Letters to the Editor
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To belabour the point:
"Even in his critics most brutal estimation, Sharon is "responsible" for the deaths of a tiny fraction of the numbers killed by Yasir Arafat, the Assads of Syria, the ruling family of Saudi Arabia, Mubarak and Nasser in Egypt, even George Bush of America. Where's the outrage about that?"
Excuse me? So the defense of Sharon is that he only committed 'little bitty' war crimes?
As for 'where's the outrage', it's there. Do you think that Arafat's sins were not laid upon his grave? Do you think that the Assad's of Syria or George Bush get a free pass? Nonsense.
To excuse Sharon's culpability for his own atrocities by claiming that they're small in comparison with others is offensive. To excuse Sharon by excusing greater monsters is more offensive.
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Sharon was a man of his time and place...
Not to make excuses, but I think it's easy in the comfort of 2006 to look at a guy like Sharon as a monster - he wasn't: he was a human being in a time and place who did what he thought he had to. The hatred and bloodshed between Arabs and Jews pre-Israel is well documented - easily a tit fo tat existence - and for every Jewish massacre of Arabs, you can find an Arab massacre of Jews. I was a big fan of Israel growing up - I'm a child of the 60's and early 70s, and it wasn't until the invasion of Lebanon that the Israel lost the David chimera and became the Goliath of today - and even then, apologists for Arabs refuse to acknowledge that the PLO was using Lebanon to stage raids and launch rockets. Valdron talks like too many who gloss over the sins of this world to focus on the crimes of a few - and those few always seem to be the Jews and the Israelis in particular. While I'm careful with charges of anti-Semitism, it sure seems that comparing Sharon to Jeffrey Dahmer is such a push, one is either blind to history, context and reality - or one is perhaps letting anti-Semitism fuel his outrage (IOW, had Sharon been born in a world of peace - in a peaceful land, I doubt he’d be a killer, a criminal or anything other than a law abiding citizen).
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Is time and place really an excuse in Sharon's case?
I'll thank Jeffrey for his somewhat more balanced response. His thesis seems to be to acknowledge that Sharon committed atrocities, but that his actions must be viewed in the context of his circumstances. I think that there is a certain quality of reasonableness to this.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that this is any kind of excuse. I too recognize that hatred and bloodshed existed between Palestinians and Jews pre-Israel, and that arguably there were massacres on both sides. I question his relevance.
I made relatively little of Sharon's involvement with terrorism pre-1948. Most of the behaviour I complain of, the 53 Massacre at Qibya, the 1956 murder of POW's, the massacres at Palestinian refugee camps in 1982 is well after 1948. I suppose the question is, was Sharon really merely acting reasonably within the context of his times?
It strikes me that this is a potentially dangerous argument, because, conceivably, it can justify just about any conduct. It justifies a husband who beats his wife to a pulp, it justifies Ted Bundy who moves from a diet of sado-masochistic media to real life outrage, it justifies the central american death squads who wiped out villages to save them from communism, it justifies Lieutenant Calley, and Richard Nixon, and all of those others up to and including Hitler. They were all human beings in a time and place doing what they thought they had to. It's the 'ultimate get out of jail for free' card.
My instinct is to reject it absolutely. But let's be reasonable. There is a gulf between 2006 and 1982, or 2006 and 1953. So the question is, what sort of gulf is it. Were his actions in 1982 or 1953 truly acceptable back then at those times?
I don't believe that is the case at all. I am very conscious of the shock and outrage that went through the population of Israel upon the news of what went on at Saba and Chattilla. Israeli's were appalled. 400,000 demonstrated against it, that was something like 20% of the *entire country*. A commission was held, there was much soul searching, Sharon was driven from office.
Those massacres offended the world, it was absolutely unacceptable in Israel. It was offensive in Lebanon. Certainly it was an outrage to Muslims, and to the west. No one, absolutely no one, was prepared to make excuses for it, or to make excuses for Sharon. No one was prepared to say "Good job, Ariel." At best, a compromised miitary and political establishment could only do its best to obfuscate and sweep things under the rug. But the truth of that time, and a truth everyone recognized at that time, was that an atrocity had been perpetrated.
Ironically, it was only the passage of time that has apparently legitimized it for Sharon. Memories have failed or dulled, the horror of the incident recedes. A man who should never have again been elected dogcatcher was elevated to Prime Minister. This would not be unlike Nixon getting re-elected with William Calley as his running mate in the United States.
Similarly, the massacre at Qibya in 1953 also produced shock and outrage, both within Israel and within the Arab world, but overall in the international community. The standards that existed then, the context of time and place, found this sort of conduct and behaviour unacceptable.
Again, we had a compromised military establishment obfuscating. But the facts are clear - people died. Women and children died. Sharon's unit 101 was dissolved and merged with other IDF branches. What was done then was so unacceptable for its time that the military unit was irrevocably disgraced. It had to be terminated because its name had become a by-word for atrocity. And it is to the credit of Israeli's that their population did not wish to countenance that atrocity.
In terms of the murder of Prisoners of War in 1956, or 1967 and 1973, it is worth noting that this information was concealed for an extended period of time. It was not considered acceptable, but acknowledged within Israel that it would be a crime. By the moral standards of the people of Israel at that time and at that place, it was a war crime. That's why it was concealed or carefully overlooked until it began to come out in the 1990's.
So, perhaps Sharon was a human being in a time and a place who was doing what he thought he had to. But his actions were offensive and appalling by the standards of his time and place, it was unacceptable to the moral people of Israel, to the standards and values that the Israelis were trying to build their nation upon. And this is not arbitrary. In WWII the Israelis had seen firsthand the horrors that would come about from abandoning those standards and values. I cannot believe that they would embrace amoral ruthlessness that had caused them so much suffering. And in fact, looking at the historical record, they refused it.
It is noteworthy that Jeffrey never bothers to examine or defend Sharon's actual actions. I'm inclined to take that as Jeffrey's concession that Sharon's actual record *is* indefensible.