The mainstream media’s lionizing and exalting of the fatally ill Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could only be compared to the praise lavished on great men and women of past years.
The hundreds of endearing commentaries, venerating news reports and glorifying television programs — massively sprung in the wake of his unexpected stroke on Wednesday, Jan. 4 — make it doubtless that only a legacy like that of Mother Teresa can match Sharon’s.
The bashful attempts by some to balance the media’s gross misconceptions about Sharon went largely unheard. The man’s direct and indirect involvement in tormenting the Palestinian people for fifty long years seemed completely irrelevant.
Sharon’s disregard for civilian lives, since his early years as a fighter for the Jewish underground terrorist organization, the Haganah (1948-49) and his role as commander of an infamous army unit responsible for several massacres (most remembered is the brutal murder of 69 defenseless villagers in Qibya in 1953) seemed an extraneous nuisance.
Also to be dropped from the narrative was the list of relentless war crimes which took place throughout the 1950s-’60s (during Israel’s wars with Egypt), late ‘70s (during his bloody reign in Gaza), the ‘80s (his contemptible war and massacres in Lebanon) and most recently with the advent of the Second Palestinian Uprising in September 2000, one that he provoked through his misguided policy of assassinations. Since his election as Israel’s prime minister in 2001, Sharon supplemented his notorious resume causing the loss of several thousand Palestinian lives.
Some US newspapers admitted, although reluctantly, that Palestinians indeed “perceive” Sharon as a war criminal who has wrought untold hurt and misery to them. But as always, war crimes committed against Palestinians are never the same as those committed against others, especially when the perpetrator is Israel. Palestinian suffering lacks that needed universality — unlike Israeli victims of Palestinian suicide bombings.
Despite a memory dotted with numerous massacres, never once has an Israeli leader or official seen his day in an international court.
Meanwhile, the US media’s pandering continued: Replacing the Irreplaceable, read the headline of one St. Petersburg Times article, quoting an ill-advised conclusion that most people, including Palestinians, “are probably not feeling good (about Sharon’s illness) because even those who didn’t like him at all are now sure he’s the only person who can lead Israel to peace and security.”
One may never know who is responsible for disseminating such utter falsehoods, recycled by hundreds of newspapers all around the world. A BBC News correspondent in Jerusalem took his viewers in a live broadcast to an Israeli café. “People here can finally relax,” he says, thanks to Ariel Sharon’s success in reining in suicide bombers. Even the man’s gruesome violations of human rights were celebrated as milestones for a great statesman. Even Arabs were too careful not to upset the consensus. We should also remember how Yasser Arafat was ridiculed and shunned until the last moment of his life.
Sharon, or the “man of peace” according to President Bush, seems to have decidedly earned a place in history simply for relocating several thousand illegal Jewish settlers from occupied Gaza to the occupied West Bank. Though Sharon has repeatedly asserted that his decision to disengage from Gaza has more to do with Israel’s strategic and demographic needs than peace, very few took notice. The number of illegal settlers in the West Bank has since then increased by more than 4 percent, but that mattered little.
When all is said and done, Sharon the person will also matter little. His age and faltering health were doomed to sideline him sooner or later. What will have greater bearing than his life or death is his legacy, one that he has already passed on, one that glorifies unhindered violence and extremism to achieve political ends. Those who wish to fill Sharon’s shoes will likely strive to prove as violent and cruel as he was. Sharon once said, Palestinians “must be hit hard” and “must be beaten” before they should be permitted to talk peace with Israel, peace according to Israeli terms, not international law. Most of Sharon’s possible successors are also strong believers in such a philosophy, which is unlikely to fade away with the fading of individuals, Sharon or any other.
