A Controversial Person

by Shalanda Bacchus, April 2015

1500 words

5 pages

essay

There are a lot of controversial figures in the world of politics. However, you can hardly find a lot of those, who at the same time would be voted the greatest citizens in their own country and viewed as sheer murderers, or even a “butchers”, in the other one. Regarding the latest development of events in the Palestinian-Arab conflict, we may note that the decisions of those people at times may be as controversial as their personalities are, provoking ever-emerging escalations of conflict. Ariel Sharon could be viewed as such a person, whose contradictions have always been at the heart of official reticence for the determination of Jewish settlers to expand Israel's influence on the occupied territory of the West Bank.

The former Israeli prime minister and war leader demonstrates a good example of a person, who knows a thing or two about power and his actions at times leave people confused as for their relevance and inevitability. Generally speaking, Ariel Sharon has always been keen on over-defending his own country and fervently oppressing the enemy, which frequently led to mournful consequences and considerable death tolls.

The direction of every person’s development is rooted in his/her childhood and youth. Ariel Sharon used to be a young soldier, which might explain his priorities in the future. The biography by Finkelstein describes his fist steps in combat as following: “Ariel Scheinerman, known by his friends as Arik, was a twenty-year-old platoon leader in the newly created Alexandroni Brigade of the Israeli army. When the brigade was given the order to retake Latrun, Arik’s platoon joined in the attack. Many of the young platoon leader’s soldiers were recent arrivals, untrained survivors of the Holocaust...” (Finkelstein, 8).

The further background of his military and political career proves the statement. In one of the articles there is a short summary on his interference into the escalated conflicts, and it is difficult to overestimate such characteristic:

From there he moved to the armed forces, eventually leading an Israeli commando attack on the West Bank village of Qibya, just east of Tel Aviv, in October 1953…Undaunted, the plucky Sharon then went for broke in the 1956 Sinai War -- ignoring direct orders, he sent his paratroopers into an Egyptian ambush, resulting in the death of 38 Israeli soldiers (Ariel, 2).

However, the most tarnishing event of his reputation, which only confirmed him as a war criminal in the eyes of the Arabs, happened in 1982 and involved the mass murder of Palestinian refugees outside Beirut. This massacre killed 2,000 people, among which there were women, children and the elderly. From that day on the Arabs have had no other name than a ‘butcher’ for the Israeli Defense Minister at that time. Ariel Sharon was found guilty of it and forced to resign.

At the times of Sharon’s stroke and his lasting health problems a lot of analysts talked about the troubled legacy that was left behind his actions. For Israeli citizens he was the only leader with vast military and political experience, who …

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