Sharon: Israel's Warrior-Politician

I like this book. Sure, the first third of the book does rely too much on the works of Van Creveld and Morris. And it could have said something more (and something different) about Israel's war in Lebanon. But it is fairly reasonable. It does spend a little time showing how Sharon won the libel suit against Time Magazine. And it has some interesting material from Sharon's time as leader of Unit 101 (an anti-terrorism squad that was formed in 1953, after more than 450 Israelis died in terrorist attacks over a three-year period). There is plenty of discussion about retaliatory raids for terror attacks. Can one simply ask folks nicely not to allow their towns to sponsor terrorist attacks? Um, no. That does not work. The people in the town simply deny them. And they mention that they are not required to keep Israel safe! Well, what if one fights back? Doesn't that just provoke more terror? Not necessarily. We see that even the Kibeyeh raid did more to slow down terror than increase it. Still, the best part of this work is the excellent history from 1997 to 2002, which takes up about two thirds of the book. We are told of the BBC's vicious untruths in its program "The Accused," which aired in June of 2001. We read about the Durban conference. And the battle of Jenin. And much more. I've seen quite a few books about Israel fall down badly when they get to recent history. This one is a big exception to that rule. I recommend it.

To truly understand the conflict that rages in the Middle East you have to first understand the players and no player is more complicated than Ariel Sharon. Known across the globe as a hawk and hard liner - Prime Minister Sharon began as a farmer in his often ostracized family and rose through the ranks in an undisciplined quasi-military before the formation of the Israeli Defense Forces ("IDF"). His tenure at the IDF was controversial and turbulent, but highly effective. Sharon entered politics after being forced out of the military and ultimately became the Prime Minister of Israel after the disappointing tenure of Ehud Barak. Sharon: Israel's Warrior-Politician captures the life of this most complicated man in a manner consistently balanced and fair. As a Zionist myself I am suspicious any time a group of academics gather to write about any member of Likud or other right leaning political group in Israel, but as I read this book, I was pleasantly surprised at just how balanced and fair the authors were. As debates rage over whether or not college students should read about Islam - one thing that should be added to every curriculum is a study of the man who has been instrumental at just about every twist and turn of Israeli history. From the first war in Israel to the current conflict - no figure captures the essence of Israel like Ariel Sharon and no book has ever captured the man behind the hawkish right leaning persona. A must read....

After looking forward for some months to receiving this new book, I have been somewhat disappointed. Unlike other monographs of this kind, which are written on the basis of original documentats and first hand information, this book is in part a rehash of secondary materials. As attested by their few earlier publications, the authors are not historians, political scientists or military experts, who might have illuminated their presentation with their own original insight. Nevertheless this book is quite worth reading. In its first third, this book rehashes earlier books on the subject, which are cited at length throughout the text without critical comment. The first few chapters are based on books with a positive assessment of Sharon, while in the following chapters the authors tend to lean heavily on two monographs, those of Martin Van Creveld and Benny Morris who are critical of Sharon, the IDF and Zionism. To exemplify Van Creveld's bias: In his chapter "The Lebanese Morass", analyzing Sharon's military strategy in Lebanon in 1982, he states "he even voted against the Camp David Accords.", as if Sharon's political views in 1993 have bearing on the military campaign in 1982. When using blatantly biased material, a responsible author is expected to point this out to a naïve reader. In writing this part of the book the authors seem to be too involved in presenting their borrowed information, so that they failed to use other, highly relevant, more recent resources readily available to them. For instance, in Chapter 25 which describes the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 and in Chapter 26 which describes the aftermaths of that massacre, the authors fail to discuss the eye-witness account of the massacre by Robert Hatem, whose book "From Israel to Damascus: The Painful Road to Blood, Betrayal and Deception" they cite in Chapter 70. Hatem points out that the Sabra and Shatila massacre was a very clever Syrian political move to defeat Israel politically, estrange it from the US and bring about Sharon's political downfall. Under instructions from Damascus, that massacre was instigated and directed by a Syrian agent who managed at the time to fool Sharon as well as the Christian Lebanese leadership. How could the authors have failed to discuss such crucial information that was available to them? In the second two thirds of this book (Chapters 33 - 84, the authors present a far more balanced reportage of recent events in Israel up the mid 2002. Consequently, this part of the book, which covers the recent pages of Sharon's life story, which is incidental to the history of the State of Israel in the last ten years, is new and quite informative. This part of this book is highly recommended to anyone interested in the current struggle for survival of the Jewish state. As a whole, this book demonstrates how deeply interwoven is the personal life story of the present Prime Minister of Israel with the history of his country in the last fifty years. I wish th