Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘ariel sharon’

Lisa recently moved to her new blog home. She’s got photos of her daily life after Ariel Sharon’s stroke. Sometimes pictures really do say a thousand words.

Meryl has numbers proving conclusively that the so-called “truce” was a myth all along. She’s been saying that since it started. Nobody’s been listening. I’m betting not too many people will now. Read her post anyway.

Closer to home, there’s no shortage of election coverage and commentary. But here’s something you don’t see every day: David Janes apparently wants to be Prime Minister. And he’s laying out his platform, piece by piece. I can’t say I agree with everything he says, but at least he’s refreshingly honest. Bloggers for PM!

Pauline cast her ballot in advance polling, for the eminently logical reason that Montreal weather is unpredictable at this time of year. If I find myself unable to vote on Monday because of an ice storm, Pauline, I give you permission to say “I told you so”.

Ariel Sharon moved slightly and is breathing on his own after doctors allowed him to emerge from a medically-induced coma. But they’re saying it’s still too early to tell if – and how extensive – there is brain damage.

Whether you like him or hate him, it’s really awful to see such a high-profile man reduced to this.

The news on Ariel Sharon this morning is very, very bad.

Reactions, of course, run the gamut, from shock and prayer to political speculation to the expected vilification from Israel’s enemies to praise from unexpected sources.

But Allison, in one post, neatly sums up the Israeli reaction from her perspective:

Whether he lives or dies, we are all already in mourning. All of us — those who always like Sharon, those who never liked him, and the vast number of Israelis who once vilified him, but over the past several years have looked in wonderment as he embodied the definition of the word — leader.

Yes, he had flaws, yes, there was scandal, he was far from perfect. But he was a leader. We had a leader. And we no longer do.

I’ve repeatedly said that Ariel Sharon is like a cat with nine political lives. Unfortunately he’s also a human being with only one physical life. And, agree or disagree with his policies, Sharon’s loss is a real loss of a leader for all of Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage and is in surgery in critical condition. Unlike his last recent health scare last month, this time it’s serious:

According to a medical expert, the procedure is life threatening. Asked what are the chances of surviving this type of surgery, the doctor replied, “Let’s be optimistic, some people survive it.”

According to Justice Ministry spokesman Ya’acov Galant, a prime minister legally remains in his post only as long as he is capable of making decisions. Since Sharon is not conscious after suffering from what doctors termed “a serious stroke,” his powers and prerogatives were transferred to his deputy, Finance Minister Ehud Olmert.

All of Israel and the entire world is hanging on for news. Beyond the implications of what this might mean for Sharon personally and for his family, Israel is in the midst of a critical election and the political implications are staggering.

In the meantime, besides directing some prayers Ariel Sharon’s way for a refuah sheleimah, there’s nothing anyone can do but wait for news.

Israeli TV is reporting that Ariel Sharon was taken to hospital after suffering what might have been a minor stroke. There don’t seem to be many more details available right now. Updates to follow.

Update: Allison writes:

And Israelis being Israelis, the kidding started. I was at a meeting for my son’s class just after it hit the news and got to bring the news to the room. One of the fathers said, “He was probably unconscious and all they had to do to revive him was stand in front of him and say “Bibi.”"

It’s true — the prospect of how happy Bibi Netanyahu is going to be about Sharon’s stroke is the best medicine possible for the Prime Minister.

And Ynet has reports of the initial Palestinian reaction to the news (via Israellycool):

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip fired celebration shots upon hearing the news of Sharon being taken to hospital for feeling unwell.

A member of the Popular Resistance Committees told Ynet that Sharon fell ill because of the stressed caused by the latest wage of Qassam rockets over the last few days. “God answered our prayers and didn’t disappoint us,” the official said.

Well, it looks like Sharon’s going to be fine, so the terrorists will just have to live with the disappointment.

The media is calling it a “political earthquake”, but those who have been watching Israeli politics have seen this coming for a while: Ariel Sharon has left the Likud party to form his own new centrist party. Most likely, the Knesset will be dissolved and elections will be called within 90 days.

Sharon has been fighting the hardline faction in his own party for quite some time, ever since he moved ahead with the bitterly contested Gaza withdrawal. It’s been clear for a while that Sharon has more support among the general Israeli public than within his own party. And with the Labour party moving further to the left with the election of new leader Amir Peretz, there is room in Israel for a broad-based centrist party.

For those who are thinking that Sharon has just committed political suicide, remember that he’s the proverbial cat with nine lives in Israel, and he’s only used up about three or four of them. He enjoys massive personal popularity and those who underestimate him tend to end up picking up the pieces of ruined careers. I wouldn’t count him out just yet.

Let’s examine this morning’s headline: Sharon, Abbas talk as Israel suspends offensive.

Israel suspends offensive???

Sounds like a Palestinian offensive to me:

But in three days, Palestinians have fired 5 Qassam missiles, six anti-tank rockets and a half dozen mortar shells at Israeli military and civilian targets outside its borders. Israel army patrols were shot at five times.

Anyway, it was my understanding of the word “offensive” that it applied to the people trying to attack and destroy a country, not to those trying to defend one.

But silly me, I guess Reuters knows best.

A CBS News column is claiming that the onus is not on the Palestinians to make the next move in the mideast, now that Israel disengaged from Gaza, because settlers are still moving to the West Bank:

For Palestinians, the Gaza pullout is a little like a settler shell game. The settlers have disappeared from one place, only to pop up somewhere else. And Israel still controls Gaza’s land and sea crossings. In the eyes of the armed Palestinians, that’s plenty reason to keep fighting.

Then there’s the “separation fence” the Israelis are building, which has gobbled up huge chunks of Palestinian territory in the West Bank, in the name of security — yet more provocation.

So when Ariel Sharon says to them, “Look what Israel did for peace, now it’s your turn,” the Palestinians are a little stumped. Essentially, they have to convince the militants to lay down their arms without being able to promise to deliver a net gain in land or independence.

Meanwhile, armed Palestinian groups believe that making the cost of staying in Gaza too high with their constant attacks on Israeli settlers and soldiers is what drove the Israelis out. For them, the Gaza pullout proves that violence works.

The sad thing about this analysis is that it’s about to emerge as the Next Big Lie.

Mideast politics is full of these Big Lies. When Israel offered Arafat 99% of what he wanted in Camp David, and instead of accepting it or even making a counter-offer, he walked away and started a war that’s lasted nearly five years and cost thousands of lives, the Big Lie was that Israel wasn’t making much of an offer in the first place. When Israel withdrew from Lebanon, the Big Lie was that Hezbollah was still justified in launching rocket attacks because Israel didn’t pull completely out of the Sheba Farms. When Ariel Sharon made a scheduled – and approved – visit to Har HaBayit in 2000, the Big Lie was that mosques were being attacked, and that this was an excuse to launch a war that had been planned for months. Mohammed Al-Dura. Jenin and the massacre-that-wasn’t. The “Apartheid Wall”. I could go on and on with the Big Lies.

They get accepted as truth because there are just so many people in the world repeating them. Media outlets. Arab countries and leaders. “Activists” and sympathizers. When you consider that Muslims outnumber Jews in the world by a proportion of a thousand to one, and that sooner or later the message being shouted the loudest by the most people comes to be accepted as truth, then it’s easy to understand how these Big Lies get propagated.

So now the “shell game” is about to be the next Big Lie. Oh, the world will say, Israel didn’t really do very much. Sure, the country went through the most painful thing it could possibly imagine, forcibly evacuating fellow citizens from their homes and land. But really, they didn’t do anything because more settlers are moving to the West Bank. So the Palestinians don’t have to disarm; they don’t have to talk peace; they don’t have to take the next step.

No matter what sacrifices Israel makes or what unilateral steps it takes, nothing will be enough. It will all be explained away by the next Big Lie. And Israel’s moves will all be in vain.

Abbas and Sharon are making the usual meaningless statements about “working towards peace” and starting a “new page” in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

In the meantime, Hamas is giving the real picture:

Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced on Monday that they have reached an agreement with the Palestinian Authority according to which the two groups would not be disarmed.

[ . . . ]

“We stressed during the meeting that the Palestinians have the right to continue the resistance [against Israel] and that there would be no attempt to collect weapons from the resistance groups,” he added.

“The weapons of the resistance were founded to defend the Palestinian people and resist the occupation. The Gaza victory was achieved with the weapons of the resistance, which is the only strategy to drive Israel out of the rest of our lands.”

Any questions?

This is not good news:

Israeli commandos killed eight Palestinian policemen in “eye for an eye” shootings three years ago that were ordered to avenge comrades slain in an ambush on an army checkpoint in the West Bank, a newspaper said on Friday.

[ . . . ]

After gunmen from the Palestinian faction Fatah killed six soldiers at a checkpoint outside the West Bank city of Ramallah on Feb. 19, 2002, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon approved stepping up the scale and variety of retaliations.

“The feeling was that this would be ‘an eye for an eye’,” an ex-soldier who took part in the shooting spree three years ago told Maariv.

Eighteen Palestinians were killed in various retaliatory attacks, including eight policemen shot while manning their checkpoints near Ramallah and Nablus, another West Bank city.

Whether this is true, sensationalized by the media, or even completely out of context, you can be sure we’re looking at a disaster. Palestinian terrorists will create a story of mythic proportions out of this, and nobody in the world will be surprised when they take to murdering innocent Israeli children in “revenge”. And the worst part is that, despite the pejorative spin that Reuters has inevitably tacked on, it seems to be based on fact this time.

As I said when details of the Abu Gharib prison scandal emerged in the media, if we condemn our enemies for wrongs, we must condemn our friends even louder. Not that the two episodes are on the same plane, but the point is that there can be no excusing wrongs or trying to explain them away. The Israeli army gets falsely accused of wrongdoing on a daily basis, but that’s no excuse.

Maybe it’s not “fair” that the world excuses terrorism while holding Israel to a higher moral standard. But the problem there is the excusing of terrorism, not the higher moral standard.

I’m already dreading the fallout of this.