End of an Era: Updated
[He is] a gigantic figure in Israeli politicsGigantic is right.
--Condoleeza Rice
Update: The Shabbat law forbids burial on Fridays --and also pulling the plug on persons on life support. Sometime on Saturday the Sharon family will be consulted on whether to end the artificial coma in which Mr. Sharon lies. NY Congressmen have already left for Israel to attend the funeral.
Update: In all the bru-ha-ha surrounding Pat Robertson's comment that Sharon deserved death for giving up Gaza, I believe some extremist rabbis in Israel put a Cabalistic death curse on Sharon in July. Read here.
The end has come for Ariel Sharon, the sly gamer and the man of war. Jesus Christ was a man of peace; Sharon and Bismarck may be considered astute men of war and of politics.
Over the next few days, we'll hear effusions of praise for Sharon's medical team (while Sharon left his adversary, Arafat, languish in suffering from lack of care as he was he was beseiged in Spartan conditions in the bare Ramallah fortress), the wails of the weeping masses for a gluttonous man of no integrity, and messages of sympathy from Western heads of state to a man who sought to carry out ethnic cleansing --on occasion by death, sometimes by other means.
Olmert has no hope of filling Sharon's shoes; the Israel "center" [composed pragmatic extremists and personality cultists] is gone. Israelis must now to choose between Netanyahu's Likud and Peretz' Labor. We think Peretz has the right idea and we wish him well in March.
posted by Nur-al-Cubicle | 4:50 PM
12 Comments:
Good thing Arafat never killed anyone. Then we'd be reduced to saying that, well, Sharon just had more guns.
Whatever, Eretz-boy.
Nur, a brilliant response as ever.
while Sharon left his adversary, Arafat, languish in suffering from lack of care as he was he was beseiged in Spartan conditions in the bare Ramallah fortress
I guess you would make sure that Osama bin Laden also had access to good medical care.
Sharon was a great leader. A man who won every battle he faced; whose goal was peace and security for Israel. arafart, on the other hand led his people from one disaster to another; an arch-terrorists whose targets were always the innocent; and who never missed the opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Sharon, unlike Arafat, sought NO ethnic cleansing.
To even make a comparison between Sharon and arafat show your complete vapidity and moral obtuseness.
Likkudie-boy, you seem to have forgotten a few facts from the past.
Interesting comment in today's Guardian by Jonathan Freedland.
Frankly, Nûr mia, I think Sharon was much less fanatical than you seem to believe: at least the man was truly secular unlike say Netanyahu, Olmert & Co.
In fact, Ehud Olmert is kind of a rightwing Likudnik wolf in centrist clothes.
Olmert’s grandfather was actually a leading ultra-fundamentalist rabbi who founded several settlements in the West Bank in the 1920s and participated in the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian civilians in and around Hebron…
The murder of Gentiles by Jews is said by the Talmud to be a “holy sacrifice” to God (Zohar, III, 2276 and I, 38b and 39a). Death of Gentiles by beheading is especially recommended (Pesachim, 49b).
When welcoming Yasser Arafat and Isaac Rabin in the White House at the signing ceremony of the Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty, Bill Clinton famously quoted from the Talmud “If you save just one life, it is as if you have saved the entire world.”
Actually, the exact wording in the Talmud says that if you save just one Jewish life, it is as if you have saved the entire world. According to the Talmud, Gentile lives, of course, have no value at all.
It is important to remember that, to most observant Jews, the Talmud is not an obsolete and crusty document. The rabbis teach that it is a living and breathing instructional document, a modern-day, indispensable holy book. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an ardent Jewish believer, was quoted in The New York Times as giving credit to the Talmud for her success on the bench. “The Talmud,” said Ginsburg, “is my sacred guide for daily living.”
Babylon Bus Rider, the Talmud says no such thing. What you quote is nothing more than the typical anti-semitic idiocy. You get this crap from Stormfront?
Well I’m not sure my dear Nudnik: in essence the racist teachings of the Talmud aren’t much different from the incendiary sermons of Hamas-style Islamic fundamentalists, and for good reason: 90% of the Islamic “Shariaa” Law a.k.a. “Koranic Justice” is just copied/pasted from the Talmudic tradition!
You just need to replace “Goy” (Gentile) by “Kâfer” (Infidel) and most of the rest is actually identical: see it’s quite straightforward...These guys were millennia ahead of Xerox and Microsoft!
“…Hitting a Jew is the same as hitting God Sanhedrin 58b. If a heathen (gentile) hits a Jew, the gentile must be killed. O.K. to Cheat Non-Jews Sanhedrin 57a . A Jew need not pay a gentile ("Cuthean") the wages owed him for work. Jews Have Superior Legal Status Baba Kamma 37b. "If an ox of an Israelite gores an ox of a Canaanite there is no liability; but if an ox of a Canaanite gores an ox of an Israelite...the payment is to be in full." Jews May Steal from Non-Jews Baba Mezia 24a . If a Jew finds an object lost by a gentile ("heathen") it does not have to be returned. (Affirmed also in Baba Kamma 113b)…”
Of course this is only an abridged except: for more “edifying” details check out the highly “enlightened cum progressive” teachings of Rabbi David J.B. Krishef of Askrabbi.com fame:
http://jewish.com/askarabbi/askarabbi/askr4942.htm
Nudie, don't pretend to be educated.
It seems as if some here actually believe that religion rather than land, power, money, and control have anything to do with what is going on. I wonder how such a thought came about.
Pocho, it really is about grandiose notions entertained by an ethnic group with its own myths. That said, Sharon stuffed his pockets thanks real estate deals and other business opportunities that were set at his feet by the fire-breathers.
I read somewhere that the Russian oligarchs were origially bankrolled by Sharon's office.
Nur,
Great blog in general. I'd like to trade links with you: www.kabobfest.com
I'm not sure if Sharon's incapacitation means the end for Kadima. Olmert, in early polls, seems a few points ahead of his contenders. Who knows if they will step up and mobilize to keep that lead. W/o Sharon it will be hard, but not impossible. Peres probably still has some clout, I imagine. If he puts himself fully behind Olmert, it might be enough...
Either way, with the wall and the settlement policy a bi-partisan one, it is hard for me to imagine that the contours of a two-state solution are not already set in stone. The are variances in terms of Jerusalem and refugees, but most eevrything else seems predictable.
Will
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