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44

Friday, April 24, 1987

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Sharon's Case

Continued from preceding page.

one: sensitive, firm, reflective, good
humored, truthful, and totally selfless in
his quest for a safe and secure Israel. The
worst he can say about his former boss is
that he displays a "slight tendency toward
impatience.
"General Sharon personifies the basic
Zionism defined by David Ben Gurion," he
says. "He never betrayed this — not in set-
tling the country or in defending the coun-
try. Most of the others not only never knew
this, but if they knew it, they betrayed it
long ago. He has always been willing to pay
the personal price for this, which is fan-
tastic for a leader. He stands up and takes
responsibility."
He refers to a recent statement by an
Israeli general in reference to the Pollard
case. "In an interview on the radio, the
general said that the only statesman in
Israel who has ever taken political or other
responsibility was Sharon, after Sabra and
Shatilla. No other one. He was referring to
the Pollard case, where there are only
operators, no political responsibility."
At the same time, Dan rejects the find-
ings of the Kahan Commission and main-
tains that Sharon had no responsibility for
what happened at Sabra and Shatilla.
"No," he says, "as the president and
defense secretary in America had no
responsibility for all kinds of stories that
went in Viet Nam. Have you ever created
an investigative committee against one of
your secretaries of defense during those
years? Ever? You, the biggest democracy
in the world?"
He argues that a "lynch atmosphere" in
Israel was responsible for the Kahan Com-
mission's findings, an atmosphere that was
provoked by the Israeli media. This same
atmosphere, he suggests, led to the inac-
curate Time story. "Those who instigated
this campaign because they wanted to take
advantage and get rid of Sharon and
Begin, they thought when it would come
to their delicate skin, the story would be
different. Now, with Iran-gate and the
other affairs, they're facing the same thing
the golem they created is marching on, and
the saints aren't marching in."
Dan has a curiously paradoxical evalua-
tion of the quality of justice meted out in
the trial. On one hand, he says that the
trial was a fair one. "It was the judicial
system at its best," he says. But he also im-
plies that the outcome was essentially a
compromise designed for political purposes
— or even for the advancement of Judge
Abraham D. Sofaer's own career. "Sharon,"
he writes, "believed Judge Sofaer had got-
ten exactly what he had set out to achieve
— exactly what Sharon had estimated he
would go for from the beginning. Sharon
had proved that the Time story was false
and defamatory, but he had not succeed-
ed in proving actual malice. Thus justice
was meted out to the Jewish Israeli
general, but the Jewish American judge
would still be able to live peacably with
himself in his own part of the world, with
Time magazine, with the First Amend-
ment, and with a great legal career ahead
of him. In other words, the judge had suc-
ceeded in bringing the jury around to deci-
sions that — as Sharon had estimated even

before the start of the trial — he could have
been expected to hand down if there had
been no jury at all."
It is clear in both his conversation and
in his writing that Uri Dan's life is inex-
tricably bound up with Ariel Sharon's.
They met in 1954, when Dan — barely past
adolescence — began to work with an IDF
newspaper. At the time, Sharon was com-
manding the super-secret Israeli paratroop
corps. "I heard about the secret unit that
was dealing with special operations, and I
naively said I wanted to write about them
and go with them to the battle," he says.
"I didn't know anything about regulations.
But I came to the base and met Sharon,
the regiment commander. He was amazed
— I spoke like a grownup, but I was in my
teens."
He jumped with Sharon's troops during
the Suez campaign, and provided the only
press accounts of the operations of that
secret unit. "Was I objective in reporting
it?" he asks rhetorically. "I don't know. But
I was there. I was, among others lucky to
get out of there."
The linkage of these two men is demon-

Uri Dan attempts to combine
a highly personal perspective
on the meaning of key events
with a journalistic sorting-out
of the complex story.

strated by a curious aspect of Dan's per-
sonality; when talking about himself, he
tends to segue into talking about Sharon.
He slips from his account of the first
paratroop encounters into a broad outlin-
ing of Sharon's career. Both in the book
and in his conversation, it is sometimes dif-
ficult to know whose point of view is be-
ing presented — Dan's or Sharon's.
This aspect of his character is evident
even in his physical mannerisms. Dan is a
compact man who radiates a feeling of
barely contained energy — and that energy
is most intense when Ariel Sharon is the
subject of his conversation. In person, he
comes across as derisive of his opponents,
fiercely loyal, and somewhat explosive. He
seems to use eye contact almost as a kind
of dueling.
He is blunt about the source of most of
the controversy about the man he admires
with such fervor. "Jealousy," he says.
"After every war they would poke out from
the shelters and ask, 'Where is this war-,
monger?' During the war, they say 'where
is he, where is he, are we going to win? Is
Sharon there? After the war, it is a different
ballgame."
It was jealousy, he says, that drove
Sharon out of the army in the early Seven-
ties — only to be called back during the
terrible crisis of the Yom Kippur war.
He is equally blunt about the political op-
position in Israel — especially the Labor
Party in criticizing Sharon, his reply was
explosive. "Power. Sheer corrupted power.
This was the reason the people got rid of

