Sharon, as both military leader and prime minister, was the man to whom the Israeli public looked in its hours of need, yearning for the protection he provided and cognizant of the consequences it sometimes entailed. As Ari Shavit wrote in a piercing profile in the New Yorker in 2006, Israelis turned to Sharon in the 1950s, during the devastating fedayun raids; as they did on Yom Kippur 1973, when even the defense minister was said to have feared the “fall of the Third Temple”; and yet again, most overwhelmingly, during the savagely bloody days of the Second Intifada.
He was defense minister during the 1982 Lebanon War and was found to bear personal responsibility for failing to prevent the Phalangist massacre of Palestinian Muslims in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Early in his career, in October 1953, he led a reprisal raid on the Jordanian village of Qibya in response to a terror attack in Israel. Forty two houses were detonated in the raid and 69 people were killed. In the field with his troops, Sharon had a reputation for pushing the license and limits of his orders to the maximum.
Toward the end of his political career, he was welcomed into the mainstream. In August 2005, he presided over the withdrawal from Gaza, uprooting some 24 settlements in total and irrevocably severing his ties with the settlement movement that he had an instrumental role in founding.
Three months later, on November 21, 2005, Sharon announced his departure from Likud, the party he had co-founded in 1973. A reporter asked at the press conference why he thought he would succeed where so many others had failed, with a centrist party. He laughed — even his greatest detractors admitted that he could be charming — and said: “Planning is something a lot of people know how to do, but executing, as you know, far fewer, far fewer.”
Farm roots
Sharon was born, on a rainy February 26, 1928, to a violin-playing agronomist father and a legendarily tenacious mother.
His father, Samuil Scheinerman, was from Brest-Litovsk and had been raised a Zionist. His father’s father, Mordechai, had been best friends with Menachem Begin’s father, and the two had broken down the door of the local synagogue when the rabbi refused to hold a memorial for Theodor Herzl. Mordechai’s wife, Miriam, was a midwife: she birthed Menachem Begin.
Moshe Dayan famously said of his generals that he preferred to restrain war horses than “prod oxen who refuse to move.” Sharon, though, proved difficult to contain.
Sharon’s mother, Vera Schneerof, from the tiny Belarussian village of Halavenchichi, was a reluctant Zionist. Her dream was to be a doctor. But in 1921, with the Red Army advancing on Tiflis, she hastily married Samuil, dropped out of medical school, and set sail for Palestine.
Gilad Sharon, in his 2011 memoir, “The Life of a Leader” (full disclosure: this reporter translated the book into English), had this to say of his grandmother Vera: “Because of her slanting eyes, her size, and her strength, both physical and predominantly mental, she always seemed to me a descendant of Genghis Khan. Every time there was some mention of her ancestry, I’d make galloping noises for my father, by drumming on the table. Everyone in the house knew what that sound meant: Mongolian horsemen, thousands of them, galloping on their short horses across the Russian plain. Short, strong, and determined, they ride with eyes narrowed against the wind. Nothing deters them, nothing stops them. Between their saddle and their horse’s back they store a piece of meat, softened by the friction and the horse’s sweat. All this came to mind when I saw my beloved grandmother.”
She slept with a firearm beneath her bed until age 80.
Arik’s father, Samuil, who was an outcast in the cooperative farming village of Kfar Malal, left careful instructions in his will: He did not want his body taken to the cemetery in the village truck; instead, Arik should use the family pickup. He didn’t want any of his neighbors eulogizing him, either.
A soldier of valor and controversy
In the summer of 1945, Sharon took part in the Haganah’s squad leader training course, far from the eyes of the British, deep in the desert. He thought he had done well but his commanders graduated him with the rank of “probationary corporal.”
That status was erased during the war.
Shortly after the November 29, 1947 vote that authorized the partition of Palestine, Sharon, then still known as Scheinerman, led a company of troops through the mud and heavy rain to the outskirts of Bir Addas, an Arab village that was host to Iraqi troops. They exchanged fire but the call to charge on the Israeli side never came. Sharon led his men forward regardless. He was ultimately given complete command over the platoon in a sign of things to come.
General Sharon, as he was often known abroad, never went to officer’s school.
He was, however, a gifted commander. In 1967, he planned the IDF’s first divisional battle, against the Abu Agheila stronghold in the Sinai, completely on his own; till today, the battle is taught in military academies across the world.
During the Yom Kippur War, he led Israeli troops across the Suez Canal, breaking the back of the Egyptian offensive. As his troops encircled Egypt’s Third Army, Sharon, a reserves officer at the time, instructed them to plant Israeli flags on the high ground, so that the Egyptians would look back across the water and see that they were trapped.
Sharon, known to all as Arik, did not need to have orders spelled out for him. In 1952, Moshe Dayan asked him “to see” whether it would be possible to capture Jordanian soldiers and exchange them for Israeli POWs. That same day, without being told, Sharon rounded up a friend and a pickup truck and drove down to the Jordan River. He waded into the water, pretended to inquire about missing cows, and promptly disarmed two Jordanian soldiers. He cuffed and blindfolded them, and drove them back to headquarters in Nazareth, his friend Shlomo Hever riding on the sideboard with a pistol aimed at their heads. When they arrived, Dayan was out. Sharon left him a note: “Moshe — the mission is accomplished, the prisoners are in the cellar. Shalom. Arik.”
Dayan, who recommended him for a citation after that mission, famously said of his generals that he preferred to restrain war horses than “prod oxen who refuse to move.” Sharon, though, proved difficult to contain. In 1956, during the Suez War, he stretched his orders to the maximum and beyond, when he sent paratroopers into the Mitla Pass, engaging in a gruesome and unnecessary face-to-face fight with the Egyptian soldiers who were dug into the craggy mountain side. The mission resulted in 38 Israeli deaths and cemented a lifelong feud with future chief of the General Staff Motta Gur.
In the aftermath of the Suez War, then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion wrote of Sharon in his journal: “The lad is a thinker, an original. Were he to be weaned of his fault of not speaking the truth in his reports he would make an exemplary military leader.”
Ben-Gurion, nonetheless, supported Sharon throughout his military life. In 1953, after the unintentional massacre in Qibya, the elder statesman kindly changed the young major’s name from Scheinerman to Sharon, reassuring him that what is important is “how it will be looked at here in this region,” to which Sharon remarked in his 1989 autobiography, tellingly entitled “Warrior,” “I couldn’t have agreed with him more.”
Despite Ben-Gurion’s persistent backing — he told military historian Uri Milstein that Sharon was “the greatest field commander in the history of the IDF” – and Sharon’s stunning tactical successes in the Six Day War, he was eventually pushed out of the army — after many previous attempts — on July 15, 1973.
Battles on the home front
Sharon was a family man. In stark opposition to many other Israeli generals and leaders, he was not a womanizer. Throughout his life, even as prime minister, he always rose to his feet when a woman entered the room. But in mid-life, over the span of five-and-a-half years, his personal life was ripped to shreds.
He first saw his wife, Margalit (Gali) Zimmerman, through the bright green leaves of an orange grove during the waning days of the British Mandate in Palestine. She was 16 and wore braids and was planting in the field of the dormitory school she attended. Sharon wrote in his autobiography that he had never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. By the time he pulled himself from his reverie, the water in his irrigation ditch was at his knees.
Several years after the War of Independence, they eloped. A rabbi friend of Sharon’s married them with no friends or relatives in attendance. Nine years later she was dead, killed in a car crash, on the way to her job as a psychiatric nurse in Jerusalem.
Their son, Gur, was five years old. The boy grew gaunt and frail and acquired “a hollow” look to his eyes. Slowly he recovered. “It was a remarkable experience watching him regain his strength, as if sorrow had reached to the depths and had broken on some inner strength it found there,” Sharon wrote.
Gali’s sister, Lily, stepped into the void. In Uzi Benziman’s highly critical biography, “Sharon: an Israeli Caesar,” the author cited anonymous sources who contended that Sharon and Lily had been having an affair, and that Gali was driven to take her own life. That claim remains unsubstantiated. The two raised Gur together after Gali’s death, fell in love and had two more children, Omri and Gilad.
But on the eve of Rosh Hashanah 1967, tragedy struck once again. Gur, age 10, saw that his father was busy on the phone, snapped him a playful salute and went out to the yard to play. Moments later, Sharon heard a gunshot. He ran to the yard. His youngest, Gilad, not yet a year old, was in the play pen; Omri, 3, stood by his side; and Gur was splayed out on the grass. He and a friend had been playing with an antique rifle. They had apparently loaded it with gun powder and a piece of metal. “I had seen so many wounds in my life; no one had to tell me that this one was hopeless,” he wrote. He bundled him in his arms and waded out into the street to catch a ride to the hospital. In the back seat of the car, Gur died in his arms.
In his memoir, Gilad Sharon wrote that his father once said, “The pain’s intensity is not diminished by the years; it’s only the intervals between the stabbings that grow longer.”
Lily Sharon, Arik’s beloved wife, who died in March 2000, is quoted in the 2006 biography “Ariel Sharon: A Life” [also translated by this reporter] as saying, “Arik never got over it. He just learned to live with it.”
Political engagement… and disengagement
Sharon founded the Likud. But he spent his first decade in politics serving under Menachem Begin. The two could not have been more different: lawyer and farmer, ideologue and pragmatist. When they first met in 1969, with Sharon still in uniform and looking for a way into politics, he was awed by Begin’s “extraordinarily powerful presence” and admitted to breaking into a cold sweat when they spoke.
Pragmatic Zionism, to which Sharon ardently subscribed, is based on “facts on the ground: reclaim another acre, drain another swamp, acquire another cow…don’t talk about it, just get it done.” This was the attitude with which he built the settlement enterprise, and this was the attitude that enabled him to dismantle it
During the peace talks with Egypt, their differences rose to the surface. Begin would agree only to Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. Sharon, his son revealed in his 2011 memoir, was willing to grant them a state. “Better to have a Palestinian state on part of the territory than autonomy across all of it,” Gilad heard him say countless times. The terminology, he felt, was irrelevant. The word autonomy on a document could metamorphose into a state, but an internationally recognized Palestinian state, which seemed like a bigger achievement for Egypt, would have fixed borders, allowing Israel to maintain the areas crucial to its security.
Sharon felt that Begin, a political Zionist like Herzl and Jabotinsky, “was a man who believed in the power of words and legal terms and consequently he gave a high priority to such things as pronouncements, declarations and formal agreements,” he wrote in his autobiography. Pragmatic Zionism, to which Sharon ardently subscribed, is based on “facts on the ground: reclaim another acre, drain another swamp, acquire another cow… don’t talk about it, just get it done.”
This was the attitude with which he built the settlement enterprise, and this was the attitude with which he dismantled it.
Sharon admired Begin’s bravery, his decision to strike in Iraq, and his frugality — he once noted that there wasn’t so much as a single chair in Begin’s home that he trusted with his weight. But the Lebanon War and the subsequent committee of inquiry brought an end to their relationship. All Cabinet members save Sharon voted to accept the findings of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, or as it has become known, the Kahan Commission.
Months after his February 14, 1983 resignation from the post of defense minister, Sharon approached the prime minister and told him how his father had made him vow, decades earlier, that he would “never turn Jews over.” The vow was taken at a time when the Palmach was aiding the British in their battle against Begin’s Irgun and the other pre-state underground organizations. The period was known as the “saison” or hunting season. British police officers jailed and executed many of the underground fighters. “Menachem,” Sharon reportedly said in ’83, “it was you who handed me over to them. You are the one who did it.”
Sharon’s rise to the premiership, after years of backwater positions, began in earnest on September 28, 2000, when he came through the Mughrabi Gate and visited the Temple Mount. The so-called Al Aqsa, or Second Intifada ensued. Amid the bloodshed and the chaos, Ehud Barak stepped down, calling for new elections for prime minister. On February 6, 2001, Israelis chose Sharon over Barak by a 62%-38% margin. Dayan’s prediction from years earlier had come true: “You will have to wait for a crisis to come along,” he said to Sharon. “It’s only then that they will let you out.”
As prime minister, Sharon flattened the wave of rising Palestinian terror; threw himself heart and soul into a global campaign to sideline and delegitimize Yasser Arafat [perhaps his most successful campaign]; and, aided by the heinous events of 9/11 and a keen understanding of the American president, he maintained a strong relationship with then-president Bush and his administration.
In 2005, with the “Disengagement” from Gaza, he severed his ties to the settlement movement. Gush Emunim, the religious arm of the movement, Sharon once noted, had seen him as “the Messiah’s donkey,” or the beast upon which their salvation would arrive.
Several weeks later, he addressed the General Assembly on the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations. “I stand before you at the gate of nations as a Jew and as a citizen of the democratic, free, and sovereign State of Israel, a proud representative of an ancient people,” he said. “I was born in the Land of Israel, the son of pioneers — people who tilled the land and sought no fights — who did not come to Israel to dispossess its residents. If the circumstances had not demanded it, I would not have become a soldier, but rather a farmer and agriculturist. My first love was, and remains, manual labor; sowing and harvesting, the pastures, the flock and the cattle.
“I, as someone whose path of life led him to be a fighter and commander in all Israel’s wars, reach out today to our Palestinian neighbors in a call for reconciliation and compromise to end the bloody conflict, and embark on the path that leads to peace and understanding between our peoples. I view this as my calling and my primary mission for the coming years.”
The man who for years had been scorned by the international community, depicted as a butcher and a blood thirsty leader, drew applause from all corners of the room.
Three and a half months later, before revealing the full extent of his future plans, he fell, terminally, from consciousness.
Read more: Israel’s indomitable protector, Ariel Sharon emblemized military audacity, evolving politics | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-indomitable-protector-ariel-sharon-emblemized-military-audacity-evolving-politics/#ixzz2q71nNxR4
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
Lots of posts like that from you … yet I am considered the offensive one?!
The NU text is not reliable
The KJV is better
Yamit (0) dweller (1)
yamit82 Said:
I am trembling with the very though of “getting lucky”: http://youtu.be/rQqwG_rQx7A
@ honeybee:
Next time you might get lucky, Best not to bet especially against me!!!! 😉
@ yamit82:
OMG, I placed all my bets of Shy Guy today, I am runined!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment to CA in moderation. That’s almost a record of ten posts in moderation today.
CuriousAmerican Said:
So it’s your contention that your dead deity had cause? 😉
KJV/NKJV footnote: (5:22) NU-Text omits without a cause.
Where OR what is his cause?????????
What a vicious, totally unjustified attack! And how dishonest, because he makes no specific charge against any named individual, just a vague, generalized attack on an entire class of people. This is prejudiced stereotyping of the worst kind and, after he has himself acknowledged that the “Rabbis” (or “Pharisees”) “sit in Moses’ seat”, exposes him for the hypocrite he was. And that was a “messiah”? 🙂 Matthew 23:23-33
Matthew 23:2-3…”The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’seat; therefore you must do and observe all that they tell you.”
Yamit (3) yeshu, dweller and Ca (0)
CuriousAmerican Said:
Step 1: throw the Jew a bone
CuriousAmerican Said:
Step 2: the predictable, and inevitable, statement of equality between the behavior of the head choppers, throat slitters, honor killers,etc. and the Nobel prize winners.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Step 3- let’s make the pals the center of attention, the focus of discussion. Lets get those fool Jews to forget about the jewish issues and focus their dunce caps on the pals instead. we can make them forget about jewish issues like they did the jews from arab lands, or the legal rights of jewish settlers, and instead focus their energy on the pals. After all their fool leaders do the same thing in negotiations and diplomacy.
CuriousAmerican Said:
Step 4: Now lets appeal to their compassion, idealism and humanity: make them feel guilty. By now the Jew has ceased giving any energy to jewish issues or needs and is in full discussion of the poor suffering arabs. The same arabs who ran the jews out of their lands, the same pals who operate 3 entities that are JEW FREE on the homeland of Israel(jordan, gaza, PA).
CuriousAmerican Said:
Neither a second, third or fourth thought are they worthy of from a single Jew. The entire world is focused on their suffering; the entire world has ignored their treaty obligations to jewish settlement in Israel; the entire world ignored ethnic cleansing of jews from arab nations in spite of the GC which they repeatedly remember to libel and denigrate Israel. You have the audacity to come here and sap the energy of jews to focus on your fake pal cause when the entire world is already focused on them and giving nothing to the Jews? You come here to take what little energy is left in Jews to focus on their own needs and seek to disingenuously and repeatedly employ an MO whose purpose is to distract Jews from jewish issues on jewish sites? This is a very common muslim supporting troll MO on many Jewish sites where trolls take on false identities, even descendants of holocaust victims, and intentionally throw out statements similar to throwing a cat among the pigeons in order to hijack the discussion, confuse the fool Jews, and have them all discussing the plight of the Pals.
Now, I am not accusing you of being an anti semitic troll but I am just pointing out the repeated coincidence of the similarity of your MO to theirs. I am just observing, that’s all.
CuriousAmerican Said:
HMMM? Just observing those fool Jews when you throw the cat among them.
CuriousAmerican Said:
As the same actions usually result in the same outcome you must surely “anticipate” the same response each time you throw the same cat among the pigeons. you have found the formula and like a snake oil salesman you keep working the same con. After all if the sucker keeps taking the bait then why should the con change?
I have come to the conclusion that in your case the content of what you say is not as important as your repeated MO.
@ dweller:
See my goat I lived in Sde Boker for a bit in 70s.
The King James renders it
But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment …
Notice the “without a cause”
Jesus had good cause to be angry with the Pharisess – though I am sure you disagree.
If you go here
http://www.blueletterbible.org/Bible.cfm?b=Mat&c=5&t=KJV#s=t_conc_934022
you will see the greek word for cause is: eik?
I am not here to get into a theological debate with you.
But check more than one translation.
Your particular point in this case was wrong.
Yamit 0 dweller 1
At least on that verse.
mar55 Said:
Your should hear the words Mexicans use.
mar55 Said:
Thank you marr55,you are so kind, been in Denver for the Stock Show. I thought of you you, how much you would enjoy watcing the little ones see farm animals ffor the first time. The Coors art show was a disspointment except for Dan and Arlo Naminga, Hopi artists and brothers. Gordon Brown had three nice landscapes.
dweller Said:
you christians do not subscribe to that commandment.
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ Mat 5:21
“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” Mat 5:22
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Later:
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Matthew 23:13-17
King James Version (KJV)
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
17 {Ye fools} and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
Hmmmm does that mean he now resides in the “fire of hell”? Fool!!!!!!
@ Shy Guy:
dweller Said:
Pauls said:
“There is no one Righteous, Not even one” Romans 3:10
But:
“Joseph was a righteous man” Matthew 1:19
“Simeon was righteous” Luke 2:25
“Joseph of Arimathea was a good and righteous man” Luke 23:50
“Elizabeth and Zechariah were both righteous” Luke 1:6
“Lot was righteous” 2 Peter 2:7
“Job blameless” Job 1:1 1:8 2:3
“John the Baptist a righteous and holy man” Mark 6:20
“Abel was righteous” Hebrews 11:4
“Noah was a righteous man” Gen 6:9
“Many righteous men” Mat 13:17
“Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.” Galatians 5:2
“Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.” Galatians 5:3
“The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” Galatians 3:12
“Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ.” Galatians 6:12
Paul as a personal example: “If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ” Galatians 1:10
Timothy acts 16:1-3 Paul decides to circumcise the uncircumcised Timothy “because of the Jews who were in those areas” Acts 16:3
Those guys from Galatians said to Paul “Hey what about all those things you wrote denouncing believers who get circumcised to please people and avoid persecution”? 😛
dweller Said:
“I agree with Paul. It’s not often I say that, so note it well.”
@ dove:
Plenty of nonsense — from somebody with axes to grind.
I repeat: “I’ve yet to be shown anything ‘false’ about him despite how hard you’ve tried to.”
Not at all cold.
But its warmth does not keep me from seeing clearly; nor from speaking plainly.
You make it sound as if her remark somehow incurred an ‘indebtedness’ on my part; as if I should cease thereafter to say what I see, and instead respond in kind, irrespective of the truth.
I have no such obligation, Dove. Nobody does.
— Our only obligation to each other is to be plainspoken without rancor, judgmentalism or fear.
Of course I did. I spoke the truth. She COULD do better.
She had compared Curio to a “Nazi larva.”
— So, THAT is something I should ignore, just because she called ME genuine?
I wasn’t aware the remark had a price-tag attached to it.
Will prove what to me? — that Curio is a “Nazi larva”?
“The Lord will not hold him [or her] guiltless that taketh His name in vain.”
— A word to the wise. . . .
@ dweller:
You have been shown plenty dweller but your heart is cold. Mar55 gives you the benefit of the doubt and actually compliments you and how do you respond? You refute her and tell her she could do better. Not good dweller.
It’s up to Hashem now to prove it to you! And Hashem will! GUARANTEED!!
@ dove:
I’ve yet to be shown anything ‘false’ about him (despite how hard you’ve tried to).
Quite the contrary, I have NO use for judgmental behavior
— as I pointed out in my reply to your previous comment — one of the most judgmental comments you’ve made yet (in a decidedly crowded field).
Also those who are particularly hard on men. (Actually, truth be told, HARDER on men.)
Strange indeed.
He calls a spade, a spade.
Fancy that.
@ mar55:
Although I do appreciate most of your commentary I think perhaps you haven’t been on Israpundit long enough to understand the mental state of some of the pundits. ie the one who just responded to you – dweller….a very strange dude. I don’t know how much you know about the new testament and the founder of Christianity – the false apostle paul but, dweller admires those kinds of people who are particularily judgemental and hard on women.
@ honeybee:
Get tested, my dear. May I commend for your consideration a good Ear, Nose & Throat specialist
— and quickly, before Obamacare makes specialists a practical impossibility?
Better that a man (or woman) should see himself as GOD sees him.
He’d acquire a true sense of humor.
Probably never STOP laughing.
@ mar55:
Have you not done, here — in relation to him — what you accuse HIM of ?
— Why not just address his specific questions forthrightly, and leave the drama aside?
Are you absolutely sure?
Only Christ can judge whether I am or not.
The overwhelming majority of self-professed Christians would say, “not”
— as I have NEVER subscribed to the Nicene Creed (or any of the subsequent ones), which asserts the ‘divinity’ of Christ — and which Creed traditionally has constituted the standard unifying touchstone for the many-and-varied denominations & confessions of the Christian faith.
Not helpful, Mar. You can do better.
@ Bear Klein:
You think he’s trying to get your goat.
But nobody could get your goat
— if you had NO ‘goat’ to be got.
It’s having that goat in the FIRST place that really makes the “game” strange.
@ dove:
Or else, what?
Isn’t that “unasked for advice”?
They don’t need to be explicitly ‘taught’ to.
— They ‘absorb’ it from being around their hateful parents — kind of, like, osmosis.
Maybe not deliberately. . . . MAYBE not even consciously. . . .
And if He chooses NOT to do so (notwithstanding your fondest hopes), will YOU then judge Hashem
— for “falling-down-on-the-job,” as it were?
@ CuriousAmerican:
Yes; of course. Absolutely.
Home — whatever it may consist of — means the same thing for all persons (and most other sentient beings as well).
Destroy ANYbody’s home and you render him/her damned-near maximally vulnerable — short only of assault, rape, or outright annihilation. No question about it.
That being said though, I’m more interested in knowing where you were prepared to go with this before the matter was derailed because some people felt threatened by your question.
Now that you’ve INDEED been given a candid answer (and a sincere one, I quite assure you), what then?
Was that all there was to your post, Curio? — just the question? — or was that, rather, a foundation for further discourse?
If the latter, I’m listening.
@ mar55:
EXCELLENT and ELEGANT. (Re: 27)
cudos!
@ Laura:
Laura, my views are that Israel has the right to all lands from the gulf and isthmus of Suez on the west to the Syrian Desert on the east, and from the northernmost part of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range on the north to the Straits of Tiran to the South.
In addition, I despise international compromise, which I regard as a disease of the nationally weak.
Finally, I want Israel to be led by a religious Jewish nationalist government that will be willing to create a new Israeli political system that seriously downgrades political democracy.
I cannot imagine any percentage remotely close to most of the commenter population on Israpundit agreeing with what I want for the Jewish nation; probably including you. But I would be immensely pleased to be contradicted in this particular assumption.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Bear Klein is right. Ignore CA and move on. Phoenix is correct too. There are times when CA needs to be exposed for the FRAUD that he is!
@ ArnoldHarris:
I don’t think your views on the supremacy of Jewish rights in Israel differ at all from most of the commenters at Israpundit, including myself.
yamit82 Said:
Yes!!!!!!!!!!
Is Kerry Stupid or Devilish?
John Kerry said about Sharon, “He was prepared to make tough decisions because he knew that his responsibility to his people was both to ensure their security and to give every chance to the hope that they could live in peace.”
He wants BB to forget that Sharon failed miserably in his pursuit of both peace and security.
His mad retreat from Gaza, deporting thousands of Jews, destroying homes, synagogues, fields, equipment, resulted in a lot more bloodshed and destruction than ever before.
How can anyone look at Sharon’s abysmal record in Gaza and say they would like to repeat it, but this time make it five times or ten times more terrible?
@ CuriousAmerican:
CA, unlike most of these other commenters on Israpundit, I freely admit that I favor double standards regarding Jewish rights anywhere in historic Eretz-Yisrael. Which means that Jews alone have national rights there, and when our Jewish nation eventually accumulates the national power base and the sense of self-assurance to exercise that power, then nobody but those who are part of or offer allegiance to the Jewish nation shall have full rights on our Jewish national land.
And no, CA, I do not feel even remotely guilty for thinking such thoughts and advocating them. Old as I am, I suffer no diseases, including and especially Jewish guilt. That land — all that land — belongs to the Jewish nation. And if I have faith in anything whatsoever, it is that as long as we have a Jewish nation — which shall last as long as humans tread on this Earth, if we follow HaShem’s commandments, then Jews will organize themselves so as to take back and hold that land. And the Arabs who reside therein shall do so solely at our sufferance.
And I would advocate Jewish national supremacy even if the goyim of the world had not treated my nation through the last 3000 years as though they were dogs, or for the more skillful and adroit among us, as simultaneously useful and despised.
I am not interested at all in wanting anybody other than my own family to love me, and if I have the respect of others it is because I am a scrupulously honest businessman whose services I supply and for which they pay me. But I am nobody’s fool and nobody’s bleeding heart.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
CuriousAmerican Said:
“Ah to see ourselves as others see us” Robert Burns, CA you are so sanctimonious you reek of it!!!!! I can’t even imagine watching my home bulldozed. My sympathies are with the Jewish settlers of Yamit and Gaza.
Perhaps bear Klein is right. Just tell this ‘american’ sob to f.o. and move on.
Nonetheless, it must be understood that whatever is written , it is being read by many others, some who MIGHT just not quite get it, and find some merit in the copious and incessant bullshit that this bastard is bringing into this forum.
He must be thus, rebutted and pointed out to be the SANCTIMONIOUS FRAUD that he is.
To allow this POS to post without a rebuttal is almost akin to the GOI not confronting the outrageous lies and various forms of blood libel that are being hurled against it.
To answer your f*****ing question, american,
The late rabbi kahane said it so well: “it is an act of kindness, since we DO understand them, that we do not wish to be forced to harm them (as yamit and Ted have pointed out to you, jackass, this was bulldozing of illegal construction so there is NOTHING to discuss there.)
BUT
To ensure that your darlings for whom you have soooooooo much love and empathy and concern, are not harmed, they should be ALL moved / transferred / ethnic cleansed. /. Given an opportunity to further their ‘careers’ elsewhere…… Take your pick, american!
Devolin, take a break from shoveling snow and let’s read your posts!
🙂
CA is playing us the Jews on Israpundit. He finds something he knows people here will object to and watches them jump with outrage. Strange game. If I were a shrink I would try and analyze it. Since I am not a shrink I will just give him the finger and move on.
Ted Belman Said:
Illegal building is also a violation of 242, Oslo and the Road Map agrements relating to establishing facts on the ground outside of agreements through negotiations. The EU, the USA, and The GCC especially the Saudis are the one financing illegal massive Arab building. Israel destroys only a few of Arab dwellings without permits in-order to deflect criticism and legal complaints to the courts by Jewish activists. Within Israel proper tens of thousands of illegal Arab dwellings are not touched where Jewish ones are. See massive illegal Arab construction in the Negev and in the Galilee. This is not even an example of Affirmative Action, It’s pure discrimination against Jews. We have laid the foundations for enclaves of Arabs to demand autonomy within Israel in the future. A return to city state political structures.
CuriousAmerican Said:
AGAIN YOU DISPLAY THE DISEASE OF MORAL EQUIVALENCY
dove Said:
“There is a futility that takes place on the Earth — there are righteous ones who are treated as [if they had performed] the actions of the evil ones; and there are evil ones who are treated as [if they had performed] the actions of the righteous ones — I declared that, also, this is a futility.” (Ecclesiastes 8:14)
Curious: Then they shall dwell in the land that I have given to Jacob My servant, where your fathers dwelt; and they shall dwell there, they, their children, and their children’s children, forever; and My servant David shall be their prince forever…And on that day the prince shall prepare for himself and for all the people of the land a bull for a sin offering. – Ezekiel 37:25,45:22 Who is the Prince?? 😉
CuriousAmerican Said:
I have no pity for the Arabs. Destroying homes is not a human rights issue, it is a legal issue. If you build without a permit, whether you are a Jew of Arab, the home should be demolished according to law. Unfortunately many illegal Arab homes are not demolished whereas all Jewish illegal homes are. They should all be demolished.
One of the reasons the Arabs build illegally is so that they don’t have to pay for municipal services including water , sewage and electricity. Instead they hook up these services illegally without paying for the required permits and hook up charges and subsequently not paying for their consumption. They also avoid real estate taxes this way.
Nope, no pity at all. Anger is more like it.
@ CuriousAmerican:
You are FULL of crap!
First of all DONT EVER GIVE ME UNASKED FOR ADVICE AGAIN!!
Go to hell Curious! How DARE you say something like this to ME! I can have deep faith – DONT CONFUSE THAT WITH EXTREMISM. I don’t TEACH my children to hate…I don’t TEACH my children to KILL….I don’t help perverted men in any way shape or form.
Like I said before I HOPE HASHEM JUDGES YOU HARSHLY!!
CuriousAmerican Said:
I found your forefather in the Torah:
“The saying of Balaam the son of Beor, and the saying of the man whose eye is opened.” – Devarim (Numbers) 24:3
I did not ask nor expect you to show equal sympathy.
I just asked if you could understand. That is all.
Your anticipated response answered my question.
Apparently, they are not even worth a thought to you.
THIS IS NOT SANCTIMONY!
I am not self-righteous.
I am NOT even criticizing.
I am just observing.
Watch this THE WAR PRAYER by Mark Twain
The Arabs with their religious extremism are guilty of this. Make sure you do not fall into the same trap
They quoted Jeremiah
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVYIRbmxHpc
CuriousAmerican Said:
You jackass! It would be the same descriptions of horro of bulldozed homes of every other Israeli for a lack of permit?
What? Someone told you that it only happens to Arabs and not to Jews? Ask your stupid self what your sources are.
Daniel Pinner: “Ah, Ariel, Ariel!…” (Isaiah 29:1-2)
Everything Pinner writes is on the mark!
@ CuriousAmerican:
Ah yes there goes CA expecting us to have equal sympathy to our enemies as we would to our own. Even Hashem (G-d in your world) would not expect that so why would a self righteous person like you expect it? You obviously are the type of person who likes to ‘rub salt in the wounds’ of the Jewish people. I hope Hashem judges you harshly!!
First, even if some here did not like Sharon – and I knew some here did not – I still hope he made his peace with the Almighty, and is at rest.
First, I am sorry Yamit’s home was bulldozed in 1982.
But the description that you gave of bulldozed homes was stirring.
I am going to ask a question – and I know it will not go over well – but it has to be asked.
I read the same descriptions of the horror of bulldozed homes by the Arabs when their homes of bulldozed for a lack of permit.
I know you do not feel any pity for the Arab. Do you consider them human enough that you can understand that what you feel about what happened in Yamit in 1982 is exactly how they feel when their houses are bulldozed?
Or are they a lesser human to you, not worthy of consideration?
Maybe so! Maybe they are not worth the second thought. Just asking.
The description struck me as identical to what I had seen Arabs write.
I hope Sharon is at peace.
Bear Klein Said:
Affirmative.
I Saw Begin Commit Suicide (and Drag Us All Along)
I concur with Bennett,
@ yamit82:
Question did you live in Yamit before it was evcuated?
@ yamit82:
Sharon wasn’t my hero either, Yamit. He was nowhere near as tough in terms of Jewish naional rights as Yitzchak Shamir, or, for that matter, David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol or Golda Meir. And the rag-pickers of journalism of the western liberal democacies, as one of Douglas MacArthur’s generals used that term 63 years ago, laud Sharon on the event of his passing into death as having pleased them greatly only for his despicable action in breaking up and abandoning the Mediterranean Jewish settlements immediately south of Gaza. HaShem willing, the Jewish nation and Jewish state will take that all back again one day, along with the Sinai Peninsula all the way up to the gulf and isthmus of Sinai.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
@ yamit82
“Put not you faith in Princes”, the person I am glad to have enter hell today is Leroy Jones. Sharon I will leave to his Maker!!
Sharon Was Not My Hero Even Before The Retreat From Gaza.
Arik Is Dead By: Yori Yanover
Who is the Real Ariel Sharon?: