Ariel Sharon's Generation
by MICKEY Z


* * * * *

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, in 1953 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.