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27 Jan, 2014

Ariel Sharon: The legacy of a psychopath | GulfNews.com

In a display of political and diplomatic hypocrisy, most western leaders praised the late Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon for his transformation from a fierce fighter for Israel to a man who took initiatives to make peace with the Palestinians.

Israeli President Shimon Peres described him as a “brave military leader”, while Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt tweeted that Sharon was “a great leader of Israel. A brilliant military commander, but also a wise statesman seeing the necessity of peace”. As Sharon had been marketed long ago as a military “hero”, most western newspapers couldn’t avoid reminding readers of his responsibility for the massacre of Sabra and Shatila following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982. And the Israeli newspaper, Jerusalem Post, said on January 12 that “his escapades earned him simultaneous adulation and criticism, most notably from prime minister David Ben-Gurion”.

“Escapades” is a very polite euphemism for describing Sharon’s record as a military man because he, like many Israelis, had one definition of victory: “The number of their victims.” That’s why Sharon was always associated with massacres and mass killings.

via Ariel Sharon: The legacy of a psychopath | GulfNews.com.