Sharon was no Mandela

“Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to […]

“Even today I am willing to volunteer to do the dirty work for Israel, to kill as many Arabs as necessary, to deport them, to expel and burn them, to have everyone hate us, to pull the rug from underneath the feet of the Diaspora Jews, so that they will be forced to run to us crying. Even if it means blowing up one or two synagogues here and there, I don’t care.”- Ariel Sharon

Of course, comparing Nelson Mandela with Ariel Sharon amounts comparing like with the unlike. But fate records it that in recent times the two are the most recent former heads of state that passed on. Nelson Mandela was the first democratically elected President of a non-racial South Africa in 1990. After serving an eventful one term of office he died on December 5 2013 at the age of 95 after a brief illness and buried at a state funeral held on 15 December 2013 in Qunu, South Africa. Ariel Sharon was a two-term Prime minister of the state of Israel. Having suffered a comma after a debilitating stroke in 2006, he stepped down, died 7 years after on Jan. 11 this year and buried on the Jan. 13 at his beloved Sycamore Ranch in Israel’s southern Negev desert. This is where the similarity between the two late leaders ends.
Even the most benign assessment of Sharon sees him as a controversial long-time political and military leader, known as “the bulldozer” notorious for his aggressive style in governance for which the Palestinians paid dearly in loss of lives and territory.  In 1982, as a Defence Minister he spearheaded the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which many Palestinians in the camps at Sabra and Shatila were massacred the tragedy that provoked the largest protest in the history of Israel against Sharon. Indeed a commission of inquiry, headed by the then Chief Justice of Israel’s Supreme Court, Yitzhak Kahan, indicted him as being negligent as a Defence Minister.  Ariel Sharon was the only Israeli Prime Minister to be so described as a Crime Minister of sort following the massacre of Sabra and Shatila.  Sharon eventually was forced to resign. Sharon was undoubtedly a Zionist Israeli patriot but even by Israel’s standard of a state of fortress, Sharon was an embarrassment and even a failure that could not achieve peace with the Palestinians.

Conversely Mandela’s enemies and his jailers who unjustly put him 27-year long imprisonment agreed he was a liberator, unifier and builder of unprecedented reconciliation among races. Mandela was certainly not averse to controversies but was globally acclaimed for his activism for justice, freedom and fairness to all. Mandela  received as many as 250 honours while alive, the most outstanding being the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize he shared with De Klerk, with whom he served in the government of national unity. De Klerk saw Mandela as  a remarkable man with the  biggest  of reconciliation and “a remarkable lack of bitterness,” . Certainly Sharon was no Mandela. He was no Menachem Begin (1913-1992) either. Menachem Begin was an acknowledged Israelis statesman and Prime Minister who shared Nobel Prize with President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1978 following the unprecedented peace deal between Israel and Egypt. Indeed Sharon was the only prime minister who came to power through terror-provocation that included provocative visit to some holly sites in East Jerusalem! Conversely Nelson Mandela came to power on account of multi racial support given his all inclusive commitment to fairness. Mandela inherited a divided South Africa and bequeathed a united country coping with the challenge of nation building. Conversely Sharon inherited Israel at war with the Palestinians and left an Israel still searching for peace with the Palestinians.
A commentator puts it better that; “A day will come when it will be recognized that leaders such as Sharon, and those who have shared his vision of Israel as a fortress state rather than one that can attain peaceful relations with its neighbours, have done their own people the greatest disservice”.