Ariel Sharon: Israel’s Soldier and Strongman, 1928-2014
Ariel Sharon died Saturday after having spent the last eight of his 85 years. Incapacitated by a coma that followed a massive stroke, Sharon’s last hours were spent with members of his family at his bedside. Outside, an Israeli nation watched with one eye on the news and another on the past, re-assessing the qualities of a leader whose lifetime spanned the life of the nation.
Sharon was physically transformed by his illness, losing the massive girth that was both his signature since middle age and symbol of Sharon’s outsized role in Israeli history. But what emerged in the last week of his life was how much his long years as an invalid also changed to how Israeli’s saw Sharon.
In active life, he had always been a warrior first — a profoundly polarizing one, in the thick of every major conflict during the nearly six decades Sharon spent either in the Israeli military or running it. As an invalid, the hard edges disappeared.
When Sharon was remembered at all in recent years, it was for the five years he spent as prime minister. His signature actions in office - including the unilateral pull-out of Jewish settlers and troops from the Gaza Strip, and leaving behind the rightist Likud Party he founded to start the center-right Kadima - were seen as the bold strokes of a confident leader, a quality more associated with the country’s vanishing Founding generation than the media-genic politicians who followed.
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