Ariel Sharon's
Generation
by Mickey Z.
Dissident Voice
November 18,
2002
New York Times
columnist William Safire has never made a secret of his pro-Israeli partiality.
Thus it came as no surprise when, in a November 11, 2002 op-ed, he described
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as "a passionate Zionist, hearty,
good-humored, a leader in battle who likes to crumble the earth on his farm
between his fingers." (For a man
of language, Safire does employ an odd usage for the term "Zionist.")
In that same
column, Safire evoked images of a certain NBC News anchor when he declared
Sharon to be of Israel's "greatest generation."
When Sharon's
colleague, Abba Eban, died a few days later, I thought perhaps a closer
examination of Safire's characterization was in order.
Loosely
speaking, the generation Safire speaks of includes Golda Meir (nee Mabovitz)
who once declared, "There was no such thing as Palestinians; they never
existed." Then there's Menachem Begin, who engaged in terrorism including
bombings in civilian areas. Unlike Meir, Begin readily admitted the existence
of Palestinians. In fact, he paradoxically called them "beasts walking on
two legs" and "cockroaches."
The sainted
Yitzhak Rabin was a member of the Palmach, the elite striking force of the
underground military organization known as Haganah. He was deputy commander of
the Palmach when the group engaged in ethnically cleansing Palestinians. Some
40 years later, while serving as Israeli defense minister, Rabin ordered troops
to "break the bones" of Palestinian
demonstrators
(which were mostly children).
Shimon Peres
(nee Perski) has been called the architect of Israel's nuclear program. He was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work involving the Oslo accords, but his
role in Sharon's government prompted the Nobel committee members to sign a
letter regretting their decision. Peres' role included the slaughter of roughly
800 civilians at a United Nations base in Qana, Lebanon on April 18, 1996. Middle
East correspondent, Robert Fisk reported: "It was a massacre. The Lebanese
refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs
missing, beheaded or disemboweled. There were well over a hundred of them. A
baby lay without a head. The Israeli shells had scythed through them as they
lay in the United Nations shelter, believing that they were safe under the
world's protection."
David Ben-Gurion
(nee Green) was responsible for this January 1, 1948 diary entry concerning the
so-called Arab problem: "What is necessary is cruel and strong reactions.
We need precision in time, place, and casualties. If we know the family, we
must strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise, the reaction
is inefficient. At the place of action, there is no need to distinguish between
guilty and innocent."
During World War
II, Yitzhak Shamir (nee Yezernitsky) was a member of the Stern Gang. Led first
by Avraham Stern and later by Shamir, the group called for a state that
extended from the Nile to the Euphrates and proposed an alliance with Hitler to
bring this about. In the fall of 1940, Stern met with one of Mussolini's agents
in Jerusalem. By January 1941, he put out feelers to the Nazis and dispatched
an agent to meet with two of Hitler's emissaries in Beirut. "Stern's proposal," explains
Christopher Hitchens, "which was rashly put in writing, began by
establishing his ideological common ground with Nazism, expressing sympathy
with the Hitlerite goal of a Jew-free Europe and speaking of 'the goodwill of the German Reich
government...toward Zionist activity inside Germany and towards the Zionist
emigration plans.' " Stern proposed the "establishment of the
historical Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis" and offered
that he, Shamir, and the rest of the Stern Gang would "actively take part
in the war on Germany's side." As
a result of this proposed alliance, members of Stern's group would react
favorably-in public-to any news of Nazi victories. Even well into 1941, after
Stern was killed in a shoot-out and as more and more became known of Nazi
racial policies, Shamir took control of the Stern Gang-never renouncing its
support for Hitler. In 1986, Yitzhak
Shamir became Prime Minister of Israel.
The recently
deceased Abba Eban explained in 1981 that his nation's systematic bombing of
civilians could be justified since "there was a rational prospect,
ultimately fulfilled, that afflicted populations would exert pressure for the
cessation of hostilities."
Then we have
Ariel Sharon (Arik Scheinerman).
Owing perhaps to
his hearty and good-humored nature, in1953 Arik was given command of Unit 101.
This unit spread terror in the name of forcing Palestinians to flee from their
homes. Sharon's unit gained notoriety for two particular instances of spreading
terror:
In August 1953,
Unit 101 set upon the refugee camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza. UN commander
Major-General Vagn Bennike reported, "bombs were thrown" by Sharon's
men "through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping and,
as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic
weapons." Fifty refugees were
killed.
Two months
later, October 14, 1953, the passionate Zionist led Unit 101 into the Jordanian
village of Qibya. While Ben-Gurion initially put the blame on "enraged
Israeli visitors," documents show that Sharon's charges massacred 69
civilians (mostly women and children). Israel's foreign minister at the time,
Moshe Sharett, called the slaughter a "stain" that "would stick
to us and not be washed away for many years." Like most stains of this
nature, it has been washed away.
"Sharon's
order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on
its inhabitants," said Israeli historian Avi Shlaim "His success in
carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story
of what happened at Qibya was revealed only during the morning after the
attack. The village had been reduced to rubble: forty-five houses had been
blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two thirds of them women and children, had
been killed."
Three decades
after Qibya, Arik earned notoriety as the architect of Israel's invasion of
Lebanon. Working with the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia, Sharon allowed
the Phalangists into two Beirut-area refugee camps, Sabra and Shatila, on
September 16-17, 1982. Once inside the PLO-built camps, the Phalangists made
little distinction between solider and civilian. Up to 800 people were
slaughtered, including 35 women and children. The massacre led to a period of disgrace
for Arik but, in comeback of Nixonian proportions, he became Prime Minister in
2001. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have characterized his
more recent actions in the so-called occupied territories as war crimes.
As I've said
about Tom Brokaw's "greatest generation": If those the best, I'd hate
to see the worst. There are no heroes, only flawed human beings and no
generation from any nation should ever be honored or saddled with the label of
"greatest."
Mickey Z. is the author of Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of "The Good War" and the upcoming book, The Murdering of My Years: Artists & Activists Making Ends Meet (both from Soft Skull Press). He can be reached at mzx2@earthlink.net.