Pray for Ariel Sharon

As we pray for Ariel Sharon, I think back on something Victor Davis Hanson wrote –in April 2002, as Sharon began to reverse Israel’s increasingly dire situation in the Palestinians’ barbaric terror war, by initiating Operation Defensive Shield.  Hanson’s article was entitled “The Tragedy of Mr. Sharon.”

[I]n 1967, and especially 1973, his service to Israel was heroic and life saving.  Five years ago no sane person in Israel thought that the widowed, obese, sweating, blunt-speaking, untelegenic bulldog would ever be prime minister. . . .  But now?  At this moment of Israel‘s greatest peril?  Israel is lucky to have the likes of him — one last time.

Without Israeli retaliation, Saddam Hussein rained Scuds into Tel Aviv to the cheers of Palestinians (who apparently hoped their payloads were gas-laden as promised); the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon brought not the hoped-for peace, but the shelling of Israel proper; and the giveaway at Camp David offered almost all of the West Bank [and all of Gaza and half of Jerusalem] and instead sired the intifada — all that implanted the impression to many in the region not that Israel was magnanimous, but rather tired, dispirited, and ready to call it quits. 

And so the utopians, peacemakers, and conciliators, for all their forbearance, got the murder-bombers . . . .

Mr. Sharon . . . said "no more," and plowed into the West Bank to hunt down, kill, or capture the culprits.  He barked out that he probably should have had Arafat shot years ago. . . .  He said all that and more — without make-up, scripts, or damage-control spinners and handlers. . . .

[T]he weary warrior is an easy target of the blow-dried, chattering classes — aged, plodding, with heavily accented English, in poor health, and solitary. Indeed, Sharon seems to belong better with a shovel and wading boots on his farm, or astride a tank than trying to conduct a press conference in a cheap blazer with an ample belly. . . .

Now in his mid-70s Sharon will be lucky to get six months of retirement back on his farm for his trouble. . . .

In future years there will be a debate about where he was going, and what he would have done next, similar to the debates about Yitzhak Rabin and John F. Kennedy when they were taken in the midst of war.  For now, Israel can thank G-d it had him when it did — in 1967, 1973 and 2002 — and for as long as it did.  And we can pray for his recovery and for the honor and comfort he deserves.