Israel Matzav

Against the Sharon Cult

Ariel Sharon’s medical emergency has unleashed a wave of media-impelled groupthink in Israel and much of the world. The official line is that he was “the only Israeli leader who could make peace,” and that his loss gravely imperils the “peace process.” The underlying axiom is that his unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and part of the northern West Bank was a wise, courageous step, and a path he would have continued when reelected next March 28.

Even the assumption of Sharon’s popularity in Israel is exaggerated. According to polls taken still three months before the elections, a Sharon-led Kadima Party would have won 40 seats. To begin with, Israeli polls are notoriously inaccurate. For instance, they wrongly predicted a handy victory by Shimon Peres over Benjamin Netanyahu in the 1996 elections, and, even more mistakenly, an easy win for Sharon’s disengagement plan in the Likud referendum in May 2004.

But even if Kadima under Sharon had won 40 seats in March, soundly defeating both Labor and Likud, 40 seats is still only one-third of Israel’s 120-member, multiparty Knesset. In other words, Kadima would have won by a solid plurality but no more. And a Kadima that would have garnered—more likely—30-35 seats would have had, merely, a not-so-impressive plurality. In fact, the talkbacks on Israeli Hebrew news sites gives a much more mixed picture regarding Sharon’s alleged great popularity.

Nor is it warranted to assume that Sharon would have carried out further disengagements, when last September 29 he said exactly the opposite. Granted, Sharon did not have a track record of great consistency and honesty; but it is just as plausible that his old, security-conscious self would have revived (or already had) and refused to hand further launching pads, gratis, to Hamas, the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, Al-Qaeda and the rest.

Nevertheless, Sharon is being lionized like Yitzhak Rabin before him as “the Israeli who could have made peace,” even as the Palestinian Authority and the Middle East in general sink further and further into Islamist hatred and belligerency. The reasons for the great popularity of Israeli territorial withdrawals—which mean transferring land, and populations, from the control of a pro-Western democracy to that of Islamist terror organizations, with demonstrably harmful effects for both Palestinians and Israelis—lie partly in the realm of psychology. On the mundane level, though, it is possible to correct the destructive groupthink myths about Sharon, which encourage those Israelis who are most delusional and least able to cope with Middle Eastern realities.

The aim is not disrespect for an ailing leader, but respect for the truth. A more fact-based view of Sharon, then, reveals:

Sorry, but you'll have to read the entire article to find out - it's worth your time!

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:45 PM