada. From the beginning of his career Sharon was regarded as the most brutal, deceitful and unrestrained of all the Israeli generals and politicians. A man of monstrous vision, his attempts to destroy the Palestinian people have included the proposal to make Jordan the Palestinian state and the now infamous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which resulted in the Shabra and Shatila massacres. Baruch Kimmerling s new book describes Sharon s quest to reshape the whole geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. He describes how Sharon is committed to politicide, the destruction of the Palestinian political identity, and how he has won the support of powerful elements within Israeli society and the present American administration in order to achieve this. At this time of crisis Kimmerling exposes the brutality of Sharon and his junta s solutions and constructs a devastating indictment of a man whose cruelty and ruthlessness have resulted in widespread and indiscriminate slaughter.

[sister herb]

Political views of this butcher from decades ago:

Ariel Sharon in an interview with General Ouze Merham, 1956: "I don't know something called International Principles. I vow that I'll burn every Palestinian child (that) will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child is more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian childs existence infers that generations will go on, but the man causes limited danger."

[Akim]

A little unrelated but what do you think of the statement that rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri made about Messiah "revealing himself shortly after Ariel Sharon dies"? Have you heard of it?

[crimsontide06]

A little unrelated but what do you think of the statement that rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri made about Messiah "revealing himself shortly after Ariel Sharon dies"? Have you heard of it?

I do not know who rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri is but we must not listen to people who claim to be prophets or know the future...that is all!

[Akim]

I do not know who rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri is but we must not listen to people who claim to be prophets or know the future...that is all!

I thought so... and it wouldn't make a lot sense anyway concerning that antichrist must come before (among other things). :D

[Signor]

I do not know who rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri is but we must not listen to people who claim to be prophets or know the future...that is all!

Adding to above,Whats the worth of these "Rabbis" who have no idea whats written in Old Testament.

“When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you. Deuteronomy 18:9-12

Yes,this is why Allah said about them:

Among the Jews are those who distort words from their [proper] usages and say, "We hear and disobey" and "Hear but be not heard" and "Ra'ina(Listen to us!)," twisting their tongues and defaming the religion. And if they had said [instead], "We hear and obey" and "Wait for us [to understand]," it would have been better for them and more suitable. But Allah has cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, except for a few.Quran 4:46

[IslamicRevival]

:sl:

Press TV have published a great article exposing this certified war criminal. Its a long read but informative
http://presstv.com/detail/2014/01/15...ns-words-acts/

_________

Zionists covered up Sharon's horrific words, deeds

Ariel Sharon embodied the pure, unmitigated evil of Zionism. He was a war criminal, a terrorist, a mass murderer, a torturer, a rapist. The French term “genocidaire” also applies.

But Sharon did have one redeeming quality: He occasionally told the awful truth about himself and his country.

During the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sharon vented his real feelings in public. In a Hebrew-language interview with Israeli writer Amos Oz, Sharon said:

“Even today I volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug out from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up a few synagogues, I don’t care. And I don’t mind if after the job is done you put me in front of a Nuremberg Trial and then jail me for life. Hang me if you want, as a war criminal… What your kind doesn't understand is that the dirty work of Zionism is not finished yet, far from it.”

The interview was published in Hebrew in the Israeli newspaper Davar on December 17th, 1982, later reprinted in a book. The Sharon quotes were attributed to “Z,” a high-level, heavy-set, 50-year-old Israeli officer “with a certain history” who was also a prosperous farmer. Israeli readers knew that “Z” was obviously Ariel Sharon, who perfectly fit the description, and whose real feelings about the subjects discussed in the interview were not exactly a state secret.

At the time, Sharon had just been fired as Defense Minister due to the international outcry over the Sabra and Shatila massacres. This was obviously the “certain history” referred to. No Israeli reader or journalist at the time had the slightest doubt that “Z” was Sharon.

Why did Sharon risk venting his real feelings under such a transparent veil?

Because he thought he had nothing to lose. At the time, everyone assumed Sharon's political and military career was finished. He had, after all, just orchestrated and supervised one of the ugliest and most brutal massacres in human history – and been caught red-handed and disgraced. It seemed likely that he would either be executed, imprisoned for life, or at least live out the rest of his life hiding from Interpol.

In the Oz interview, Sharon lashed out at the liberal Zionists who were throwing him to the dogs. He felt these liberal Zionists were hypocrites who were just as guilty of genocide as he was, but too cowardly to admit it. In this he was right.

Sharon actually bragged about being evil:

“Tell me, do the evil men of this world have a bad time? They hunt and catch whatever they feel like eating. They don’t suffer from indigestion and are not punished by Heaven. I want Israel to join that club. Maybe the world will then at last begin to fear us instead of feeling sorry. Maybe they will start to tremble, to fear our madness instead of admiring our nobility. Let them tremble, let them call us a mad state. Let them understand that we are a savage country, dangerous to our surroundings, not normal, that we might go wild, that we might start World War Three just like that, or that we might one day go crazy and burn all the oil fields in the Middle East. Personally, I don’t want to be any better than Harry Truman who snuffed out half a million Japanese with two fine bombs.”

Paradoxically, Sharon's interview with Oz may have helped save his political career. Many Israelis identified with Sharon's sentiments and admired his bluntness. As Israel turned to the right, Sharon and his ideas became increasingly mainstream.

By the 1990s, Sharon had returned to center-stage in the Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu. Though his brutal words in the Oz interview had helped pave the way for his comeback – and were a net asset in domestic politics, given the genocidal sentiments of the average Israeli – they were a huge liability for someone who wanted to be Prime Minister and appear on the international stage.

Pressure was applied to Amos Oz. When an American journalist named Holger Jensen accurately reproduced the Sharon “Z” quotes in an article published in 2002, the Zionist Liars Lobby went into action. Suddenly, Oz (a dedicated Zionist himself) quite absurdly denied that “Z” was – as everyone in Israel knew and still knows – the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, Ariel Sharon.

That didn't prevent the truth-teller from being punished. Holger Jensen was subjected to the Zionist equivalent of a journalistic lynching. To save his skin, he was forced to half-sincerely recant his attribution of the quote to Sharon, even though he obviously doubts the veracity of Oz's disingenuous denial.

Here is another revealing quote attributed to Sharon :

“I vow that I’ll burn every Palestinian child that will be born in this area. The Palestinian woman and child are more dangerous than the man, because the Palestinian child’s existence infers that generations will go on...”

This quote, from an interview by Ouze Merham, has been disputed by the Zionists... which speaks for its likely authenticity! In any case, it accurately describes Sharon's policies and actions. Under Sharon, the Israeli Defense Forces had a de facto official policy of “enticing Palestinian children like mice into a trap to murder them for sport,” as journalist Chris Hedges described it in his 2001 article “Gaza Diary.” The sport-shootings of children that Hedges witnessed are official Israeli policy; a British Medical Journal study a few years later confirmed more than 600 sniper murders of Palestinian children by the Israeli military.

The Zionist propaganda machine, which dominates Western media, works overtime to “scrub” such facts from public consciousness, just as it works to scrub the public record clean of Ariel Sharon's too-revealing words. An apparent Mossad spin-off called CAMERA does much of the dirty work.

CAMERA has published outrageous lies about Sharon's “Z” interview with Amos Oz. Now it is offering an even more ridiculous lie about Sharon's notorious post-9/11 “We Jews control America” outburst.

In early October of 2001, three weeks after 9/11, Shimon Peres had been pressuring Ariel Sharon to respect American calls for a ceasefire, lest the Americans turn against Israel. According to a BBC News report, a furious Sharon turned toward Peres, saying: “Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.”

The report was picked up by the BBC from Israeli media. I heard it myself on BBC radio news. Yet CAMERA absurdly claims: “These quotes originated with the pro-Hamas American group Islamic Association for Palestine...” Unfortunately, the largely Zionist-owned-and-operated Western media often accepts the ludicrous propaganda of CAMERA, MEMRI, the ADL, and other Zionist-extremist propaganda outlets without critical examination.

Today, the professional liars are trying to rehabilitate the image of the brutal Zionist butcher Ariel Sharon – by papering over the historical record of his vicious words and deeds. We must not allow them to get away with it.

:wa:

[سيف الله]

Salaam

More info


Toady journalists are patching up the image of Israeli butcher Ariel Sharon says Robert Fisk

Cursed in life as a killer by quite a few Israeli soldiers as well as by the Arab world, Sharon will, says Robert Fisk, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker.

Any other Middle Eastern leader who survived eight years in a coma would have been the butt of every cartoonist in the world. Hafez el-Assad would have appeared in his death bed, ordering his son to commit massacres; Khomeini would have been pictured demanding more executions as his life was endlessly prolonged. But of Sharon – the butcher of Sabra and Shatila for almost every Palestinian – there has been an almost sacred silence.

Cursed in life as a killer by quite a few Israeli soldiers as well as by the Arab world – which has proved pretty efficient at slaughtering its own people these past few years – Sharon was respected in his eight years of near-death, no sacrilegious cartoons to damage his reputation; and he will, be assured, receive the funeral of a hero and a peacemaker.

Thus do we remake history. How speedily did toady journalists in Washington and New York patch up this brutal man's image. After sending his army's pet Lebanese militia into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in 1982, where they massacred up to 1,700 Palestinians, Israel's own official enquiry announced that Sharon bore "personal" responsibility for the bloodbath.

He it was who had led Israel's catastrophic invasion of Lebanon three months earlier, lying to his own prime minister that his forces would advance only a few miles across the frontier, then laying siege to Beirut – at a cost of around 17,000 lives. But by slowly re-ascending Israel's dangerous political ladder, he emerged as prime minister, clearing Jewish settlements out of the Gaza Strip and thus, in the words of his own spokesman, putting any hope of a Palestinian state into "formaldehyde".

By the time of his political and mental death in 2006, Sharon – with the help of the 2001 crimes against humanity in the US and his successful but mendacious claim that Arafat backed bin Laden – had become, of all things, a peacemaker, while Arafat, who made more concessions to Israeli demands than any other Palestinian leader, was portrayed as a super-terrorist.

The world forgot that Sharon had opposed the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, voted against a withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 1985, opposed Israel's participation in the 1991 Madrid peace conference – and the Knesset plenum vote on the Oslo agreement in 1993, abstained on a vote for a peace with Jordan the next year and voted against the Hebron agreement in 1997. Sharon condemned the manner of Israel's 2000 retreat from Lebanon and by 2002 had built 34 new illegal Jewish colonies on Arab land.

Quite a peacemaker! When an Israeli pilot bombed an apartment block in Gaza, killing nine small children as well as his Hamas target, Sharon described the "operation" as "a great success", and the Americans were silent. For he bamboozled his Western allies into the insane notion that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was part of Bush's monstrous battle against "world terror", that Arafat was himself a bin Laden, and that the world's last colonial war was part of the cosmic clash of religious extremism.

The final, ghastly – in other circumstances, hilarious – political response to Sharon's behaviour was George W Bush's contention that Ariel Sharon was "a man of peace". When he became prime minister, media profiles noted not Sharon's cruelty but his "pragmatism", recalling, over and over, that he was known as "the bulldozer".

And, of course, real bulldozers will go on clearing Arab land for Jewish colonies for years after Sharon's death, thus ensuring there will never – ever – be a Palestinian state.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/how-speedily-toady-journalists-are-patching-up-the-image-of-butcher-ariel-sharon-says-robert-fisk#.UuFIh7TLdaQ

[سيف الله]

Salaam

More analysis

How the British media whitewashed the crimes of Israeli leader Ariel Sharon

The media whitewashed the crimes of the West's leading ally Ariel Sharon as 'harsh', 'controversial', mere 'black marks' against an otherwise 'pragmatic' and honourable nationalist serving his people.

Readers will recall the famous perceptual illusion in which the brain switches between seeing a young girl and an image intended to represent an 'old crone'. The picture of course remains the same, but our minds flick between the two interpretations, unable to perceive both images at the same time.

The 'mainstream media' - that curious collection of elite-run, profit-maximising business interests sometimes known as 'the free press' - performs a similar perceptual trick. In reviewing comparable crimes by the West and its official enemies, it is able to flick between perceiving virtue in 'our' criminality where only wickedness is found in 'theirs'. Indeed, though 'our' crimes may be as bad, as cynical, or worse, 'their' crimes are consistently perceived as being far uglier.

Not that 'our' crimes are completely ignored. A Sunday Times editorial reviewed the life and career of former Israeli prime minister and general Ariel Sharon, who died on January 11:

'His Unit 101 slaughtered 69 civilians in the Jordanian town of Qibya in 1953 and as defence minister he was blamed for the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by Israel's Christian Phalange allies in 1982. He was forced to resign from his post.' (Leading article, 'The old warrior who turned to peace,' Sunday Times, January 12, 2014)

The Sunday Times described these as mere 'black marks', much as 9/11 and Halabja were 'black marks' against bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, perhaps. Otherwise, Sharon was one of Israel's 'great nation-builders', 'a military hero'; 'He leaves an important legacy.'

The 'black marks' were noted with minimal information, not even a rough idea of the number of victims at Sabra and Shatila. Up to 3,500 civilians were brutally massacred on September 16-17, 1982. Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting writes:

'An official Israeli investigation known as the Kahan Commission found that Sharon had personally decided to send right-wing Christian paramilitary forces, known as the Phalangist militias, into Palestinian refugee camps immediately after Palestinians had been (falsely) accused of assassinating the Lebanese President-elect Bachir Gemayel, a Phalangist leader. The fact "that the Phalangists were liable to commit atrocities... did not concern [Sharon] in the least," the Commission found.

'After the massacre began, Israel assisted the killing by firing flares over the camp to provide illumination for the Phalangists (New York Times, 9/26/82). Recently declassified Israeli documents (New York Times, 9/17/12) show that when US officials pressed Sharon to order the militias out of the camps, he retorted, "If you don't want the Lebanese to kill them, we will kill them."'

The dead included infants, children, pregnant women and the elderly, some of whom had been raped and mutilated. As Hart indicates, the Israeli government investigation found that Sharon bore 'personal responsibility' for the atrocity.

According to Menachem Klein, a politics professor at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv, Sharon's founding of Unit 101, a 'retribution squad' in the 1950s and 1960s, set the pattern for modern Israeli military strategy named. Israel-based journalist Jonathan Cook explains:

'In Israel's early years, Unit 101 carried out reprisals against Palestinian fighters across the armistice lines, in an attempt to deter future enemy raids into Israeli territory. In practice, however, the price was paid as much by civilians as fighters.'

Cook adds:

'Today, Sharon's military philosophy is reflected in the Israeli army's Dahiya doctrine – its policy in recent confrontations to send Israel's neighbours in Gaza and Lebanon "into the dark ages" through massive destruction of their physical infrastructure.'

An example was Sharon's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, although it was not included among the Sunday Times' 'black marks', nor even mentioned. In The Nation, Max Blumenthal describes the invasion, which cost the lives of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, most of them civilians:

'Sharon sent Israeli tanks rumbling towards Beirut without the approval of the rest of the cabinet, whom Sharon had deliberately deceived. Many of them were outraged, but it was too late to turn back.

'Against fierce Palestinian resistance, one of the Middle East's most vital and cosmopolitan cities was laid to ruin. Sharon's forces flattened West Beirut with indiscriminate shelling, leaving streets strewn with unburied corpses. With each passing day, disease and famine spread at epidemic levels. In August, the day after the Israeli cabinet accepted US special envoy Philip Habib's proposal for the evacuation of the PLO, Sharon's forces bombarded Beirut for seven hours straight, leaving 300 dead, most of them civilians. The Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling wrote that the raid "resembled the attack on Dresden by the Allies toward the end of World War II."'

For the Sunday Telegraph, these horrors were 'controversial methods' to 'secure his country's future'. And anyway, Sharon 'ended his career with a more complex image, as a tough-minded statesman searching for peace. His example offers hope'. Apparently with a straight face, the editors concluded: 'as Ariel Sharon's career showed, peace through dialogue is possible'.

For The Times, Sharon's military record was 'marked by two shocking episodes'. Again, just the two black marks: the massacres in Qibya, and Sabra and Shatila, which were 'the harsh aspects of Sharon's career'. He was 'uncompromising and divisive', but The Times' concluded:

'Though an unlikely harbinger of peace and negotiation, that, finally, is what he was.' (Leading article, 'Warrior Statesman; Sharon's military and political record was uncompromising and divisive; yet he was finally an unlikely advocate of peace and negotiation,' January 13, 2014, The Times)

The Independent on Sunday published an article entitled, 'Ariel Sharon: A hawk who might just have liberated the Palestinians.'

Middle East peace envoy, Tony Blair, said:

'His strategic objective never wavered. The state... had to be protected for future generations. When that meant fighting, he fought. When that meant making peace, he sought peace with the same iron determination.'

Peter Hart reports numerous, similarly 'hollow' attempts to 'portray Sharon as a peacemaker' in the US media.

Not 'A Single Scintilla of Evidence'

The Guardian refused to unreservedly **** Sharon as it reflexively does official enemies such as Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Assad.

Senior Guardian commentator Jonathan Freedland opined that Sharon 'was silenced by a stroke that left him lodged in the limbo between life and death. That state of ambiguity was strangely fitting for a figure who, after decades painted as either black or white – reviled by his enemies as the "butcher of Beirut", loved by his admirers as "Arik, King of Israel" – ended his life an unexpected shade of grey'.

The Guardian editors wrote that it was 'tantalising to speculate that the illness of a man who had spent so much of his life at war may have robbed the region of its greatest chance for peace'. They added:

'There may be nostalgia for his decisiveness and strength, and we may applaud the withdrawal from Gaza, but we cannot cheer his role in creating the settlements, or his long-held belief that the fight against "terror" can be waged only with bullets and bombs.'

The reality is far uglier than either article suggests. Writing for The American Conservative, Scott McConnell argues that Sharon actually sought to provoke 'terror':

'There is reason to believe that Sharon felt that provoking the Palestinians to violence could be of strategic benefit for Israel...

'I've heard other Israeli politicians argue in this vein, implying that they would actually welcome Palestinian violence, because militarily Israel is far stronger and can damage Palestinian society far more in the context of war than peace.'

Noam Chomsky concurs:

'There is a long history of Israel provocations to deter the threat of diplomacy... The effort to delay political accommodation has always made perfect sense... It is hard to think of another way to take over land where you are not wanted.' (See our Media Alert: 'The BBC, Impartiality, And The Hidden Logic Of Massacre,' February 4, 2009)

Thus, Permanent War has facilitated a key aspect of Sharon's legacy, the relentless spread of illegal settlements. Blumenthal describes Sharon as 'the visionary behind the settlements'. Sharon told Winston Churchill's grandson:

'We'll make a pastrami sandwich out of them. We'll insert a strip of Jewish settlements in between the Palestinians, and then another strip of Jewish settlements right across the West Bank, so that in twenty-five years' time, neither the United Nations nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.'

Writing for The Jerusalem Fund, Yousef notes that Sharon 'presided over the single largest period of expansion in the Israeli settler population, some 75,000, since the Menachem Begin era'. This, indeed, makes it hard to portray Sharon as a man of peace.

Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, a leading scholar on the Israeli-Arab conflict, comments:

'President George W. Bush famously called Sharon a man of peace. Sharon was nothing of the sort. He was a man of war through and through, and he called his autobiography Warrior, not Diplomat. His approach to diplomacy reversed Clausewitz's dictum; for Sharon, diplomacy was the pursuit of war by other means. For the last 40 years, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been my main research interest, and I can honestly say that I have never come across a single scintilla of evidence to support the notion of Sharon as a man of peace.'

Chomsky takes a similar view:

'Well, you know, there is a convention that you're not supposed to speak ill of the recently dead, which unfortunately imposes a kind of vow of silence because there's nothing else to say — there's nothing good to say... He was a brutal killer. He had one fixed idea in mind, which drove him all his life: a greater Israel, as powerful as possible, as few Palestinians as possible — they should somehow disappear — and an Israel which could be powerful enough to dominate the region. The Lebanon War then, which was his worst crime, also had a goal of imposing a client state in Lebanon, a Maronite client state. And these were the driving forces of his life.

'The idea that the Gaza evacuation was a controversial step for peace is almost farcical. By 2005, Gaza had been devastated, and he played a large role in that. The Israeli hawks could understand easily that it made no sense to keep a few thousand Israeli settlers in Gaza using a very large percentage of its land and scarce water with a huge IDF, Israeli army, contingent to protect them. What made more sense was to take them out and place them in the West Bank or the Golan Heights — illegal... The farce was a successful public relations effort.'

The withdrawal from Gaza was not about peace-making. As Max Blumenthal notes, it was about 'setting the stage for a high-tech siege of that occupied coastal territory.'

Chomsky concludes of Sharon:

'But his career is one of unremitting brutality, dedication to the fixed idea of his life. He doubtless showed courage and commitment to pursuing this ideal, which is an ugly and horrific one.'

Thus, where comparable crimes by the West's enemies elicit outrage and bitter condemnation, the crimes of a leading ally are whitewashed as 'harsh', 'controversial', mere 'black marks' against an otherwise 'pragmatic' and honourable nationalist serving his people. Though the facts demand a sceptical interpretation of the 'almost farcical' move in the direction of 'peace', the 'mainstream' finds overwhelming evidence of benevolent intent. Language magically transforms the 'crone' of 'unremitting brutality' into the lovely aspect of compassion. War is peace!

For people with eyes to see - notably, people without a career in journalism to jeopardise - it could hardly be more obvious that the 'free press' functions as an arm of state propaganda. The public mind is under constant attack by a vast illusion machine bending reason and reversing truth to present the interests of a tiny, ruthless elite as 'the national interest'.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/how-the-british-media-whitewashed-the-crimes-of-israeli-leader-ariel-sharon#.UuFJXLTLdaQ