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Ariel Sharon: 1928-2014

The Lion Of Israel

A legendary warrior-statesman is mourned.

Mitch Ginsburg I Times Of Israel

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

elections that he was expected to win in
a landslide, Sharon suffered a devastating
stroke and never recovered.
He is survived by his older sister Dita, his
two living sons, Omri and Gilad, his daugh-
ter-in-law Inbal, and his six grandchildren.
Sharon, as both military leader and prime
minister, was the man to whom the Israeli
public looked in its hours of need, yearning
for the protection he provided and cognizant
of the consequences it sometimes entailed.
As Ari Shavit wrote in a piercing profile in
the New Yorker in 2006, Israelis turned to
Sharon in the 1950s, during the devastat-
ing fedayun (terrorist) raids; as they did on
Yom Kippur 1973; and yet again, most over-
whelmingly, during the savagely bloody days
of the Second Intifada.
He was defense minister during the 1982
Lebanon War and was found to bear per-
sonal responsibility for failing to prevent the
Lebanese Christian Phalangist massacre of
Palestinian Muslims in the refugee camps of
Sabra and Shatila.
Toward the end of his political career,
he was welcomed into the mainstream. In

August 2005, he presided over the withdraw-
al from Gaza, uprooting some 24 settlements
in total and irrevocably severing his ties with
the settlement movement that he had an
instrumental role in founding.

Ariel Sharon and

Farm Roots
Moshe Dayan,
Sharon was born on a rainy Feb. 26,
left, survey the
1928, to a violin-playing agronomist western side of
father and a legendarily tenacious
the Suez Canal
mother.
during the Yom
His father, Samuil Scheinerman,
Kippur War in
was from the Belarussian city
October 1973.
of Brest-Litovsk and had been
raised a Zionist. His father's father,
Mordechai, had been best friends with
Menachem Begin's father, and the two had
broken down the door of the local synagogue
when the rabbi refused to hold a memorial
for Theodor Herzl. Mordechai's wife, Miriam,
was a midwife; she birthed Menachem Begin.
Sharon's mother, Vera Schneerof, from the
tiny Belarussian village of Halavenchichi,
Battlefield Valor
was a reluctant Zionist. Her dream was to
In the summer of 1945, Sharon took part in
be a doctor. But in 1921, with the Red Army
the Haganalis squad leader training course,
advancing on Tiflis, she hastily married
far from the eyes of the British.
Samuil, dropped out of medical school and
Shortly after the Nov. 29, 1947, vote that
set sail for Palestine.
authorized the partition of Palestine, Sharon,

News Analysis

The Bulldozer's Jewish Heart

I

Dr. Aviad Hacohen

Israel Hayom

Ariel Sharon is

pictured on his

Negev farm in

1993.

8 January 16 • 2014

JIB

nside Ariel Sharon existed an apocalyp-
tic clash. Dwelling inside him, simul-
taneously, was a lamb and a wolf. On
the one hand, Sharon was a forceful and
aggressive military leader par excellence, a
revered commander, a courageous warrior
unafraid of charging the enemy from the
front and leading his men to victory.
In politics, too, Sharon offered his adver-
saries no quarter.
On the other hand, Sharon was a family
man, a farmer and man of the Earth, curi-
ous in nature, sensitive and responsive to
the people around him — he heard the suf-
fering of others and took pains to help them.
For years the religious public saw him
as "one of us." His active support in propel-
ling the settlement enterprise in Judea and
Samaria, even at the cost of blatantly break-
ing the law, earned him immense credit
with them.
In time, he also became adored by lead-
ers of the ultra-Orthodox parties. But,

much of this magic abruptly dissipated
when he announced his Gaza disengage-
ment plan.
Of all these images we are familiar with
there is still a sweet spot in my heart for
a side of him that is perhaps not as well
known — "Sharon the Jew." Sharon was
not observant or religious. Far from it. But
in his chest beat a warm Jewish heart. The
fate of the Jewish people was always at the
forefront of his mind, and he fought unwav-
eringly to secure its future.
I discovered this side of his personality
during a random meeting with him some
12 years ago, when Sharon was opposi-
tion chairman, a relatively minor player. I
was accompanying then-Diaspora Affairs
Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior. Melchior
asked him to support the plan to deal with
the challenge of conversions for the hun-
dreds of thousands of immigrants from the
former Soviet Union.
Sharon sat with us for an hour and told
us about his concerns over the future of the
Jewish people. He lamented the assimila-
tion eating away at the Jewish people every-
where and expressed his sorrow that the
rabbinical authorities were making things

then still known as Scheinerman, led a
company of troops through the mud and
heavy rain to the outskirts of Bir Addas, an
Arab village that was host to Iraqi troops.

Ariel Sharon on page 10

difficult for those wishing to convert to
Judaism.
He went into a personal story about dis-
tant relatives of his who had converted, and
he concluded on an optimistic note and the
hope that something will indeed be done
on the matter. Sharon spoke from his heart
and expressed, in his own way, his concern
for the Jewish people.
In the days to come, he was given the
opportunity to realize his vision. About a
year and a half later, after he was elected
prime minister, Sharon ordered the creation
of the conversions department in the Prime
Minister's Office. Typical of the Bulldozer,
he did not let those working there rest. He
demanded of them to tackle the issue head-
on, to hire the best people available for the
task, and mainly to find a solution for every
one of the thousands of non-Jews of Jewish
descent who were asking to return to the
bosom of the Jewish nation if it would only
open its arms to them.
This issue revealed to us a different side
of him — Sharon the Jew. His good deeds
in this regard will earn him favor, not only
in this world but also in the world to come
as well.

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