From the Jerusalem Post.
Sharon’s career ended in January 2006 when he suffered a debilitating stroke, his second in under a month. Since then, he has been in a coma on life support systems.
Sheba director Ze’ev Rotstein said Monday that only a miracle could save Sharon’s life. A day earlier Rotstein said that Sharon, whose first name means lion in Hebrew, was “fighting like a lion.”
Sharon was one of Israel’s legendary politicians and military leaders. He played an instrumental role in IDF victories in the Sinai desert in both the 1967 Six Day War and in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. His victories on the battlefield, immortalized by the image of him in an IDF uniform with a white bandage wrapped around his wounded forehead, earned him the title, “Arik, King of Israel.”
He was equally fearless in the political arena, where he was the father of two parties, Likud and Kadima. As defense minister in 1982, he oversaw the Lebanon War before he was ousted from office in 1983 as a result of the Sabra and Shatilla massacre for which the Kahn Commission of Inquiry found him indirectly responsible.
But he returned to politics. As construction and housing minister from 1990 to 1992, he was responsible for a massive building effort of 144,000 apartments to house the flood of Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union bloc. As the father of the settlement movement, he was also instrumental in building thousands of homes in Judea and Samaria and is famous for urging right-wing activists “to run for the hilltops.”
He rose to the post of foreign minister in 1998. In September 2000, as the head of the Likud party, his walk on the Temple Mount was cited by Palestinians as the trigger for the second intifada.
He was elected prime minister in 2001 and under his leadership Israel began to build its security barrier in the West Bank.
Sharon was a hell of a guy. Israel needed someone like him to lead them through some very dangerous times in their history. He was a fierce defender of Israel who believed in a strong defense against Arab aggression.
RIP, Ariel.
Related article:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/01/11/remembering-ariel-sharon-great-man-who-defied-stereotypes/
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