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).

"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.

Let's get real here. I appreciate the passion of the defense, but its notable that when you take away the passion, there's nothing left. No fact, no logic, no argument. And in particular, there's no defense of Sharon's conduct.

The man slaughtered 69 women and children in the village of Qibya, outside Israel's borders in 1953. This act outraged the world. This act outraged Israelis, because they did not see themselves as the sort of people who would do this. They saw themselves, to their credit, as better than that.

Qibya was nothing more or less than an atrocity, a war crime, a massacre. It would be unacceptable committed by Argentines against Bolivians, Americans against Indians, Germans against Czechs, Japanese against Koreans, British against Hindus, Boers against Zulus.

The Execution of Prisoners of War? Tell me where this is acceptable? Tell me where it is tolerated? Tell me how its singling out Israel to criticize Sharon for executing POW's? And don't give me 'oh, the other guys did it too' because that is the single most morally degenenerate excuse around.

And once again, I'll note that murdering prisoners of war is unacceptable to mainstream Israelis.

The Saba and Chatilla massacres, I've covered sufficiently.

Sharon belongs in the class of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, William Calley, Augusto Pinochet, Idi Amin, Richard Nixon, etc. The class of monsters who came to the world and smeared blood on it. It's a big class, and quite diverse in its way. We can argue about their differences. Jeffrey Dahmer merely killed and ate a few people for sexual gratification, Richard Nixon secretly bombed entire countries, Pinochet was merely a thug. The point is that they all killed people gratuitously, that they added to the sum total of human misery. They left the world an uglier and more bruised place for their presence.

There are good men and women in the world. Including in Israel. They work and strive and struggle to make the world a better place, to bring justice and fairness, to treat people with a little decency. Sometimes in large ways, as with FDR, sometimes in very small ways. For the most part, their efforts go unremarked, we all benefit from it, but we seldom fully appreciate. Sometimes, their works come with a price, they're mocked and scorned, abused and ridiculed, sometimes killed or vanished. But the point is, that they keep on trying to make a better world.

Venerating a monster like Sharon simply shits in the mouth of every decent unsung hero, its an assault and mockery of all the good people trying to make a difference.

I've said that this is not about Israel. This is about a man who was a monster. This is about a man whose career encompassed murder, atrocity, massacres and war crimes. It should not be tolerated or legitimized, no matter what country he belonged to or what cause he fought for.

Because, in the end, if one were to say "Sharon is okay because he was on our side," then morality ceases to exist, there is no more integrity. There's only sides, our sides and their sides. And it all breaks down...

Imagine that! The Jewish nation chooses a leader, just like the leaders of every other country, committed to the security of the nation. How dare they? They are just supposed to go meekly to the slaughter.

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?

This is anti-Semitism. Spare me the blather about Jews accusing every critic of anti-Semitism. There has never been a time and place throughout the last 2000 years that critics of Jews' behavior were not anti-Semitic. It is hard to believe that support of virulently anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic, mysogynistic people (Palestinians) would qualify as a cause of the Left, but since they openly call for the destruction of world Jewry (what is left of it after the Europeans destroyed a third of it within living memory), the Left can overlook such trifles.

Sorry, the days of Jews getting slaughtered without retaliating are long gone. A pity for all the anti-Semites among us.